lately

Blimey, it's been longer than I'd intended since I last posted here. Here are all the things I have intended to blog about in the past few weeks:

spices
It was looking like we'd have to buy a special spice grinding contraption to pulverise all those spices we bought but, after roasting, we shoved it in the blender and that seems to have done the trick. We now have enough spice mix to last the next thousand years.

The chicken tikka masala turned out well, but it was a hugely enormous faff with all the brining, soaking, roasting, peeling, scraping, blending, marinading, skewering, barbecuing and pressure-cooking. The barbecue (which was bought especially for the purpose) was supposed to be used instead of a tandoor, but it didn't quite work as planned and ended up taking about six hours to cook eight chicken thighs. Well, six; two fell off the skewers into the fiery depths.

Husband refined the recipe, Delia style, and his version 2 was equally tasty.
He's currently working on version 3, which should be ready tomorrow.

nature
Spent a long time gardening last weekend because our other next-door neighbour put in some new fencing, making our clematis fall down. I had to chop it right back so it's still in an extremely sorry-looking state.
Still, I adore this time of year, the last couple of weeks of April and the first couple in May. The bursting buds on the trees, the bright green of the leaves, the birdsong, the warmth in the air, sunshine and showers, the smell of freshly cut grass and something else I can't quite put my finger on - perhaps the effect of freshly-made oxygen from all those new leaves. Intoxicating.

Forgot to mention that we haven't any birds in our bird box this year. They started making a nest about a month ago while we were away in Edinburgh, but stopped shortly after our return. Our neighbour, D (of the ongoing D and B saga - and are away on holiday together at the moment) has eggs in his box. I did hear that blue tits don't like to nest too close to each other, so perhaps that's it, although I did see a buzzard sitting on D's fence a month or so ago.

TV / internet
Over the past few weeks our Sky satellite signal has deteriorated from skipping occasionally on The Channel Formerly Known As BBC News 24 to the point where we now have no signal at all on any channel. We called an engineer out relatively recently and had a new box, but will have to call the service contract people again.
Husband has two theories:
1 - radio interference. We live practically opposite a mobile phone transmitter. Our wireless internet also suddenly stopped working a couple of weeks ago and has been intermittent ever since. Husband phoned OfCom about the interference and they can send someone out to check for radio interference but charge £50 if there isn't any.
2 - the new leaves on the trees in front of the house are blocking the signal to the satellite dish. The only way to find out if this is the cause is raise the dish.

Cud
I went to see Cud in London on Friday. It was a right palaver getting there as I accidentally got on the wrong train. I had consulted the online rail enquiries, which had told me there was a train to London Bridge at 17:35. The only train from Boblogville at 17:35 arrived, I got on it and... it proceeded to stop at every bloody station the convoluted route into London Blackfriars. Gah!!!
Got off at Elephant and Castle and took the Northern Line to King's Cross St. Pancras, arriving about 45 minutes later than I'd planned. Enjoyed looking about the new station at St. Pancras and ate at the new sushi place there.

At the venue I discovered the band weren't on until 22:30.
It was 8pm.

The first support weren't bad (they had also supported Cud in Brighton), but the second support was just wrong. I won't say that it was awful, because I did enjoy the drumming, but Drum'n'Voice (a 'singer' reading lyrics/poetry from a canvas set to beats) does not sit well next to what Wikipedia calls 'indie rock... [with] elements of funk'.
There was much vocal disapproval from the crowd.

Cud, as usual, were marvellous. Did lots of dancing and now have sore legs. Good job it's a bank holiday weekend and I get an extra day off work to recover.

Comments

[Teresa]

I have a Tikka Marsala recipe (somewhere) that doesn't seem quite so convoluted. I'll dig it out from wherever it is and email it to you. I think I cooked mine under the broiler. Probably not quote the same taste as doing it on the grill but it will probably do in a pinch. I'm making a curry tonight (Thai, not Indian) so the recipe is probably with that one.

[Kirsty]

We had a Tikka Masala recipe (of our own invention) that wasn't so convoluted, but it was lost when Husband's computer died.

He was excited about Heston's CTM recipe, being that CTM is probably his favourite food. Heston's was good and Husband's shortcuts haven't taken much away from the overall taste.
He's continuing to refine the recipe with each batch he makes.