Black Forest Brownies are so easy to make that, if right now on the morning of Valentine’s Day, you haven’t whipped up a sweet dessert to share, you can get this done and still have plenty of time to sprinkle rose petals, whip through your tax returns, or negotiate peace in the Middle East.

This month’s Lady Behind the Curtain Dessert Challenge ingredients were chocolate and cherry. Play your cards right at the dollar store, and these brownies are also a bargain! Plus, they can be varied in numerous ways that I’ll describe at the end of the recipe.

Valentine’s Day calls for a dopey love song, and handily, Tegan and Sara’s new album Hearthrob (buy at iTunes, buy at Amazon) has that song. It’s called “Love They Say,” and it’s reputedly constructed from every cliché in the love-song biz. Billboard‘s right in saying it cries out to be in the soundtrack to a teen movie.

Preheat your oven to 325, and let’s embrace the chocolate. Read the rest of this entry »

Colton Dixon blinded me with science.

While I wasn’t overwhelmed by his stint as a reality-TV personality on American Idol, his launch into Christian Contemporary Music coincided with my seizing on the research question of whether Idol alumni would have an easier time building sustainable careers if they started in a niche genre, rather than being hurled at pop music. It’s hard to get more “niche” than CCM while still singing in English — no, as far as I know, no group sings in tongues — unless one dedicates one’s life to smooth jazz.

So I started reading Dixon’s interviews, generally enjoyed how he talked about music, and figured, with the release of his debut album, A Messenger (buy at iTunes, buy at Amazon), that thoroughness required giving it a listen to see if he delivers on his promises to do musically exciting things.

There is no logical or theological reason this should be paired with orange muffins that are secretly filled with strawberry jam. Dixon does not, for instance, have a jam band (that would be Season 11 winner Phillip Phillips). His style is unsurprisingly alt-rock, spurring (fair) comparisons to genre-mates MercyMe and Casting Crowns. Let’s preheat the oven to 350, find an orange, and contemplate this album track-by-track. (If you use Spotify, you can follow along without committing.)

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Murder on the Menu by Miranda Bliss is very thoroughly a chick-lit prymance, so we’ve drifted a long way from my normal tastes, apparently on a sea of split pea soup.

Sadder but wiser gal Annie Capshaw, still smarting from the end of her perfect marriage, apparently took a cooking class in the prior book. Together with her ditzy and gorgeous friend Eve and the oh-so-luscious instructor of the course, they solved a murder and then decided to open a restaurant together. Further mayhem ensues. The hot cop this time is a cranky former flame for whom Eve still carries a torch. The restaurant is in Alexandria, Virginia, on King Street, probably near Patrick Street.

Nonetheless, I’ve been wanting a good split-pea soup recipe, and at the time I wrote this, I’d been coughing and sniffling my way into a chilly, dank winter, so here is the moment!  A restaurant-based plot calls for a restaurant-based song by Irish rock band The Thrills, still on their indefinite hiatus since 2008.
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Pfeffernusse.

It must be whispered in a sort of enticing coo.

Also to be whispered enticingly: band recommendations. I have a mutual follow on Twitter with an account that purports to be former Survivor front man Jimi Jamison (track-by-track of Never Too Late), though I suspect — due to its sudden burst of recommendations for Croatian post-punk bands and the like — that it’s actually a fan account. But anybody who remembers back to my World Cup fusion recipes in summer 2010 will realize that I need the occasional Croatian post-punk band. So I have no serious problem here with being fooled or exploited, as long as the bands keep coming. (And if it’s really Jamison, he has an amazingly diverse network of musical pals.)

The recipe for these cookies bears a vague resemblance to Kitchen Riffs’ pfeffernusse. Don’t rush to preheat the oven. Instead, set a stick of butter out to soften while checking out Australian hard rock band Ragdoll (official site, Youtube or buy Here Today EP from CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon).

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Today brings two diverse challenges for you, and that’s before we even get to stunning the unwary by mashing parsnips with cream cheese as a Thanksgiving side dish.

Challenge 1: If you desperately miss melodic arena rock of the mid-1980s, you need to order Jimi Jamison’s Never Too Late right now (at iTunes, at Amazon, official site). Don’t wait for iTunes gift cards.

Challenge 2: If you’re a hipster, your job is to convince people that Never Too Late is secretly a holiday album.

“Wait, what?” you say. “There’s no ironic grungy reconfiguring of holiday classics! No twee girls cooing about Santa! No Bon Iver making me feel cold, depressed, and concerned for elk! What about the elk?”

The true childlike magic of Christmas is not elk. It is not doing one’s entire holiday shopping on Christmas Eve at a Love’s truck stop in Wisconsin or knitting everybody matching fingerless gloves or making up a drinking game for How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Fine traditions though these may be, they are not Christmas. Christmas is lack of cynicism. Never Too Late is the least cynical rock album I have ever encountered. Even though I’ve never been much for the bombastic Survivor style (you have recognized Jamison as Survivor’s second frontman, yes?), I can’t help finding this album weirdly charming. Since that’s also roughly how I feel about parsnips, we’ll explore both at once (yes, the album’s on Spotify if you need a trial listen). Read the rest of this entry »

Pssst! Cranberry-mushroom flan with onions and walnuts!

This is my go-to Thanksgiving dish for vegetarians, and you will want to make plenty, as non-vegetarians will snurfle up more than their share. This version is a flan, rather than a quiche, because it lacks a crust, thus making it a lot lower-calorie, as well as gluten-free (if you omit one optional ingredient).

Since it’s thrown together somewhat randomly, I’m going to take a random stroll through my Twitter feed and play whatever comes up, regardless of thematic consistency. Let’s start with Colorado blues-rock band The Amends (official site), who endearingly want to be your 11th favorite  rock ‘n’ roll band. Preheat the oven to 350 and check out their latest single.
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All together now: “Your candy corn cupcakes do not look like candy corn!”

These cupcakes are an experiment that tastes pleasing enough but doesn’t entirely work as proof-of-concept. So this recipe falls in the vast range of cookery that lies between sunlit photos of domestic perfection (on the one hand) and “help! I can’t boil water!” (on the other).

This level of randomness fits well with a day when I realized two hours into a project that I needed — and couldn’t legally get — samples from a musician’s upcoming album and so would have to save him for later. As a result, it’s time for three contrasting layers of Artists I’ve Discovered on Twitter, in this case, psychedelic folk-pop UnAware (Facebook), hip hop Shoota The Outlaw (Reverbnation), and Clapton-esque acoustic guitarist Bud Buckley (Reverbnation). Preheat the oven to 325 and let’s see what’s what.

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Sometimes chance favors the unprepared mind.

On Wednesday morning, I decided that if I could find a good seat for Kelly Clarkson’s show that night at U.S. Airways Center, and if that ticket cost less than $80, I’d like to see her live show. I figured the last few available tickets would cost $120 and be located up under the eaves with the mourning doves, so I’d end up instead using my freebie pass for yet another damned rom-com.

Spoiler: this blog entry is about Clarkson’s show. And I’m probably going to gush.

Clarkson is touring as encouragement to the masses who bought her latest album, Stronger (iTunes, Amazon), co-headining with The Fray, who hope people will notice their latest album, Scars and Stories (iTunes, Amazon). The opener is Carolina Liar, whose indie album Wild Blessed Freedom (iTunes, Amazon) has a title that contains S sounds but no words that start with S.

Putting Clarkson’s lively pop/R&B show between the mournful post-grunge guitar rock of Carolina Liar and the mournful, post-grunge piano rock of The Fray is like sending Eeyore and his hypothetical younger brother Ooyore into the Enchanted Forest, where they encounter a PINK SPARKLY UNICORN. And the PINK SPARKLY UNICORN holds grudges! Snarky, defiant, angry grudges! Read the rest of this entry »

Since working out left me feeling flat as a pancake, I thought I’d address Run Hundred‘s top workout songs for July by making some pancakes.

These are wild pancakes: wild rice pancakes, to be precise. They’re also pretty wild. I started with a recipe from Taste of Home and ended up having to substitute for a major ingredient that I thought had no substitutes. (No, not the wild rice!)

Equally wild is Matchbox 20′s latest single, “She’s So Mean,” which I think demands explanation, if not outright exegesis, so since it’s on the top 10 list, this is the time, not to mention the place and the moment. Let’s make pancakes! Read the rest of this entry »

My passion for lemon is equivalent to other people’s passion for chocolate, so inevitably I was bitten by the Pinterest-borne lemon brownie bug (recipe from Baker Girl). My version has a twist.

Lemon brownies — twist and all — felt like the natural match for my overdue rendezvous with a feature on Jesse Thomas (official site), the husky-voiced  acoustic pop-rock guitarist whom I saw open for Green River Ordinance last month (a thundering experience). Thomas had won me from skepticism to fascination in the course of her short set, which I think counts as a win-win. She is (or was) touring to draw attention to her album War Dancer (buy on iTunes), so we’re going to pay some attention to it. Preheat the oven to 350 and let’s get lemony. Read the rest of this entry »

If all my investments did as well as the rough-cost-of-an-upscale-burger-and-beer that I threw in the kitty for Green River Ordinance’s Kickstarter fund to make its new album Under Fire (buy at iTunes), I could develop half the vacant lots in downtown Phoenix.

As it is, I’ll have to settle for good cookies and good music. This round of cookies is savory: one variety is bacon-cheddar (recipe from Evil Shenanigans) and the other, inspired by bo08mo‘s adventures at Trader Joe’s, is cheddar-chocolate-chip. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hot, it’s luscious, and it’s on your dinner plate. Better yet, it involves cheese sauce and bacon.

It’s the Hot Brown, signature dish of Louisville, Kentucky’s Brown Hotel.

A Louisville dish called for a Louisville band. Number 42 on Reverbnation’s rock chart for the city is Thirty Spokes (official site), which characterizes itself as “roots rock” (e.g., “Americana with attitude and maybe tattoos” or possibly “Southern rock with more folk influences”).  Read the rest of this entry »

These chocolate-chocolate chip cookies are dark as sin and twice as potent.

The same could be said of the Winchester Rebels (Reverbnation), a band that showed up among my Twitter followers and immediately caught my attention as a sound that some of my online pals would love. If you miss the good ol’ days of hard, heavy rock like Incubus and Alice in Chains, the Winchester Rebels is a band that belongs in your music collection.

If intensity is your thing, these cookies (recipe from Beth Struble) belong in your recipe collection. It’s time to tackle — or be tackled by — both the recipe and the band. Let’s do it! Read the rest of this entry »

That murky pool is a Honeybadger, the signature cocktail of Phoenix’s Crescent Ballroom and its choice to tout for Arizona Cocktail Week (which I am not making up).

It’s blurry because that’s how it causes one to see the world.

I was at the Crescent on Wednesday night to see Hey Rosetta! (site) opening for Gomez (site). The latter is in a phase of psychedelic-tinged bluegrass that had its fans clapping their hands to the beat  – though the band was apparently a bit miffed that this was the limit of moving to the beat. (Dudes. Phoenix audiences don’t move. We’re conserving moisture.) Hey Rosetta! was simply — well, complexly — delightful, so you want to hear about it, right? Read the rest of this entry »

My earlier love affair with wheat bread (recounted romantically here) left me at a loss for Kansas, where the most important crop is… wheat.

Frantic Googling yielded the news that Liberal, Kansas, is best known for its Shrove Tuesday pancake race (yes, really). The answer became obvious: Kansas calls for whole-wheat pancakes (recipe from Make Healthy Meals). Strawberries and cows are also key Kansas crops, thus the choice of topping and protein.

My other discovery was that Reverbnation can be finagled into giving local by-genre “charts” for any city one likes, making it much easier to find a band for Kansas. I chose Wichita as my city and ended up with two Southern Rock bands — Barrelbright (here) and Street Survivor (here) — that give contrasting interpretations of the genre. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I have a heart-shaped cookie cutter, that’s why.

Also, it’s time for the monthly workout song post that starts with a song from Run Hundred’s delightful list (found here, with instructions on how to participate in voting). My pick from the top 10 for February is the DJ Escape and Tony Coluccio club mix version of Selena Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song,” as it’s a hook to let us wander through self-referential love songs.

Love calls for hearts. Selena Gomez calls for something sweet, innocent, and Mexican-derived. Sugar cookies call for shaking one’s booty so fast that the fat molecules don’t have a chance to get a solid grip. I sense synergy here. Let’s get some Mexican sugar cookies (recipe) into the oven! Read the rest of this entry »

That, sir or ma’am, is a vegetable.

It’s not just any vegetable. It is a pickled green bean. Iowa, the next stop on the 50 states / 50 dishes / 50 bands project, also has German and Dutch immigrants, and these are people who felt that vegetables are happiest when soaked in vinegar and allowed to putrefy. Since I regard Vlasic ultra-hot Polish dill pickles as an entire food group comparable to chocolate in importance, pickling a green bean struck me as a splendid idea.

Also a splendid idea is Ames, Iowa’s Peace, Love, and Stuff (Reverbnation), the band that introduced me to the term “psychobilly.” Shall we be full of spit and vinegar? (Well, vinegar, anyway. Spit would be gross, in context.) Read the rest of this entry »

Any Midwesterner would have been certain that for Indiana, I’d have to capitulate and deep-fry a hunk of breaded meat for a pork tenderloin sandwich.

Fortunately, Indiana also had German and Dutch immigrants who appreciated the beauties of a ham-onion tart.

It also offers us a change from shoegaze and dream-pop, as I dug up a “southern rock” group called Buffalo Head (Myspace), whom I think we need to keep around for their name, if nothing else. Every home needs a buffalo head. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a banana. I don’t think it’s glad to see me.

My monthly email from Run Hundred about top workout songs turned up the gem that this month’s #1 workout song is an Elvis Presley remix. (Want the rest of the list? Subscribe here.)

Since this revelation led me into a wonderful and bizarre world of Elvis remixes and re-imaginings, it seemed appropriate to pair it with a modernized version of Elvis’ favorite nosh, the peanut-banana-bacon sandwich. Thus the banana. Slice it into coins and get ready to boogie to the King. (It’s safe to cook during the first video, which has no visuals.) Read the rest of this entry »

Last night in Tempe, AWOLNATION proved to be all that and a basket of chips.

Well, actually, the fish ‘n’ chips are from Rula Bula, and now that I’ve mentioned the restaurant’s name, I’ve probably made a lewd suggestion to any friends who speak Gaelic. I’m a little embarrassed at having been here, as this is the sort of place — well, did you ever see Rumpole of the Bailey? Set it in Dublin, and the young, heavily starched, up-and-comers would have eaten at Rula Bula, whilst nattering about wine vintages and free-range caramelized onions.

My excuse is that Mill Avenue is surprisingly devoid of funky university hangouts, and also, the fish was excellent: moist, buttery, and crisp.

The agenda was an evening at the echoing barn that is the Marquee Theater, for a bill of AWOLNATION (previously discussed here, with Lebanese lemonade), supported by Twin Atlantic (previously here, with peanut oatmeal bread) and Middle Class Rut (not previously anywhere). Since  “rula bula” purports to mean “raucous good time,” I vote we have one. Read the rest of this entry »