between books | Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

Jack has been busy with some construction, so of course his guest post is late –

One of the things we’ve been brushing up on during the last year is our culinary skills. I’ve been expanding my range of meals while Wendy taught herself to pressure can. We purchased a new toaster oven that doubles as an air fryer so with that plus our trusty slow cooker crock pot and the pressure canner we set out on our taste adventures.

Air frying is a fast, clean and healthier alternative to deep frying, which is what I’ve usually done in the past. It’s really a small convection oven with a fan to distribute the hot air and very little oil is needed.

Wendy became an expert at sourcing vegetables in bulk from local farms, and after distributing them to local foodbanks, non-profits and the ‘pay it forward’ café we had loads of stuff left to be canned for ourselves. The only problem we’ve had is where to safely store the jars where they would be cool and safe from our cats. We have lots of potatoes, mushrooms, tomato sauce, curry sauce, beans and onions stashed away in every nook and cranny!

During the pandemic and before we were vaccinated we avoided going to grocery stores as a great many people there were either un-masked or wearing them round their chin. So we concentrated on using our stocks of veggies and meat or fish from the freezer.

Another safe source of protein is thanks to our four chickens and their egg laying proficiency. They give us so many that we’ve been able supply friends and neighbors as well.

So, with a limited range of ingredients I’ve been scouring the internet for interesting and different recipes – 101 things to make with potatoes or what to make with potatoes, mushrooms and onions. It’s been an enjoyable journey and I suspect that when things get back to ‘normal’ our approach to cooking will have changed permanently. My main specialty before was curry, but now I can add many more, just so long as it includes potatoes, mushrooms, onions and beans!

Bon Appetit – – –

Jack gets in over the wire for a change with the Wednesday guest post –

There are often events that are described as marking the end of an era, and the death yesterday of Chris Barber certainly seems like that for me. The path that led me to a love of Scottish traditional songs and music started, as it did for many others of my generation, with the New Orleans style jazz popular all over Britain in the 1950s and 60s.

Popular bands including those led by Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball regularly topped the hit parade with numbers like ‘Stranger on the Shore’ and ‘Midnight in Moscow’. But the Chris Barber Band was by leaps and bounds ahead of all the others.

The original line-up was really just the Ken Colyer Band minus Colyer, with Barber becoming the leader and Pat Halcox replacing Colyer. The story is that the members of the band wanted to experiment with music from outside the strict confines of New Orleans and that led to the split. The first big hit for the Barber band was ‘Petite Fleur’ featuring clarinetist Monty Sunshine and that brought the band to a much wider audience. Then the guitar/banjo player with the band, Lonnie Donegan, began interspersing blues and old-time American songs between the band’s instrumentals. One of these – ‘Rock Island Line’ even topped the US charts!

However Barber himself was very much in charge and stamped his personality on the band from start to finish although that seems to have been necessary with personnel changes over the years. Despite these changes the sound remained recognizable. They had always had a broader repertoire than other bands of the period, including pieces by Count Basie and Duke Ellington and this became more evident as additional players were added. There was a period in the 60s when he ran a London club called The Marquee where modern jazz would often feature with folk like Tubby Hayes and Johnny Dankworth, and this, I’m sure was how the Barber band got the inspiration for their broader approach. At that same time he was bringing blues artists from the US and touring with them as well as putting them on in the Marquee. That was how he and Donegan became the ‘firelighters’ for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and even the Beatles.

The last time I saw the band was around 2007 at the Burnley Mechanics Theater in Lancashire and by that time they had become ‘The Big Chris Barber Band’ but Pat Halcox was still there on trumpet and Chris Barber on trombone. They were both in their late seventies but you wouldn’t have known it! What I loved about that concert is that they had a section in the middle where everyone except the basic seven piece New Orleans outfit left the stage and we were transported back to the 1950s for half an hour.

I think my lasting impression of the man is the curious mixture of uninhibited playing and very English laid back humor, always delivered in an immaculate suit and tie!

RIP Chris and thanks for everything!

PS – here’s a track from an early album I still have that I bought when it came out in 1959 –