Please feel free to email us your favourite recipes at:
bigroadblues@shaw.ca
Your recipe may be posted if it satisfies our demanding
gastronomical criteria, and we can be very demanding.
DISCLAIMER: We do not assume responsibility for your health, the quality of your guests, or the success of your dinner party. In these matters, you are truly on your own.
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Most recipes, I'm sure (though I never read them all the way through - they're far too boring), anyway, most recipes, I'm sure, are good at telling you how many pineapples you need to make a kumquat, or when to stir and when to whisk (also useful, I'm told, in other spheres of life), but they're not much good at taking into account your state of min at the precise moment at which you need to read the recipe and bring it to life.
For instance, waking one morning after a typical Big Road gig, with the warmth of the crowd still surging through you, and the inescapable sense that you had a few too many sherbets during the evening, you approach the kitchen gingerly, knowing that the regular stuff just won't work today. For example, anything with milk in it is just waiting to hit the curdling electric soup awash at the pit of your stomach, with predictable results. Eggs? They're following you around the room like Dick Turpin's eyes in those old silent films that no one remembers. Or was it Ben Turpin?
No matter. Anyway, look - when you've had too many the night before, the only thing you'll be able to face for breakfast in the morning will be DRY TOAST.
Sound great, you say. But how to make it?
It's simpler than you think, but a couple of things are key. A toaster will come into its own for this very task. You wonder what it's doing there, most of the time, like a miniature PT Cruiser sitting on your kitchen counter. Then one day, perhaps today, you find out.
If you don't have a toaster all is not lost. Start gathering firewood (wooden flooring is a useful and handy substitute) and get some kindling going by burning your old Scouts Manual with gasoline and a Zippo, and throw vast quantities of wood (or other suitable material - let your imagination run wild!) on the raging inferno. Then simply attach your piece of bread (I'm getting ahead of myself, see below) to a broomhandle (yes, yes, with duct tape) and toast it leisurely on your inhome bonfire! Wait for the flames on your bread to subside, then, eat hearty!
In our cradle-to-grave society, of course, a lot of Nervous Nellies prefer the modern Toaster (Tooster in Danish, but with the oomlaut over both of the 'o's - alas my Operating System cannot handle oomlauts). It's very sad, but, like the lost oomlaut, that's progress.
Now, I can't give specific instructions for every toaster, because every toaster, like every snowdrop, is different, although I don't know anyone who's checked every single one of either, now that I think about it. Certainly they (the toasters, not the snowdrops) seem to come in every colour, like the that girl in the song by Arthur Lee's old group Love.
And a couple of truths about toasters really are universal, like Mr Lee's group, with their red flared bellbottoms. Or were they cordurouy drainpipes?
Firstly, the bread should go in one slice per slot (see diag. 1). The notion that you can cram several slices of bread into a single slot is delusional. I hate seeing people going down that particular cul-de-sac, and you try to warn them but, oh well, I guess they're busy thinking about Tiger Woods's inner game or when's Michael Jackson's new album coming out?
And the second truth may seem obvious but is no less true for all that. To make toast, you do require bread. It's no use sticking a slice of pineapple (see fig. 2) into a toaster and expecting it to create toast. Do you still think milk comes from the mall? Well then, you've got a lot of other misguided ideas that could use a bit of a reno, mate.
You need bread. Or you knead bread. That's just a witty way of reminding you that you can make your own bread - you don'ts gots to go to de mall! but that's a discussion for another day, and for a bread expert, not a toast guy like myself.
We hope to see you at one of our gigs soon, but please don't throw toasters. They threw jellybeans at the Beatles and I think that was sort of OK with the Fabs - I think Ringo used to catch them in his mouth. But I think toasters would be a bit of a stretch - even for Ringo.
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1 cup water
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups dried snoot
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown sugar
lemon juice
nuts
1 gallon whiskey
(rum may be substituted)
Instructions:
Sample the whiskey to check for quality. Take a large bowl.
Check the whiskey again to be sure it is of the highest quality. Pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.
Turn on the elctric mixer, beat 1 cup butter into a large, fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon sugar and beat again.
Make sure the whiskey is still OK. Cry another cup. Turn off mixer. Break 2 legs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of fried druit. Mix on the turner. If the dried fruit gets stuck to the beaters, pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the whiskey to check for tonsisicity.
Next, sift two cups of salt or something...or whatever.
Check the whiskey. Now, sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table stoon of sugar or something. What ever you want. Grease the oven. Turn on the cake tin to 350 degress.
Don't forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out the window and check the whiskey again. Go to bed.
Nobody likes fruitcake.
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Combine these ingredients for an easy & tasty dressing that will help to combat that wretched 'dry teeth' effect from your favourite spinach salad!
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp seasoned pepper
7 tbsp salad oil
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