Wish I was a June apple hanging on a tree.
Every time my true love pass, take a bite of me.
Take a bite of me, my love, take a bite of me,
Every time my true love pass, take a little bite of me.
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Songs about boats
I don’t think I’d made a post about boat songs before, but there are quite a few good ones to choose from. Do you have any faves?
Let’s start with the Ozark Highballers performing the Stephen Foster tune, The Glendy Burke. The Glendy Burke was a Mississippi paddle boat. It was named for the 29th mayor of New Orleans.
The Glendy Burk is a mighty fast boat,
With a mighty fast captain too;
He sits up there on the hurricane roof
And he keeps his eye on the crew.
I cant stay here, for the works’ too hard;
I’m bound to leave this town;
I’ll take my duds and tote ’em on my back
When the Glendy Burk comes down.
Here’s the late Guy Clark performing a tune he wrote with Verlon Thompson called Boats to Build.
Another paddle boat tune – Cathy Barton and Dave Para do a great job on Waiting for the Belle. They recorded this one on their excellent Sweet Journeys CD, also with Cathy on autoharp.
The Sloop John B is not a Beach Boys tune, although they sure popularized it. As far as I know it’s a Bahamian folk song. I’m going to share a lovely version with lots of swing by Blind Blake Higgs
OK OK I know this is a long post, but how do I choose? Here’s a fun one, a cover of the delightful Don Freed tune, Being a Pirate performed by the Pirates Royale.
A Local Gem
You might not even realize Tasty Korea is there, although the new sign helps. There are three businesses in one at this point – flowers, tea and excellent Korean take-out, just up the street from us. I stop in for lunch to go on a weekly basis.
There are various combinations available of rice, noodles and chicken, pork or bulgogi beef. Today they had a Korean chicken soup that hit the spot for me, especially since I’ve been dealing with a cold. It came with rice and kimchi. I also couldn’t resist some wonderful dumplings – and when I asked about the pancake-like items, I was given a mung-bean pancake as a sample. It was so tasty. I also love the tofu skin sushi! – they usually have veg and meat sushi as well.
It’s right at the corner of Twenty Seventh and Lakeshore here in Long Branch. Delicious Korean food at fair prices. Tasty Korea is a local gem.
Lazy Allen – 2 more stories coming
As some of you know, I’ve been writing a series of short-short stories called The Lazy Allen Stories, and putting them up on their own site for anyone who wants to read them. There are 16 of them up now. These stories, set in 1982, are all in the voice of a character named Lazy. There are three streams to the stories. In some of them, Lazy talks about his past adventures as a musician, playing accordion on the polka circuit. In others he talks about his life after the music career went to hell, working the line in a bottling plant. In still others, he tells stories about his return to music, joining his buddy Staashu to form a band, playing a strange hybrid of polka and punk.
I think there are just two more stories remaining in this series, and I’m working on those now. I say I think there are two more remaining because they’re not done yet and anything can happen. I hope to have one up this month, and the last one up in March if all goes well.
For those readers who might be interested in giving these stories a read, this would be a good time to catch up. There’s a menu up on the main story page listing all the stories by title in the order in which they were written and published. Each are individual stories but they are related. If, in a fit of madness you decide to read all of them, I recommend starting with The Bottle & Can and continuing in order from there.
Putting these stories up on a blog was an experiment of sorts. I was writing these things and I didn’t really know what to do with them so I decided to simply give them a space of their own and share them, having no idea what to expect. My hope was that if people liked them, they might tell their friends. As it turned out, not very many people have visited the stories blog at all, and there are 0 comments to date – but at least the material is preserved online and is available if anyone is interested along the way.
Two birds and a cat
This morning Tuffy P kindly left me a honey-do list, which included install bird cupboard door handles in the madness we like to call our kitchen.
Breakfast at the Comfort Food Diner
2 eggs fried with kielbasa drizzled with sriracha, side of rye toast, plenty of coffee
Go – baduk – wei chi
I’ve read that Go, called baduk in Korea and wei chi in China, is the world’s oldest board-game. Although I’ve been playing for many years, it only gets increasingly interesting along the way.
white to play
At home I have a go table complete with stools created for me many years ago by our friend Ruth Arnold. The travel set shown in the picture stays with my friend Vox. I made that board from a piece of leather I bought at Capital Findings back in the 80s. At that time they had a place in a warehouse building on King Street West. There are also a pair of leather bags which I also made. Back then we played with stones I gathered from a beach. Although I picked the whitest and blackest stones I could find from the beach, more differentiation was needed so I spray painted them white and black. These days we use a set of glass stones.
Over the years a few people have asked me to teach them how to play, but most people back away from the game once they realize it takes some commitment to really learn to play. That’s one of the things I like about it. It’s not easy. In 2016, for the first time a computer was developed that could beat the strongest pro players. I’ll never get anywhere near that level in my lifetime. One good thing about the game is there is lots of room for players of all strengths and there is an excellent handicap system which enables weaker players to enjoy playing stronger players in a game either player might win.
Go is all about surrounding territory and that includes the life and death of groups of stones. In the game pictured, white got behind early after the white stones in the upper left were trapped behind enemy lines and killed. Although white has good potential in the bottom left and in the centre, black has good cash profit, some captured stones, and has some potential for points in the centre as well. An uphill battle for white.
Yellow Jacket
I came across somebody’s shaky video from a jam session somewhere in which they play a tune called Yellow Jacket. I love this tune. I think this one is from the late Garry Harrison (please correct me if I’m wrong on that if there are any old time aficionados out there).
The Comfort Food Diner: spicy fried mushrooms
Growing up, I had an aversion to all mushrooms. I think my young palate couldn’t cope with their unique texture, and as well, I’m not convinced I had an opportunity to enjoy really well-prepared mushrooms as a kid. My aversion disappeared in early adulthood, and over the years I’ve acquired quite a taste for mushrooms, including many varieties I forage for in the woods.
Last night I was making a spinach salad. I had some nice baby spinach and some mediocre grape tomatoes, and an English cucumber, but I really felt like jazzing it up a little. I had some excellent cremini mushrooms on hand and that gave me an idea. Oh, by the way, did you know that cremini (the common brown grocery store mushrooms), your basic white mushrooms (which I call Loblaws mushrooms because everyone understands what I mean), and the big meaty portobello mushrooms are all in fact the same species – Agaricus bisporus?
Here’s the plan. Slice up a bunch of mushrooms. Any of the common grocery store mushrooms are fine. If you’ve just won a small lottery, the shiitake mushrooms (which grow on oak logs) are also excellent for this. Heat up a pan to medium heat (I use my trusty old cast iron pan for this) with a dollop of butter and a splash of vegetable oil, and add the mushrooms, stirring them regularly as they cook.
Some people have difficulty cooking mushrooms because they don’t realize what happens when you cook them. Mushrooms contain a lot of water and when they start to cook, they release it. Don’t worry about this. Just let them cook. Let the water disappear. After that, they’ll slowly start to brown. Once the water has cooked off, add some salt and some cayenne or some other ground hot chili. I have some scotch bonnets I dried in a dehydrator and ground up in a coffee grinder, which are perfect for this. I like these quite spicy so I add in a liberal quantity of scotch bonnets,
Keep cooking the mushrooms. They will begin to brown. Don’t panic, just keep cooking them until they take on a rich brown colour. Resist the temptation to add more fat. You may have to lower the heat some. The texture will begin to transform as well. Just how far you take the cooking is up to you. I allowed the mushrooms in the photo above to cook for another minute or so after I snapped the picture.
When you’re satisfied you’ve cooked the mushrooms enough, take them off the heat and let them cool. At this point, you need to try one to make sure they are as amazing as they look. Once you realize that yes they are, make some toast, open a cold beer and spoon a generous amount of mushrooms onto a piece of toast – and enjoy. You’re the cook and you deserve it. Don’t worry, you’ve made plenty enough for the salad.
Once your mushrooms have cooled add them to your salad before dressing it. Last night, my fried mushrooms transformed an ordinary spinach salad into a spectacular taste and texture experience.
Simple Images on paper
I’m continuing to paint on paper with tempera and big brushes. It occurred to me that I was going back in a way, back before filling my head with images and ideas and ways of looking at the world. Painting is thinking, that’s the ticket.
It’s funny the things we remember. Hop in my time machine for a moment. We’re going back to the kindergarten at the front end of what was then Green Meadows Public School in Etobicoke Ontario Canada. That was before the Catholics took over. Painting was the best part of the day. We had powdered tempera paints back then. I remember dipping my brush in the bucket of water then into the powder, which would gather in dry clumps over the wet brush. I loved the effect of the water and the powder partially mixing on the paper, which was taped up on a big, clunky wooden easel.
The kids in class were mostly painting the same things, their square houses with pointy roofs and chimneys with smoke curling out the top, even though none of us had fireplaces or wood-stoves. They painted the nuclear family out in front, with Mommy and Daddy and the dog. I know this because the teacher would ask each of us, one at a time, and that’s what the other kids said.
Me, I had a big squiggly colourful mess going on. I was having a great old time attacking the paper with layers and layers of paint. “My goodness Eugene, this is different”. She seemed alarmed. “What are you painting?” Now I just didn’t have the vocabulary back in the day to explain to her how I was engaging the picture plane with expressionist vigor. I looked at all the other paintings and I looked at mine and I felt like an outcast. I reached into my little mind for some words to justify what I was up to. To this day I remember my response. “It’s just a design”, I said. I knew I couldn’t explain it. Back then what I didn’t know was that painting was beyond explanation.
Years later, while watching the delightful short documentary The Reality of Karel Appel (now, like everything else, available on YouTube), I remembered that moment. “Painting is a concrete and sensual experience” said Appel (or at least said the translator), “Being intensely moved by the joys and tragedies of man.”….and “I paint like a barbarian in a barbaric age.” I wish I was armed with that kind of vocabulary back in kindergarten so I could have offered the teacher some insight. I wish I could have at least repeated what Francis Bacon said, “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
27th Street 