The Who, That's Who

I apologize for my absence. Both in posting and commenting. Time has a way of just slipping by too quickly & I have (luckily) had a rather busy social calendar. (And a busy work schedule, blah). The highlight of the past week or so was of course The Who concert. (which I did smuggle my camera into)

The opening act was some band from Winnipeg that was pretty shitty, so we just hung around in the lobby and ran into a couple of people we knew including Paul & John from Volume Water who informed us that their album has been nominated for an HMA. Congrats guys! They're in the Rock Recording category up against Daniel Lanois, so Paul says they haven't got a hope in hell. You never know...strange things happen in this world.

We had great seats for the concert & they went full-out, non-stop for 2 hours singing all kinds of hits, I Can't Explain, Baba O'Riley, Who Are You, My Generation and on & on. The crowd loved every minute of it, singing along, cheering Pete's famous windmills, Roger's mic swinging and just dancing & rockin' with the band. Jim & I had an absolute blast! The show got great reviews in the papers the next day. My only complaint - they didn't sing one of my Who favorites, Magic Bus. The rest of everything made up for it though.

Keith Moon, who died 30 years ago, was hard to replace, but Zak Starkey is a perfect choice. Not only is he the son of another famous drummer (Ringo), Keith Moon was his godfather & mentor. How cool that he ends up playing for The Who. And holy crap is he amazing! One of the best drummers I've ever seen. It was hard to get a good photo of him because he was always moving. Pete Townshend's brother was also on guitar. (in the Roger Daltrey picture above, on the left wearing a tuque). His name is...Simon!!

Here is a good fan made video shot at Copps Coliseum. Have a watch. This is what I got to experience.



I haven't had a whole lot of time for cooking/baking, so I've relied on old stand-bys & repeats, like Dreena's Cumin Lime Tofu.

Served with a rice pilaf I adapted from a barley recipe I got from Crystal over at Cafe Cyan. On the side I had some oven roasted broccoli with onions & red peppers. This is so freakin' delicious. I just toss the broccoli florets, onions & peppers with olive oil, some sea salt and freshly ground pepper and spread out on a parchment lined baking sheet. Put into a 400F oven, stirring every now and then for about 10 minutes, maybe less - I go by look. When it's all done, tender crisp, I dump it into a bowl, drizzle with balsamic vinegar, toss and serve. YUMMY! Throw the parchment paper away, wipe off the baking sheet and clean-up is done.

I also dug out a recipe I hadn't made for quite sometime. It's from Campbell's soup and I have it in an old cookbooklet that I picked up somewhere years ago. It's also available on line. The recipe calls for steak strips, but I used this

Talk about making a fast work-night dinner even faster. These are already cooked, I basically just stir-fried them a bit to brown them up a bit.

8 ingredients totalled (including brown rice) and I ended up with this.

The soup used was Tomato with Basil & Oregano. It gives this a nice lift. Easy, tasty, minimal clean-up and enough leftovers for lunches = my kind of meal.

I wasn't too busy to bust out a batch of cookies though. This was a first time attempt at this particular recipe. Isa's Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies. I wanted chocolate something (big surprise) so I threw some chocolate chips into the batter.

These cookies are not overly peanut buttery, just a hint. Chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal. Yea, I know what you're thinking. Awesome! And they were.

Things are really starting to cool down around here. There's a nip in the air, the leaves are turning colours and my thoughts are turning to wintery fare - soups, stews, chilis, pot pies....

I'm hoping everyone has a safe and Happy Hallowe'en. Oh, guess what I heard on the radio? So as not to offend anyone, some schools are not calling it Hallowe'en anymore. It's black and orange day. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? The nimrods who decide these things are playing up the "religious" aspect of the holiday, which isn't even an issue. To almost all of us, Hallowe'en is a fun day to dress up and get free candy. That's it! It's Hallowe'en. Call it what it is. By not doing so, you're offending me. And don't even get me started on Christmas.
Anyhow, play it safe and to my American friends, don't forget to get out there and vote on Tuesday. I'll be watching along with you on the TV.