Sunday 6 March 2011

Cab and me

Last Thursday was an important anniversary for me, and by an extraordinary co-incidence it was also an anniversary for the great Cab Calloway, for on 3rd March in the year I was born he published Minnie the Moocher, the first million-selling jazz record.

But sadly I could not invite him to join me in celebration because he died in 1994, and I certainly wouldn't want to invite his trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who stabbed him in the leg with a small knife in 1941 and died in 1993.

So to mark the occasion I had dinner with my immediate family, nine of us, at a restaurant in rural Sussex: no scat singing or HBTY, just a couple of hours browsing and sluicing.

As a matter of interest (my interest, that is) I ate:
Potted Herring, Slow Cooked Gloucester Old Spot Belly, Fennel Gratin, Chestnut Honey Tart, Green Walnut Ice Cream... and miscellaneous forkfuls from the plates of those who had something different: Barbary duck, onion jam potatoes, pigeon, that sort of thing. An eight-year-old grand-daughter had chosen Jacob's Ladder (illustrated below), but needed very little help from me in putting it away. 
It was a splendid evening.


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3 comments:

Grumio said...

Doesn't look like a Jacob's Ladder to me. More like rib.

Anyway, congratulations on your 80th and on outliving Cab, Dizzie and countless others. I expect the lack of small knife wounds to the thigh may have assisted your longevity.

And an adequate supply of slow cooked Old Spot.

Froog said...

My, that food looks wonderful.

I'm glad you enjoyed such a fine celebration.

80 years?! I had somehow got the idea that 1933 was your significant year. (Perhaps I was thinking of Hitler's assumption of power?) Many congratulations.

blandine said...

Well Tony, i am very curieuse to know how the chestnut tart was! How very unusual! I am glad you had a fantastic time, wish i had been there to take you down the pub for a pint or 2! ;-)