Great to see Candy and Stagg tonight! Great dinner at 850 Degrees here in Long Branch. The photo in this post is Stagg with Tuffy P in our kitchen….making coffee….but other captions are possible.
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Chanterelle Omelet
First go to a forest and forage around until you gather a basket of primo chanterelles. If you find a few hedgehog and lobster mushrooms and an bolete or two, no problem. It’s all good.
Clean your mushrooms then saute them in a little vegetable oil. The mushrooms will release fluid and then take it up again. At that point they’ll start to colour up nicely.
Crack 3 eggs, add a splash of milk, and beat them for a minute with a fork. Add the eggs to the mushrooms. While the omelet cooks, grate a little hard cheese. I carefully chose the only hard cheese in the fridge. Use what you like. 
Sprinkle on a few hot chiles and grind some fresh pepper and add a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, put some bread in the toaster. You’ll want some toast. Open a cool beer. Fold the omelet and slide it onto a plate. Serve with toast. You could chop up some chives or a little parsley and sprinkle it on top. If you squeeze a little ketchup on top, I won’t tell anyone.
That’s the best ending they could come up with?
We’ve been watching True Detective on DVD and until tonight when we watched the final episode, we’ve been totally enjoying the show in all it’s twisted dark gumbo-noir detail. What’s with the limp cop-out happily-ever-after sucky lame ending?
Salad Bowl Banjos
My friend Jamie and I are working together on two salad bowl banjos, one for each of us. Jamie started by turning the first bowl.
It’s going to be a pretty big pot – about 12 inches. He’s also fashioned a nice tailpiece from antler. Jamie dropped those elements over here the other day. I’m starting the neck this week. It’s going to be ash with an ebony fingerboard. I also have the piece of wood to the left in the photo. I’m not sure what it is. It comes from the offcuts bin at Exotic Woods in Burlington Ontario. I bought it because I thought it would be good for making banjo bridges. Now I’m thinking I might also face the peg-head with this too.
The construction will be similar to a gourd banjo. The neck will have a “dowel stick” that will extend through the salad bowl. Shaping the neck is a good deal of work but but fairly straightforward as it is not highly intricate. The challenge I think will be getting the holes in the salad bowl just right so the neck fits in at exactly the correct angle. The nut will be bone (I have some for the purpose) and the pegs will be ebony violin pegs. I have a bunch of those on hand.
The head of the banjo will be goat skin. It will be stretched over the bowl in a similar manner to gourd banjos, using upholstery nails. I sourced the ones we want today and will pick them up this week.
We don’t know if the bowl will need sound holes or not. I suspect the answer is likely yes, but we don’t have to commit to them just yet. First there is lots of work to do on the neck. We also have to decide on a peg-head shape. That decision will have to happen soon.
I’ll post progress reports as this project comes together.
Mushrooms!
Enjoyed a great afternoon with my friend Jamie and the dogs foraging for mushrooms.
We found mostly chanterelles but also a few hedgehog mushrooms and a couple lobsters. I had expected we would find some boletes and more lobsters, but the quantity of chanterelles (we found plenty) made up for that.
Milo enjoying some garden time
Nest
This nest must have been up in the locust tree. I found it in the garden this morning. I hope the birds using it were done with it for the season.
Front Garden update
The gardens change throughout the season but the front gardens really shine through July…
Alboka
Since becoming somewhat obsessed with clawhammer banjo, I’ve been posting mostly what we call “Old Time” music on this blog. Some readers will remember it wasn’t always that way around this joint.
I’d like to feature some Basque music tonight, and in particular music made on the Alboka. It’s a very unique instrument….check it out:
Here’s another Alboka piece, this time with tambourine.
Two-row diatonic button accordion was added to the tradition later on, and I think that instrument and the tambourine became the more dominant instrumentation.
The Intouchables
Last night we watched a 2011 film called The Intouchables on DVD (French with English subtitles). This is a 2011 film directed by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano. Now, I don’t know French directors – I hardly know North American directors for that matter (and don’t even ask me about actors)- but I mention them because they did a wonderful job on this movie.
The film is about the relationship between an unlikely caregiver, Driss and a rich quadriplegic, Philippe. Driss has a unique qualification – he doesn’t pity Philippe. The film is charming and funny and irreverent and thoroughly enjoyable. It could have been a much darker film but instead it’s a movie about human possibility in the face of mountains of adversity.
I suppose The Intouchables is really simply a “buddy” movie, but it’s a really well crafted buddy movie and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
27th Street 