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Bird is the word
Sailor’s Warning
For a few minutes while we were out walking with The Partners, the sky was an intense red. By the time we got home and I ran out back with the camera, light was taking over and the red was fading. Still intense though.
The Wild Goose
Here’s the late great Wade Hemsworth…
Soup of the Week at the Comfort Food Diner
butternut squash soup
Over the years I’ve made butternut squash soup a few times and I think I do it differently each time. Last night time I roasted the squash first along with some celery, a jalapeno and a couple carrots.
Meanwhile, I caramelized some onions in my soup pot slowly with a little vegetable oil, along with a crazy amount of fresh sage – which I removed once the onions were nice and golden – and some salt and pepper. In the past I’ve used ginger and I’ve used curries, but not this time around. I added some stock, then the roasted squash and veggies. I kept the squash in big chunks. The roasted squash was delightfully sweet and I figured it needed some acidity so I added a splash of some kind of swanky vinegar I found in the pantry.
I just let the whole business simmer away for a while while I whipped up some skillet cornbread. The cornbread was pretty standard except I would have preferred greasing my cast iron skillet with bacon fat, but I was bacon-less at the time so I used butter. Also I had a little bit of frozen corn in bag in the freezer so I stirred it into my batter.
Just about anytime I see squash soup, it’s pureed within an inch of its life, super smooth, maybe with a bit of cream added at the end. I wanted a more exciting texture than that, so I left it chunky. I guess that’s what some people call country style (while holding their nose). I like the texture of the squash and roasted veggies, though, and I get to choose.
I was worried the single roasted jalapeno wouldn’t be enough heat, so I sprinkled in a wee bit of dried scotch bonnet (we dry our own) to jazz it up and play off the sweet squash and the splash of vinegar.
Stalling
I keep my tax-related stuff, art expenses and so on in a drawer, which I believe to actually be a tardis. You know like the police booth Dr. Who travels around through time in – it’s not very big on the outside but once you enter, it’s infinite in size.
Today I’ve been pulling unending piles of stuff from that drawer in an effort to sort out what I need for taxes. I have 2 grocery store bags filled with stuff I don’t have any idea why I saved in the first place, and several files full of stuff I need to save but I should have organized. Memphis puppy pictures. A loop for closely examining mushrooms. A pair of vice grips. My university degree. Ear buds. A couple clawhammer bridges. My 2011 CARFAC membership. 10 or 15 pens that don’t write. My 2008 busking license from when I was a button accordion busker. On and on. My head hurts.
I’m writing this post in an effort to stall for a while. Maybe I should take a little break and go tie up a few trout flies or work on that banjolin neck, or try to finish up a painting or two?
What’s the deal on coffee prices?
Since I’ve become “Retirement Man”, I do more of the food shopping around 27th Street and while I’m not the smartest shopper around, eventually some things sink in, such as: THE PRICE OF COFFEE MAKES NO SENSE. At home we drink your basic drip grind coffee that comes in big tubs from our local No-Frills. Today they have a huge display, proud to advertise the tubs at $7.97.
Fine, except 2 weeks ago it was $6.97 and the week before that it was a whopping $14.97 and the week before that it was at $5.97. It comes around at $5.97 every few weeks and when it does I buy 3 or 4, and stick them with the paper towels in the netherworld above the kitchen cupboards. Sometimes they keep it at $14.97 for a couple weeks. That’s over twice the lowest price. Does anyone actually buy coffee at that price?
The other item I’ve noticed with very uneven pricing is tins of sardines. Now I don’t like tinned sardines and neither does Tuffy P. However, the Partners – Ruby and George – love some fish mixed in with their kibble and I believe the fish oils can only be as good for them as they are for us. When I see them at $0.99 for a can, I stock up. They’ve been at $1.49 for some time now.
I can better understand more seasonal items like blueberries, but my local Loblaws had them on at one point this winter for $7.00 for a pint. The produce manager was out on the floor and I said to him, geez I’d better buy some of these before you start selling them by the berry. He shot me the look that said, I’ve had a bad day and I don’t need another smart-ass, but he actually said, “we don’t make the prices, sir.”
As my brother the trout once said to me, “Eugene you’re not as stupid as you look….you couldn’t be”.
I could listen to this all day….
Are there any tunes or songs you don’t want to end? Tunes that settle down into just the right groove, tunes you want to listen to all day? For me this doesn’t happen in pop music so much as in old time music and in some jazz as well.
Here’s Yigal Zan playing fiddle and David Margolin playing clawhammer playing a tune that has come to be known as Henry Reed’s Breakdown in A.
Mr. Margolin’s banjo playing here seems so wonderfully relaxed. Look at his banjo, cradled on his lap, leaning back against his body, neck angled up. This is much different than the way I hold the banjo, with the pot firmly on my right thigh and the neck much more horizontal. I suppose there are as many ways to play this instrument as there are people to play it.
Henry Reed was born in 1884 and passed in 1968. He lived in West Virginia and never had a career as a musician. We know about him and his music because a fellow named Alan Jabbour heard about this fiddler/banjo player and searched him out. He collected Reed’s tunes, recorded him, and with his group the Hollow Rock String Band, spread Reed’s music. Through is association with Mr. Jabbour (who recently passed by the way), Henry Reed’s music became very influential in the old time music community.
Is there music you could listen to all day, a tune you don’t want to ever end?
A local history curiosity
Tuffy P was at a show of vintage paper items the other day and came home with a cardboard fan celebrating Campbell’s Tomato Soup, but more specifically, the tomato soup coming from the New Toronto plant at 60 Birmingham. 
Campbell’s opened at this location in 1930 and is still there today.
Hot Cold Cold Corn
Vivian Howard, the chef and star of A Chef’s Life on PBS wrote in her cookbook, Deep Run Roots: “Ground corn distinguishes the food of the Americas from that of the rest of the world”. It turns out down in America they make hooch from it too.
The Dave Rawlings Machine….
Flatt and Scruggs
The Osbourne Brothers with String Bean
So nice to be right here….
With all of 45’s shenanigans south of the border, I was thinking how happy I am to be living right here in Canada.
Here’s Mendelson Joe performing The Canada Song. Back in the 80s when I was living in a storefront studio on Ossington Ave here in Toronto, he used to live up the street and could often be seen and heard playing music on his front stoop. Mr. Joe was hard to miss. He usually wore paint-covered coveralls cut off into shorts, because he’s a painter as well as a musician.
27th Street 