patricia

I hope you like my recipe, but, play around with it. KEEP ON TASTING IT as you make it, or adjust the amounts of seasonings so that YOU like it. It's kind of like any recipe that you make all the time. Sometimes it has a little more, or a little less of something in it, but it's still good. BTW, the lemon juice, besides smoothing out the guacamole, also keeps the avocadoes from turning dark. You can also brush some on the other half of one, before wrapping it in plastic, if you should ever find yourself with one. Also, leave the pit in a half that you're not going to eat right away. Another thing that I do with avocado is mash a half or even a whole one, with whatever spices I have around and put in on a BIG baked russet potato and that's dinner, with a salad. [i'm a vegetarian, so a baked potato is quite often the base for a meal for me.]

I agree that guacamole is a wonderful thing. There are as many recipes for it as there are people who love it. Here's mine: Guacamole 2 green onions 1 large fresh garlic clove, minced 1 enormous tomato, chopped up fine, but not pulverized 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley 1/4 tsp minced cilantro [some people like more, but I'm not big on cilantro] 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon chili powder cayenne [be careful with this, add a tiny bit at a time, tasting all the while. If you don't, you'll blow somebody's head off.] 4 ripe avocados, peeled, seeded and mashed. [you should end up with about 2 cups.] Ground rock salt or seasoned salt, if you must. FRESHLY ground pepper [keep on tasting]. Just dump all this into a good-sized bowl in the order given and them mix them around till they're all mixed around. Serve with corn chips, or even chunks of Frenchbread. I like it and there's never any left when I serve it to guests. Try it. You might like it too.

We want the greats to live forever and, with their music they do. Jimmy's music was one of the reasons I turned to jazz and his version of "Walk On The Wild Side" is the best one ever recorded. I will spin "The Sermon" first, then the "Walk On The Wild Side" collection. One by one, the greats leave us.....................

Gorgeous collection!!!! Enjoy. On my turntable, "Jazz Spectrum", a compilation on Curcio I Giganti Del Jazz. It features amazing live perfomances. Side I Dizzy Gillespie Quartet - Be Bop Sarah Vaughan, backed by Dizzy singing a terrific version of "Embraceable You" Dizzy's kick-ass take on "My Heart Belongs To Daddy". WOW!! Dizzy's Big Band - Things To Come Side II Miles Davis Quintet - Milestone Charlie Mingus and His Sextet - Pithecanthropus Erectus Now, this collection has NO liner notes, but all the tracks are live performances, where the pulse of the audience is clearly heard. Not in an annoying way though, but as if I were listening to the performances among like-minded jazz-addicts. Wonderful!!! Sassy at her best, IMO. Everybody on the album are bursting with energy and creativity. This is one of my favourite collections and this was a low-end, from a cost perspective, release.

Trying to figure out what the reason was for vandalism is futile. There are so many angry fools out there who think it's amusing to wreck anything they can that I can't imagine what they would say, if apprehended and they were asked. What makes it worse is that if you report this criminal offence to the local constabulary, it's not long before you feel that it's your own fault that it happened. How could you have left your car in a parking lot without an armed guard protecting it?? If you had, it seems, you would not have had this happen. No mention of what we were all taught as little kids, that if it's not yours, leave it alone. To add insult to injury, if you claim on your insurance, quite often your premiums go up. The implied solutions seem to be to either lock up your belongings in a windowless strongroom, or not have anything of value. I'm not saying that we should amputate thieves' and vandals' right hands, or put them in the stocks in the public square and sic the townspeaple, armed with over-ripe fruit on them............................but, maybe I am. Whatever we are doing isn't working. It makes no sense to, in effect blame us for having things that we paid for and oddly enough want to use.

Just an FYI - over the long term, tuna is actually quite bad for cats and can lead to serious urinary tract problems. I used to feed my cats tuna as a treat before a vet mentioned this to me and some subsequent research confirmed it. I have no idea why this warning isn't more commonly given to cat owners. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if it's the mercury content or the magnesium content or both. As an alternative, try a little cheese. Most cats like it. If I have to give my cat a pill, I always hide it in a big gob of cream cheese. As far as catching the kittens goes, in my experience you're just going to have to build up their trust. If you trap one and not the other, I have a feeling you'll never see the other again. Go out to where they are, don't get too close, hold out some cat treats (like Whiska Lickings or something) and stay very, very still. Wait for them to approach you. The first time they probably won't come towards you at all, but they'll watch you. The second time you go out they may or may not come about 1/10 of the way towards you. The time after that they may come halfway. The next time they'll be eating out of your hand. Once that's happened, they'll follow you home. At least, that's the sort of experience I've had. You're right about not feeding tuna to a cat on a regular basis. But, I was talking about an empty tuna container, with pretty well just the smell still there. My cats would lick the inside, forever, apparently thinking that there must be tuna in there somewhere. I wanted to mention that trapping more than one cat is almost impossible. Once they see that their compadre is gone, never to be seen again, having entered the seemingly harmless box with the treat in it, they won't come near it. Need I remind you, THEY ARE NOT DOGS. Cats are independant, smart creatures and are seldom fooled the way that some other animals are.

Happy Birthday, Big Wheel!!! We get older and that's a positive in itself. I'm getting to the point where I can actually look back and recognize changes in our society's history. AND I can order JUST CAKE and a BIG GLASS of my favourite tipple, without having to finish my dinner. Nice being a grown-up. So, a glass of good wine and a chunk of birthday cake today and may there be decades more for you.

Tuna, even the suggestion of the possibility of tuna, used to bring both my cats at a gallop. To clarify, even an EMPTY tuna can, placed on the floor would have them battling over which one got to lick it so vigorously that it would travel all over the kitchen. WARNING. If you don't get the can off the kitchen counter immediately, you'll have the cats on the counter. To be fair, cheese works too and, in my cats' case, CANTELOUPE!!

Which Jimmy Smith album?? Frustrating thing. At my usual vintage vinyl outlet, there is a marker for a section for Smith, but there are NEVER any albums in that section. I have tons of Smith on CD, but nothing, so far, on vinyl. I remain hopeful, but damn that's frustrating. Home Cookin' boy! Fine choice JazzCat!!! I am listening to an album from the fifties, "Tango" by the Plymouth Tango Orchestra. It reminds me of the music from the Sally Potter film, "The Tango Lesson". Wonderful!!! This will be followed by "Scott Joplin - Palm Leaf Rag" the 1974 recording by the Southland Stingers. Then, "Pastiche" by The Manhatten Transfer.

Which Jimmy Smith album?? Frustrating thing. At my usual vintage vinyl outlet, there is a marker for a section for Smith, but there are NEVER any albums in that section. I have tons of Smith on CD, but nothing, so far, on vinyl. I remain hopeful, but damn that's frustrating.

YESSSS!!! Congratulations to Melissa, welcome to little Milo and of course, thank you to Johnny for his supporting role in bringing yet another liberal jazz nut into the world. .

Since I am what is known by Parisians as "a woman of a certain age", I have had time to do many, varied things for a living. Some paid next to nothing, to some which paid so much that I was almost embarrassed. The most horrible job I did was when I was in highschool and worked in the stockroom of a local variety store, hauling boxes of stock all over the basement storage, for under a dollar an hour. I used to tell my mother that I never wanted to go back almost every day. The rest of the staff treated my collegues and me like slaves and wouldn't even eat lunch with us. Admittedly, we were a scruffy crew, but it was dehumanizing. My mother told me, by way of consoling me, that I would never have to do that again and that any work was honourable. Besides, it gave me spending money. Since then I have been a telephone operator [when I was working my way through to a degree in alternate years] to a commercial sales rep, also with the telephone company. I liked it. It had such great benefits and money by then that I stayed for over twenty years and didn't ever use the degree I worked so hard to get.. But, I got bored, so at the same time, I started an image-consulting business and contracted myself to schools and companies with commission sales teams, to teach them how to put their wardrobes together to better do their jobs. My mother was a superb tailor and I grew up with a real love for beautifully made clothes. I knew how important image was, even as a little kid. That was the most lucrative thing I have ever done, because I contracted to government career counselors at their seminars for women who were going back to work. I also went to both men's and women's homes and helped them organize and edit their clothes. For the last few years I have been a free-lance still-life commercial photographer. When you see pictures accompanying ads, of shoes, dishes, food etc. somebody like me does them. I also do the candids for weddings and wedding showers. Pay is good, but jobs are sporatic. I pick up the money slack by working in retail and doing everything except investment counselling for an investment counsellor. He hates paperwork and juggling his schedule. I do that. If I live long enough, I'll have done a lot of things to keep the wolf from the door.

Feeling traditional this morning, so I'm listening to the 2 record mono set on RCA, "Glenn Miller - A Memorial 1944-1969. It's easy to see why Miller's music not only lives on, but is evolving, as jazz does, thanks to younger players who continually revive and give a modern polish to it. The cover notes were written by Benny Goodman and he gives us a capsule biography of both the man and his contribution to jazz. Very nice.

I understand what you're saying, Stephan. One of the few good things about living in Country and Western heaven, Calgary, is that jazz is still to be found at low prices, at the cost of shoe leather, or gas. The vintage store's prices run from about $5 for a single disc, to around $20 for really old, or particularly rare records, to around $50 for close to mint condition boxed sets, with the exception of the mail-order ones, which l have never seen. I have to assume that they don't accept them. Those are almost always found at secondhand stores like the Salvation Army and at yard sales. That's where the $1 per record, no matter what the record price is found. At yard sales, the entire collection of somebody or other is usually around $50 and the "proprieter" of the yard sale usually doesn't want to sell individual records. The downside is that there is a lot of chaff among the wheat. However, if even 10% of a 500 disc collection is good stuff, the rest can be passed on. The search goes on and I forgot another source, the classifieds. If you want to, you can even post an ad in the "looking for" section, which I've found to be moderately successful, though not usually cheap. People who answer those ads know what they have and you may have to call into play your latent bargaining skillsl. It's kind of like hunting without bloodshed.

Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that when I buy vinyl from vintage record stores, or online, $15 is moving to the high end, but certainly not as high as you could be paying. When I mention records, many of them rare jazz, which I have snagged for $1, or less, I've found them at yard sales and secondhand stores that mostly have other things and the records are incidental. But, if you don't have the time to scrounge around at non-vinyl specific stores and other sources, $15 is quite reasonable.

JazzCat, ME TOO!!! The "bad" ones are SOOO bad. You've got to wonder why they thought they had a ghost of a chance

Today, Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia Of Jazz Jazz of the '60s Vol 3 Tracks by: Mavis Rivers,- Irma Curry, - Juanita Hall, - Bill Henderson, - Lightnin' Hopkins, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, - Sarah Vaughan, - Joe Williams, - Dinah Washington, - Ann Richards and Brownie McGhee. With Count Basie & his Orchestra. On Exodus Records. Blues and Jazz extraordinaire!!!

Nice item. But, at best, you look like a semi-badass.

If you wait until you can afford them to have kids, you'll never have them. It's not the initial cost, it's the accessories like sports, clubs and education. Imagine how many sets of mink-lined long underwear could be bought for that folding currency?? But, doors and a lock on your jazz, if you have little kids are a small price to pay to end up with what my dad had. His records started with some from the thirties and went right up to the mid-fifties. When he died, eight years ago, they were immaculate!!!

Chuck, my late father, who was a cabinet-maker, would have agreed with you. He found 1/2-1" plywood for shelving units were the best. You cut the wood to size, it's inexpensive and very sturdy. A router was used to make grooves for the shelves to slide into, glued securely and the units could be pretty well any size you wanted them to be. If you wanted to get really fancy, you can buy finished one, or even both sides, but you can also sand lightly and paint or stain to order. However, Dad kept his jazz collection in a very old cabinet that had a lock on the doors, to protect his records from us, his four kids.

NICE!!! Almost TOO roomy, if that's possible.

OK JazzCat, now's your chance. Get your tapemeasure and measure your record covers. Then, allow about and inch on the top and hustle your buttocks down to Path Mark. Measure the crates to make sure that they are the older, bigger ones. If they are, snap a couple or so up, if the coast is clear. Then, run like the wind and Godspeed.

Jazzcat, when I was in college, EVERYBODY knew that milk crates were perfect for LPs and they ALL stole them. Grocery stores used to just leave them outside their back doors for the dairy to retrieve and they were scooped up by students by the hundreds!!! It was so widespread that the milk dudes actually suffered significant impact on their bottom line, because those crates were expensive to lose. Who knew that the humble milk crate would be, shall we say, "re-cycleable"?? I still see the old ones in vintage record stores, but used as bins for LPs. They don't stack them.

I love Jazztone enough to give them their own section. By all means check out the other records in your stacks and I would recommend that you do the same. They are GOLD. On many of mine it's evident that they were true, live, one-take performances and there are lots of spontaneous exchanges between the musicians who are performing. They are possessed of a pulse, in that they have the sense of real people doing what they love and sharing it with us. They are not perfect and sterile, which is the sense that I get with current recordings. Maybe it's just me.