Social Eats: Food to Impress Your Mates

Jimmy Garcia is not a man who does things by halves.From cooking elaborate five-course meals for his university friends to expanding his culinary knowledge by catering for Arabic royalty on yachts for three summers, his enthusiasm and zest for life are clear. 

His impressive skills have gained him a wide and dedicated following. 

CLICK ON BOOK TO BUY

In Social Eats, he shares his best pop-up secrets to show you how to turn your meals into gastronomic events to be remembered.

Divided into three sections - Pre-party (salads and quick fixes At the Party (cocktails, canapes & little dishes; crowd pleasers; the great outdoors; celebrations), and After Party (breakfast, brunch & comfort food)

Social Eats is packed with fun and flavour and features recipes whose variety and imagination are sure to inspire even the most jaded palate.

Jimmy Garcia Buy his new book SOCIAL EATS   click on the book to buy 

How Being Busy Makes You Unproductive

Being busy has somehow become a badge of honour. The prevailing notion is that if you aren’t super busy, you aren’t important or hard working. 

The truth is, busyness makes you less productive.When we think of a super busy person, we think of a ringing phone, a flood of e-mails, and a schedule that’s bursting at the seams with major projects and side-projects hitting simultaneously. Such a situation inevitably leads to multi-tasking and interruptions, which are both deadly to productivity.

Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, TIME, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.

(The full article can be read here 
 http://fave.co/1jOq0wX

This is my view.

The above article came into my inbox this morning from Linkedin,the website that seems to have established itself as the preferred choice for professional networking. 

So why do we associate busy people with success? 

And- Who was it that said ''If you want a job doing quick , then give it to a busy man'' ? 

Well if you Google that question you come up with a plethora of names attributed to that saying - anyone from Benjamin Franklin to Lucille Ball.

And some people would say  

'If you really want a job doing quick, then give it to a busy woman'

Several years ago I had a business partner who always seemed to be very busy and was always doing some important deal and juggling several tasks at the same time, well that's how it looked to anyone observing him.

The truth of the matter matter was, he was very good at making lots of noise and getting the ball rolling but far too busy to control where the ball was actually going. Hence he always crashed the car and ended up in a ditch-needing a bail out.

He was merely re-shuffling his fathers well earned fortune, the same fortune that had paid for his place at Eton and his wine account at Cambridge. 

We often here people talking about a work life balance, but in today's world of Austerity , Welfare cuts and Tax credits do any of us have the luxury of a work life balance?

We may all be very busy for some for time to come.!

Travis Bradberry's book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 

can be bought here just click on the book.

Supermarket self checkouts

Many of you will have noticed the growing trend for self-service at the supermarket checkouts when you pay for your weekly food shop. It’s something that started to appear many years ago on the petrol garage forecourt.

Do you remember the days when you drove your car onto the garage forecourt where you were met by a pump attendant? They would ask you what type fuel you wanted and then after filling up your tank they would give your windscreen a quick wipe and maybe offer to check your water and oil levels.

Well those days of customer service have long since gone, we now take self-service for granted and in todays busy times self-serve is often the preferred way for paying for goods and services. I wonder though if this practice is good for us in the long term.

There are times when you don’t want to engage too much with the person who is checking taking your payment. There are also days when it frustrates me that I have to engage with a machine that repeatedly yells ‘Unexpected item in the bagging area’.

Six months ago in my local supermarket you would see three sales assistants behind the checkout but that has now reduced to only one member of staff and another one encouraging you to use the self-checkout.

To the worker and the jobs market this is disastrous, replacing workers with machines is not the way forward. This country needs jobs for shop workers, if they are replaced with machines it is the working class people who will ultimately suffer from a lack of jobs. It will leave a large group of people with no money, claiming benefits and no purpose in life. We have seen this already in the manufacturing industry where huge swathes of the once bustling West Midlands industrial heartland is now reduced to barren wasteland and Disney style shopping centres.

If Supermarkets are to be allowed to continue with the dominance they enjoy in the market place, they should at least be expected to provide jobs in the community.

They should not be allowed to make such huge profits without contributing something back to society, a contribution to the welfare of the people they are profiting from.

They should be obligated to provide well-paid manual jobs.

They should also give something back to their customers in return for all the information they gather from us when we shop with our loyalty cards.

How about they offer Free Dental care to all shoppers who carry their loyalty cards.

If the population had better teeth then surely they can chew more beef.

It’s a win-win situation for both Supermarkets and the Consumers.

I personally don’t use self-service machines. I will always wait for the sales assistant to become available.

I suggest you do the same. Ignore the Self Checkout and Engage with a real person and help support Britain’s working classes.

Hospital Food at King's London

I was visiting King's hospital in Camberwell last week and I popped into their shop to get a sandwich.

I was shocked at the prices they were charging, A beef sandwich was £3.95 which seems a hell of a lot for a basic Sarine, that's Top end prices you expect to see in Pret a Manger and other deli sandwich shops.

When you are visiting a hospital you notice that the vast majority of the people there are not wealthy, they are ordinary people going about their business, struggling to pay the bills and yet they are being asked to fork out top dollar for basic sustenance while sorting out their health issues or visiting friends and family.

This sends out a bad example of how we view our access to basic food and how it is reserved for those that can afford it .

A hospital should set the benchmark and should be High in quality and Low on price

Come on Labour party! this basic cost of living crisis is what you should be focusing on in the run up to the election in 2015 . The Tories are not helping anyone apart from the wealthy in this country , its about time we had saw fair prices return to our food shelves. The price of oil has dropped enormously over the past six months due partly to government sanctions against Putin, this just shows when they want to change systems they can do it . So lets fix up our food pricing structure so that good quality food is available to the masses and not just the few.

The View from Blackfriars Bridge

I cycled over Blackfriars Bridge last week about 6pm just as the sun was going down. The pastel colours were stunning in the dying sun and I got off my bike and took a couple of  pics on my Canon G10 . This one struck me , I hadn't seen this view before and thought it was worth a post. 

There are three London Landmarks in this photo, one is obvious but can you name all three ? 

Blackfriars Bridge London 

Robert Harrison at the Half Moon Pub review from 2008

London Tourdates Magazine

Venue Review - Half Moon, Herne Hill

Your guide to essential bricks and mortar - the venues that are home to the capital’s greatest live music events

by Tourdates Staff Writer, first published in London Tourdates #024 ,13th June 2008

Not many people know about Herne Hill. Like Brixton’s quieter, more well behaved neighbour, it sits at the entrance to the sprawling Brockwell Park. And with its leafy Victorian streets, you’d be forgiven for dismissing the area as just another boringly wealthy South London suburb that’s not on the tube. It does, though, have its livelier side!

The Half Moon has existed as a live venue since the early 60s. The Police, U2 and Van Morrison have all reportedly played there and it’s rumoured that once upon a time even Frank Sinatra popped in for a jam after a show.

Robert Harrison took over the venue in 2006. He’d worked in bars and venues since the early 90s and after starting out at the Tea Rooms Des Artiste in Clapham opened The Dogstar – often regarded as the first DJ Bar - in Brixton in 1995.

Since taking over, Harrison has transformed The Half Moon in terms of both a pub and as a live venue. Though the building always had an impressively grand exterior – all the stained-glass finery of a traditional Victorian pub – the interior was in need of a makeover.

Nowadays the bar area is immaculate, with polished wood floors and ornate detail that includes chandeliers, gilding and stained glass as well as a host of other period features.

And the refurbished stage area means The Half Moon is a decent sized venue too. A back room off one of the main bar areas, it has a capacity of around 200 but has the kind of intimate feel that means it wouldn’t feel empty with a much smaller crowd.

And with good PA and lighting systems and great acoustics, the venue is starting to attract more and more credible bands and a few regular monthly nights too.

“It’s a lovely surprise in the back room of a pub,” says Harrison. “It works with 200 or 20. It doesn’t shout or blow it’s own trumpet, but when it does it sounds sweet.”

And what have been the highlights of the live stuff so far? “Tymonn Dogg was a revelation to me,” he says, “not knowing anything about him before he played.

“Miss Paloma Faith was fabulous too. But the best so far for me has to be Turin Brakes in 2006. It was packed to the rafters and and they were an excellent live band.”

One of the new regular nights at The Half Moon is Feeding Time. Held on the last Saturday of each month by Rod and Jake from Dazed and Confused Magazine, it’s a cutting-edge indie/electro showcase that is gaining in popularity and developing a reputation for good music (recent acts to appear include John and Jehn and Let’s Wrestle) and a good crowd. Added to this there’s Folk At The Moon on a Friday - a monthly indie-folk night which has seen Indigo Moss play recently - and regular open mic sessions.

With such a thriving calendar of events and regular flow of great music, you’d think Robert Harrison would be jubilant about the future of The Half Moon, but as an experienced pro it seems he doesn’t take anything for granted…

“The pub is a listed building,” he tells me. “So they won’t be building flats anytime soon.

“However the economy is struggling and London is such an expensive city to live in, I worry that we will loose much of the vibrancy and creativity that we have seen in the past.

“Young people will be forced to move further out of London. You only have to look at the Kings Road to see how corporate we are getting; I don’t see anyone doing anything to challenge this trend. “I remember when I was in Brixton, there was always so much going on… parties every weekend, it doesn’t seem the case now. Maybe I’m getting old.”

Michael Wylie-Harris

Thanks to Michael W H for the above article
for a link to original click below
tourdates

Taj Mahal Restaurant in Streatham

The Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant Streatham

Back in the late 1980’s I shared a bedsit with my friend Dennis in Streatham, it cost £23 a week, unimaginable these days.  In true bedsit tradition we had our local Indian curry house, we went there most weeks, eat the same dishes and always seemed to pay £22 for two.

Recently when Dennis was back in London I returned to the restaurant for a trip down memory lane, some 20 years after my last visit.

The Taj Mahal was established back in 1962, it has basic seating for about 30 people and a small bar at the front of the restaurant. 

On arriving we were met by the owner Moben, who remembered us from years before, he is very knowledgeable about his food and he made us feel very welcome.

We chose starters of, Onion Bhaji, Prawn Puree, Vegetable Samosa and mains of Chicken Jalfrezi, Lamb Naga and for old times’ sake we had Chicken Korma and Lamb Rogan.

The Naga Lamb was tender and fell apart in my mouth the flavour was excellent and the chicken in the Jalfrezi was perfectly cooked. The curries were very tasty and not overly spiced.

We had Sag Paneer to go with our mains which was very creamy and sweet.

The usual accompaniments of rice, Nan bread and poppadum’s were also good.

We also had Cobra and Kingfisher beers and a Mango Lassi.

The bill for the meal for four people including drinks and service was about £85 which seems reasonably good value.

Delivery Service

A few weeks later on a Wednesday evening I tried their delivery service and I am pleased to say this is pretty good too. All the dishes were equally as good, although the Nan bread was a tad cold on delivery, a minor slip which did not spoil the experience.

On the whole Taj Mahal is a good value restaurant serving quality produce in a friendly environment and definitely worth paying a visit.

Taj Mahal

11a Leigham Court Road

Streatham

London

SW16 2ND

020 8769 0704

^{https://twitter.com/TajCurry}

Early morning fog over the Park

I woke up this morning to this, lingering fog over the Lido in Herne Hill