Drift Away...

So I was sitting in front of my computer looking up recipes for spagetti carbonara which I decided I am going to make tomorrow and then "Drift Away" by Dobie Gray came on the 70s station. More on that later.

I was actually going to make the carbonara for a late snack tonight but I don't have any bacon or panchetta in the house. I don't think I have had any in the house for a year or so. I didn't feel like making a food store run given that it's almost 11pm. I was looking at some family pictures earlier today in my neverending quest to bring some order to my life. Why do I say that? Well I've been in this house for two and half years and I still have boxes that I haven't unpacked. Anyhow one of the pictures triggered the spaghetti carbonara inkling in me. My Mom used to make huge batches of it every once in a while and I wanted to live that memory once again. Kind of sentimental these days. Hmmm. Hopefully it turns out okay. It doesn't seem very complicated to make.

Back to Dobie Gray. As I said the 70s station was playing in the background and all of a sudden one of those all-time classics came on the station. That being the Dobie Gray version of "Drift Away" released back in 1973. If you don't like this song, you don't like music. Simple as that. An absolute northern soul classic. I first heard this song back in the day on CKGM and from the get go this was one of the songs of my youth.

Back then I would head up to the shopping center at the corner of Notre Dame and Labelle and browse the 45s in the music departments that were in the stores at this mall. I would usually end up buying some at Miracle Mart. Now that's a blast from the past. LOL.

One of those 45s that I bought was "Drift Away". I used to play this on this box record player. It was a must-have for a kid back then to have a record player of our own because our parents would surely not let our music pollute their stereo players. It would play 45s, 78s and 33s with the crappiest sound ever. I think these box record players shared the same speaker technology as transistor radios. I would play the 45s over and over until I knew the lyrics backwards and forwards.

The songs that got this treatment were what I consider classics like The Jackson 5's "Rockin Robin", Eddie Kendricks "Keep On Truckin", The Stylistics "Make Me Feel Brand New", William Devaughn's "Be Thankful For What You Got". I wonder if you see the pattern here. All classic soul songs. Man they could sing. I don't think it's possible to compare the stuff from these days next to these songs. I know I am showing my age. Whatever this was, is and will always be the music of my life.

To quote the late great Dobie Gray: "Give me the beat boys that frees my soul I want to get lost in your rock'n'roll and drift away."

This And That and Creole Catfish...

Okay I'm back at the ready at the keyboard here on a Saturday evening with YouTube playing some of my favorites I think randomly. First up on the player is a live version of Asia's "Heat Of The Moment" from the Live in Japan DVD. This version actually has the the four original members of the band so it's pretty darn authentic. While this band was touring back in 2008, there was an offshoot band touring at the same time called Asia Featuring John Payne. LOL. John Payne joined the band after some original band members left back in the late 80s and somehow he got the rights to the name Asia and is allowed to tour with the Asia Featuring JP name. Okay my theory is that Asia is Steve Howe of Yes on electric, Geoff Downes of the Buggles on keyboards, Carl Palmer of ELP on drums and John Wetton of whatever band he was in on bass and vocals. That's the band. They're the ones that had the hits.

It kind of makes me think of the version of the Little River Band (LRB) that is doing tours now and then in this area. Recently LRB was at Harrah's Cherokee and I wanted to go up there and see them. So I googled the showtime, the location, the travel time etc. etc. only to discover that this version of the Little River Band didn't have a single original member from their heyday back in the late 70s. It would be weird paying top dollar to see a cover band playing LRB songs claiming to LRB. Sorry not biting at that lure.

LOL. I used the lure line to segue effortlessly into the success of one my recent supper dishes. A year or two ago when at J's old house her mother was in town and prepared this creole catfish dish that I found to be excellent and quite low maintenance to make.

From start to finish including prep time it took less than an hour to make and that's only because the brown rice I prefer to use takes 50 minutes to be properly prepared. It got a good review from H as I was rather liberal (imagine that me being liberal rather than conservative) with the cayenne and fresh ground black pepper.

Instead of using the native catfish found here which I found to be overpriced considering I wasn't sure if I was going to be successful with this dish I used swai which is like catfish' fraternal twin as opposed to indentical twin. Swai is cultivated in southeast Asia as a food fish and it's cost here is half of the native catfish.

Usually I mess up fish dishes either by overcooking them or making something that I really don't like eating. I didn't even know that swai was similar to catfish until I googled it when I got home after buying it. My thought process was that it's a white fish; it can't be all that bad. LOL. I know a rather scientific approach employed by me. LOL.

Anyways the end result was that it was great dish and I will add it to my cooking arsenal. I really like cooking it turns out.

Okay that's it for now. I actually started this blog a couple of weeks ago and it had been sitting in draft form and I finally said that I would finish it up before starting on some other topics or blogs.