Baby's Got Bundt!

New Year's Day my wife declared 2010 the Year of the Bundt, and she vowed to bake a bundt a month. Illogical exuberance for the trivial is my domain, so this declaration confused me.

I'm still confused.

For the record, I don't understand the appeal of the bundt cake. At potluck dinners I gravitate towards pie, and I leave the bundt cake to the bridge-playing, Lawrence-Welk-watching crowd.

I thought my wife's passion for the bundt would die, but my daughter has now joined in the chorus singing the praises of this cake. The gospel is spreading, and the bundt spirit has overwhelmed my wife's coworkers. Yesterday I even found a bundt recipe in my daughter's cubbie. There's no escaping the presence of the bundt in my life.

I'm very worried about how big this will grow.

The following is this month's bundt:

Milky Way Bundt Cake

Ingredients:

• 6 regular-size Milky Way bars
• 4 eggs
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 2 sticks butter (or margarine)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1½ teaspoons vanilla
• 2½ cups flour
• 1 cup buttermilk

For the glaze-

• 1 bar German sweet chocolate
• 1 tablespoon butter
• ¼ cup water
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
  

1. Over low heat, melt Milky Way bars and 1 stick butter. Set aside.
   
2. Cream other stick of butter with sugar and eggs; mix well.
   
3. Add flour, baking soda, buttermilk and vanilla; stir well.
   
4. Add Milky Way mixture and beat with mixer until batter is all one color.
   
5. Pour into greased and floured Bundt-style pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
   

For the glaze:

1. In small saucepan, melt chocolate and butter with water. Combine sugar and salt and gradually stir in chocolate mixture. Add vanilla and spread on cake.

Don't Mess with Kansas Pt. 3: Celebrate Good Times!

Once upon a time before the goddamn bastards whittled me down to a cranky nub, I was a wide-eyed, eager boy who possessed a jaunty demeanor. During this fabled age, I was overcome with giddiness the last week of January because we would break from the rigors of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and celebrate the birth of Kansas.

I'd immerse myself in coloring the state seal (To this day, I still consider the best in the Union) and my imagination would sweep me away. I'd soon find myself manning the plow underneath that glorious sunset.



Later in the week we would color meadowlarks, sunflowers, cottonwood trees, and jayhawks.

I miss those days. We stopped celebrating Kansas Day around 5th grade. I don't know why we stopped.

Last week I was talking to a fella who grew up in Texas, and he recalled his elementary days celebrating the Lone Star State's birthday. He remembered: learning about the Alamo, coloring a picture of a Bowie knife, a longhorn shitting on the playground during a school assembly, and being indoctrinated with he belief that Texas was on the right side of the cause during the Civil War. His face lit up as he recalled these stories.

I thought: This is the stuff that matters, but I don't get to enjoy the stuff that matters because I'm engaged in the general bullshit of living.

I'm too busy doing shit like supporting capitalism, rubbing elbows with people who don't read poetry, and fertilizing my lawn with chemicals that will eventually drain to the Gulf of Mexico and contribute to the dead zone. Combine all of this with watching others making a general clusterfuck of things, it's no wonder I walk around with a scowl.

Before I started these posts on Kansas, I didn't like this blog and found it a general waste of time. Now I'm ready to admit that muddywaters has the right idea. Maybe this blog will help me remember what really matters in this life, and maybe I can get to the joy of actually living a life that matters.

Tonight I'm breaking out the Crayola box.

As a child, how did you celebrate your state's birthday?

Celebrate good times. Come on!!!
Mr. Crankypants

Fajita Marinade Revised

I used to possess a steal-trap mind that could store recipes, football statistics, the occasional poem, and restaurant menus across the United States. Lately, these bits of information have been performing a Houdini-like escape. I guess, age would be the most likely explanation for this, but I won't go gently into that good night. Today I'm using my blog to record a recipe as preventive measure. I tried this recipe last summer, and I loved it. Somewhere in the shuffle I lost the recipe. Now I've found it, and here it is. It's a recipe for a fajita marinade, which quickly replaced one I posted in the early stages of this blog. I like this recipe because the liquid smoke in my earlier recipe has been replaced with chipotle peppers, jalapeno peppers that have been smoked, so you get a subtle smokey taste to your meat.

I usually marinate skirt or flank steak for my fajitas. I haven't tried this marinade with chicken, but I'm sure it will work fine.

Fajita Marinade

(Adapted from Mark Miller's Tacos)

• 8 to 10 cloves roasted garlic (If you don't have any on hand, just use some a few cloves of chopped garlic or a bit of garlic powder)


• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce


• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar


• 1 tablespoon red chile powder


• 1 teaspoon ground cumin


• 2 teaspoons onion powder


• 1 tablespoons chopped cilantro


• 1/4 cup vegetable oil


• 2 tablespoons Sriracha (The original recipe called for a red chile sauce, but for me this is a suitable substitue)


• 1 teaspoon chipotle puree (You can find canned chipotles with adobo sauce in most grocery stores. Just simple puree in a blender. This is an amazing ingredient that can be used in a lot of recipes. I've used it in meat loaf, salsas, and sometimes in vegetable dishes. When I open a can for this recipe, I just freeze the remaining puree.)

rage, rage against the dying light,

muddy