Category Archives: digging

simple pleasures

The best part of looking at site stats today was finding my site was a hit for a search for “how nanna would make pumpkin soup”.
That pleases me.
I wish I had more to offer in the gastropod way of things. But I don’t. Buggered if I can remember what I’ve eaten this week. I’ve been so busy with the thesis, and I DJed three nights straight over the weekend (Thu, Fri, Sat), including my first after party. Which I was happy with, though I guess it’s hard to stuff up a 45 minute set, isn’t it?
My DJing issues are continuing with a search for a media player to which I can drag songs from itunes (using itunes as my library), but which also produces useful play lists. I mostly want to be able to preview songs on headphones before I play them, and for this you need two media players as macs can’t understand why you’d want to have two versions of one application open at any one time. Sometimes this rocks, but sometimes it sucks. This is one of those times. I think I’ll settle for a combination of DJ1800 (about $AU70) for previewing (no sensible playlist option), the usb headphones (plugged into the imic I need to buy from Brian, or into the usb directly) for listening to the DJ1800 songs, and itunes for actually playing to the sound system, searching, creating playlists, etc.
But if you’re looking for gastropod action, I have a little tub of nice bocconcini in our fridge atm, and some nice hydro tomatos on the window sill (I was in bed when the potato man came this week – 8am is TOO early!) and some sweet rocket in the garden. Make of that what you will. I choose to make nice salad.
I am also going nuts with mandarins and apples at the moment. It’s that time of year. We have a bowl full on the coffee table, and I push segments down The Squeeze’s neck every evening while we watch Buffy and Angel. Soon he will have strange Buffy-citrus dreams.
Meanwhile, I had a dream where I was stabbed by a platypus with its poison spur. It was also a dream about the house I lived in in Brisbane, and also about houses generally. I know that if I’m having house dreams, it’s anxiety season. And of course, the source of this anxiety would be the thesis. And the fact that my supervisor goes away 2 weeks from now, for 3 weeks. Arriving back one week before I’d planned to submit. Yes. Isn’t that nice?

what a tool

I should open my eyes and understand that the iPod is a chain-smoking long-hair that craves exactly three (3) things: chicks, cigarettes and METAL, in reverse order. The iPod hangs out in the smoking section and takes your girlfriend to the Maiden concert. You big fucking pussy.

(the patriarch)

cab calloway (vol2) – 1935-1940 – on JSP


Cab Calloway (vol2) 1935-1940 on JSP
That’s some hot shit. 4 discs of Cab goodness. Almost every single song I’ve listened to so far (starting in 1940 and working backwards, for a change) is danceable, and every song rocks. I love this man. I love his kick-arse band during this period. Oh, this is SWEET.
…this is the second set from Cab on the JSP label, which is cheap, but better quality than the Proper stuff. I also adored the first one, Cab Calloway the early years, 1930-1934.

gastropod Saturday

In the spirit of practicality, I think I’m going to declare Saturday or Sunday gastropod day, seeing as how we only eat crappy food on Friday nights. This time it was an awful ‘middle eastern’ chicken and cous cous dish which I once knew how to cook but now, obviously, can no longer manage.
Thank god I followed it up on Saturday with an easy ‘Moroccan chicken’* dish which was delish.
Basically, you grate up some ginger, crush some garlic (however much you dig), chop up an onion, fry it all til the onion is transparent, then add an overflowing tsp of ground cumin**, 2 massive tsps of ground coriander, 1 tsp paprika, fry for a minute or til it smells good, then add some water, stirring or whisking to get the stuff combined well. Add some chicken legs and cook for 20 mins. Then pop the chook legs in the oven for 20-30mins (til they’re done), simmering the wet stuff on the stove top til it thickens and reduces. Plop the cous cous on the plate, pop the chook on top, stir some fresh parsley and coriander (I add quite a lot as I really like this bit) into the wet stuff and serve immediately (rather than dropping the herbs on top – this way they flavour the wet stuff nicely) with lemon wedges and fat olives. And a salad of greens, mint, tomato and cucumber with an olive oil/lemon juice/garlic dressing.
ROCK the kasbah!
*I’m not quite sure what ‘Moroccan’ means in this instance, but heck.
**That’s pronounced ‘kew-min’ in our house, thanks. None of this ‘kumm-in’ rubbish.
how much chicken? as many drumsticks per person as you can manage. That’s eleventy for me and 0.5 for The Squeeze, who is revolted by meat on the bone.
how much water? ti it covers the chicken.
what’s reduced? when the wet stuff is thicker, and there’s enough to wet the cous cous on the plate properly, but not drown it.
how do i make cous cous? now you’re scaring me. put some in a bowl. take it out and rinse it in a sieve til the water runs clear. put it back in the bowl. cover with hot water, stir. let it sit til it’s absorbed. stir with fork. if the grains are soft, rock on. if not, add a bit more water. or follow the instructions on the box. or google.
how do i make the salad? get a recipe book, or get a CLUE.

Buffy season 3

Season 3 of Buffy has us in hand. It’s my sixty millionth time through the Buffy series, but The Squeeze hasn’t seen them all. We’re enjoying them very much, though our viewing has synchronised with someone else who’s borrowing them from the video shop*. We watch them faster than they do, but they keep them out for the whole week and won’t let us get ahead – whenever we make a preemptive strike and borrow the couple of discs ahead of them, they retaliate and take the next two. Which sucks, as we’re done with ours in less than a week, while they keep them for the whole week.
We’re nearly at the end (just one or two discs to go), and then we’ll start getting Angel out as well. I have convinced The Squeeze that we have to watch the two in conjunction. Personally, Angel was the only thing that kept me with Buffy at the end there. Buffy herself craps me to tears – she’s such a whingey little ho…
*I want to make a dumb joke about female fans, woman-friendly telly and synchronised menstrual cycles, but I can’t quite manage it…

benny goodman the vampire slayer


Today I picked up the complete RCA Victor Benny Goodman small group recordings (3 cds, $45, see ya later DJing money) and it ROCKS. I love early Benny Goodman so much. And this trio and quartet stuff makes me want to weep with joy. I also really really like the Sextet stuff, but, well, they’re not on this awesome collection. It really rocks: Lionel Hampton on vibraphone (!! I LOVE Hamp a crazylot), Gene Krupa on drums, Teddy Wilson on piano and Goodman on clarinet (of course). This stuff was so radical and amazing at the time – musically it was unique and exciting, socially the group was way radical, with 2 black doods and 2 white in the one band, on stage together, at a time when segregation was legally enforced in much of the USA. We’re talking about the 30s here, and the group were edited out of the films they starred in for films screened in the south of the US.
Musically, it’s fascinating stuff. The way those doods work together is awesome.
Yeah, so I’m loving this set. I was describing its wonderfulness to The Squeeze here, while he lay under the chenille bedspread reading a book about computers and I counted bpms: it’s a nicely packaged set, with nice black and white photos of the band. Krupa and Hamp are grinning like crazy people and Goodman and Wilson are more reserved. There are even photos of the band on the cds. Which prompted The Squeeze’s statement “like Buffy. Benny Goodman the vampire slayer.”
Well, I guess so. Into each generation a chosen one is born.