All posts by stacy

Muse: Best. Concert. Ever. Period.

All I gotta say is: WOW. Adjectives, exaltations, exhortations, interjections and run-of-the-mill adverbs all fail to do justice to the show we saw last night: Muse at US Airways Center in Phoenix.

Here’s what I knew about Muse going into the show:

1) We had free tickets in the skybox seats directly across from the stage… with a full bar and semi-private restrooms, plus nice comfy armchairs and a fully catered meal.

2) Um, I think some of their songs are used in those commercials… and didn’t they have that song in that Tom Cruise movie? And aren’t they the theme song for the NCAA basketball tournament. Something madness? I was only passingly familiar with them since I spend the majority of my radio time with NPR (and it’s a news / jazz channel)

3) Muse is one of my nephew’s favorite bands, and in our efforts to reach out to the young people and try new things, I figured I should be adventurous and broaden my horizons.

For those keeping score at home: Muse 4,827 – Horizons, shattered.

Best concert I’ve ever seen – but more than seen: Experienced. They had lasers, people. Lasers.

Continue reading Muse: Best. Concert. Ever. Period.

The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 4 – GAMEDAY

The Official Krewe of Helios-Arizona Thanksgiving Day Turkey Gumbo
The Official Krewe of Helios-Arizona Thanksgiving Day Turkey Gumbo

We did not win the inaugural Gladiators of Gumbo this weekend in Shreveport, but neither were we chum for the lions. Competing in a field of 31 professional chefs, caterers and home cooks, Roux the Day represented for us amateurs, winning the winner-take-all non-seafood division, while The Spicy Crabs took the seafood division. Gumboo-yah won the People’s Choice Award, and Krewe of Helios-Arizona unofficially came in second*.

In my first outing as a competitive cook, I learned a helluva lot, had a helluva time and decided I’d come back for seconds next year. I don’t know if that means I am a glutton for punishment, but I definitely could contend for the title of a Gladiator of Gluttony.

Continue reading The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 4 – GAMEDAY

The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 3

That is a fine bird... even if it arrived at 10 PM.
That is a fine bird… even if it arrived at 10 PM.

Aleve, you complete me.

I crawled from bed this morning into a cavalcade of cracks, pops and cramps. Besides the grease burns, nicked fingertips (no blood drawn… yet) and isolated scaldings, competitive cooking has put the hurt on this 41-year-old body… and I have one more week of it.

Since January 1, I have run, biked and swam a total of 159.63 miles training for my first Olympic-distance triathlon … and thank God for that because I don’t know how I’d otherwise manage my three-day cooking odyssey at Gladiators of Gumbo next weekend.

There are 22 teams competing in my division – non-seafood – and they make no distinction between professional chefs and home cooks like me… nor are they making a distinction between hometown cooks and Arizona interlopers. All tasting by the judges is blind – and they have no expressly stated prohibitions against blatant bribery and underhanded tactics in the People’s Choice division. It’s a popularity contest – this is Louisiana: Vote Early and Often.

Continue reading The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 3

The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 2

Test-cook No. 1 in the can.
Test-cook No. 1 in the can.

Normally it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes to make my bacon-grease roux.

On Sunday, February 24, during test-cook No. 1 for the Gladiators of Gumbo cookoff, it took 18 minutes. 18 minutes!

I managed to brown my roux and assemble a palatable version of Pat and Stacy’s Thanksgiving Day Gumbo in 3 hours, 18 minutes, 56 seconds, while cooking for the very first time over an open flame on my new Bayou Classic Outdoor Gas Cooker… and I didn’t burn the house down. Although technically, it took me 22 hours and 58 minutes to cook all of it – since I really started on Saturday at 2:20 PM when I pulled my 24-pound turkey from the brine, popped it in a 350-degree oven and commenced three thrilling hours of bird-flipping, vegetable-chopping, sausage-grilling and okra-snotting, and truth be told, I forgot the okra-snotting until Sunday morning (add that one to the checklist!)

Continue reading The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 2

The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 1

My television viewing habits have bled into my hobbies: I started watching Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo way back in 2005 and subsequently threw up all over myself at the World Series of Poker and finished seventh in the Arizona Women’s State Poker Championship. I turned my attention to Miami Ink on Discovery Channel in 2007 and ended up in New Orleans with a fleur de lys tramp stamp.

Thank God I’m not a fan of Dancing with the Stars or America’s Got Talent… but I do watch BBQ Pitmasters on Destination America and Chopped on Food Network, so it came as no surprise to my sweet husband when I proclaimed, “I want to enter a gumbo cookoff.”

“Sounds good,” he replied calmly. I was surprised that he didn’t offer anymore pushback… until I realized he was probably more shocked than relieved that he hadn’t been smacked with: “I’d really like to start cooking pharmaceutical-grade meth in an underground lab.”

Or perhaps: “Man, I’ve got an itch to go hunt zombies with a crossbow.”

Or maybe even, “I’d just love to set Anne Burrell’s hair on fire.”

Hey, I can’t be the only one that’s ever had that thought.

Continue reading The Competitive Cooking Chronicles, Part 1