Cank Festival -- Day 2

Boy Howdy! It sure has been a fantastic Cank festival, so far!
I have never had so much fun at a Cank Crawl in all my life!
Did you see the parade? If you missed it, you missed the best pollination rap song that's ever been. It sure was a toe-tapper! And how about all those beautiful Cank Queen contestants?

You know, I met the Mrs. Mayor Stoner when she was a Cank Queen Pageant contestant. She was first runner up in the pageant, but she was the queen of my heart!



Here are a few more shots from yesterday's parade and festival street.

This is Lando Cank Queen 2008, Miss Ashleigh Crouse!

Ashliegh Crouse

Ashliegh is Dirk's little girl, only she aint little anymore! She won the beauty contest as well as the blue ribbon for best cank dish, Crispy Cank Tortilla Chips with Tropical Cank di Gallo. Check the recipe at the end of this post!

Even the cats dig the Cank!

Viva le Cank! Show me some Cank love!

Crispy Cank Tortillas

• 1 package of regular sized corn tortillas, quartered
• 1 lb Lard
• 1/4 cup Fine Sea Salt
• 1/4 cup Chipotle Powder
• 1 lb Male Lando Canker Worms

Preheat the oven to 250.
Place the Canks on a large baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.
Heat in oven until completely dried out and crispy.
Pulse in food processor until they become a fine powder.
In a medium bowl, mix together salt, Chipolte powder, and worm dust.

In a large iron skillet, slowly heat lard to cooking temperature.
Place quartered tortillas in hot oil and fry in batches until crispy.
Season with Cank seasoning immediately upon removal from hot oil.

Tropical Cank di Gallo

• 15-20 Female Lando Canks
• 1/4 cup Apple Cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup EVOO
• Salt and Pepper


• 6-8 Roma Tomatoes
• 2-3 Tomatillos
• 1 Red Bell Pepper
• 1 Yellow Bell Pepper
• 1 Green Bell Pepper
• 2-3 Jalapeno Peppers
• 1 Habenero Pepper
• 1/4 cup Pineapple
• 1/4 cup Kiwi
• 1/4 cup Papaya

Dice all the peppers and fruit and mix in a large bowl with the remaining ingredients and Canks.
Stir until well combined and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with Crispy Cank Tortillas

Recipe courtesy of Lando Cank Queen 2008, Miss Ashleigh Crouse

Cank Days wraps up tomorrow at noon. I hope you all got your fill of cank until next year!

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This Week in Lando

This is a really hectic week for all of us here in Lando.
Obviously, we're all getting ready for the big Cank Festival which starts on Thursday!
Most everybody in town has something to get ready before the festival starts.


Bobby Green and his wife are working with all the girls who will be vying for Cank Queen.
Sylvia Snodgrass is getting together the judges for the best Cank dish.
Rafe Hollister is working on his solo for the Cank Chamber Choir Concert, and there are countless others working to make sure that this year's Cank Festival is the best ever. That's a hard thing to do, too, since we have so many years of festival tradition behind us.

Well, it seems like the only one around here who doesn't have too many things to do is me, so I thought I take a walk around town, and give you all a glimpse of what those hard working people are doing to get ready for the biggest event of the year here in Lando!

First I went by the opera house to see how the crew is getting on with sprucing up for the concert.


These guys really know how to use a ladder!

This is Jake Deese hauling off some brush from the town square.


Chief Wiggum has installed new road signs...


Workers all over town are sprucing up....


I finally got my dumb ole brother-in-law to get that dead tree out of his yard...


I dont know how this happened, but Mrs. Mayor Stoner took her eyes off the road for just a minute and got stuck on the bridge over Woody's Creek...


These boys had just a bit of trouble getting those lights on all the trees on Main Street...


Here's the Jacob's twins getting their boat down to the lake for the Cank Crawl Rowing Meet...


Here's Dirk Crouse moving the swingset down to the playground....


Look at Crazy Cooter working on one of the trucks we use to pull the floats in the parade!


As you can see, there is a lot going on this week!

Remember the Festival starts at 8:00 am on Thursday, April 17, and concludes on Saturday.
You DO NOT want to miss it!
See you there!!!

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Cank Salad

Up there in Charlotte, it seems they got themselves a Canker Worm problem.


They done gone and hired a big city yankee to come down and spray something called BT to kill 'em all. Folks here in Lando have known about Canker worms a long time, and we figured out years ago how to deal with them.


Here's a picture of the Sky Tractor spraying over Charlotte.


Seems they take this modified crop duster and fly real low over the city and drop the BT stuff on all the trees. It's real sticky and clings to the trees. Somehow the worms eat it and they all die and fall on the ground. Problem solved.

Here in Lando, we take a little simpler approach that everyone can enjoy. It's called a Canker Crawl, and we have it every year about this time.

A Canker Crawl is when most of the ladies in town cook up their favourite recipe using Canker worms. Then people go from house to house and sample the food. It's a real big party, and most everyone in town gets in on it! At the end, ballots are cast and we select a Canker Queen based on who cooked up the tastiest dish.

Cank is a spring-time treat and is only around for a couple of weeks. It's also very versatile. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it.

There's, cank-kabobs, cank creole, cank gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple cank, lemon cank, coconut cank, pepper cank, cank soup, cank stew, cank salad, cank and potatoes, cank burger, cank sandwich.

We've had cank slaw, cank toast, cank po-boy, cank étouffée, cank pie, cank dressing, cank bread, and cank beignets.

This year the Cank Crawl is April 17-20 in lovely downtown Lando.

Y'all dont miss it!

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