Family Reunions

Due to one of those extraordinary chains of coincidences, we found ourselves in that London this weekend, attending a gig (m’lud) at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. A few months ago, while I was out on an early morning constitutional, my iPhone threw up a track by Family, a long lost band, split up in 1973, who I adored at the time, and still play regularly to this day. I’m a member of a Facebook group where people post music tracks that they love, so I YouTube’d for this one, and posted it. Then I thought “wonder what the hell they’re all doing now”, and Googled. And found they were doing a 40th anniversary concert on 1st Feb. After a brief discussion with ‘im indoors (yes, we are going), tickets were bought for gig and trains, and a hotel booked.

We wondered whether they could still do it. Trust me. They could. We managed to grab a space at the back of the standing room, up some steps, with a rail to grab on when required (it was), so we had a great view, and room to boogie. The audience was quite amusing – lost of ageing, grey-haired hippies; anyone under 50 must have been a carer, I think. There’s a great review here from David Belbin, and I couldn’t write anything better, so if you’re interested, go read that. He actually went on the Saturday – there was so much demand they did a second night. Which is pretty bloody good for a band that hasn’t payed a gig for forty years.

As for the rest of the weekend, we walked, and saw friends. We walked from Kings Cross to Notting Hill Gate on Friday night, then gave in and got the tube for the last two stops, and tubed it back. We walked 13km on Saturday – Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Soho, and a couple of hours in the British Museum, then Japanese food with a couple of friends who we hadn’t seen for *years*.

Sunday was more walking, around the same areas, before Dim Sum with about a dozen mates that we don’t see nearly often enough at New World in Gerrard Place, a couple of large reds in the pub and then a taxi to the station.

So lots of reunions, 35km walking* (!) and a gig I’ll never forget. That was a pretty damned good weekend.

More reviews as I find them, for my own reference

Astounded by Sound
Vintage Rock

*I bought a Fitbit One (which is what tracked the mileage) via the wonders of John Lewis online; ordered Thursday afternoon, and collected from Waitrose in Bloomsbury on Friday afternoon. This internet thing could catch on, you know.

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

a vegetable curry … ish

Well, it was meant to be a vegetable curry, but I’m not convinced it turned out like that.

I love pulses and beans, and keep serried ranks of jars in my cupboards, all containing various varieties of same. Last weekend, I thought I’d cook up some kidney beans, so I poured some into a bowl and covered them with water, left them to soak. Then on the Sunday, I cooked ‘em up in the slow cooker. On Monday morning, I drained them into a colander, and thought “Gosh. That’s a lot of beans”. I do this regularly, and I really must learn how many cooked beans a given quantity of dried beans transmutes into. “Lots” seems to be the general answer.

In a “lets clear the fridge of all the old veg”, between us Pete and I chopped red onions, aubergine, butternut squash and sweet potato. And garlic and ginger was liquidised into a paste. I took the black Le Creuset out of the cupboard, looked at the bowl of beans, and got out the enormous faux Le Creuset that I bought in Sainsburys for about 45 quid (about ¼ of what a genuine one would cost).

In my ongoing attempts to lose weight, I’m using far less oil to cook, so I put about, oh, a dessert spoonful of groundnut oil, in which I softened the onions, then added quite a lot of garam masala and cooked it off. In went the garlic/ginger paste, then the cubed veg. Turned it all round to coat it, and get it started, then added passata, and sufficient water to cover the mix, and some seasoning. When the veg were almost cooked, we shoehorned in the kidney beans (not easy, I can assure you), and left it another 15 minutes or so.

It was really, really nice, but not very curryish. No matter. And it made 10 portions for really not very much money at all.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.