I Have Eaten and Drank All the Things

Well!  So, Friend Will is in town from the west coast, and so, after two months of thrift and boredom, we have been OUT and ABOUT.  Will flew into town on Thursday, and Ted and I picked him up at the airport.  Our first order of business was to drive straight to Piper's Pub, for breakfast and beer.  Because breakfast and beer is the best possible solution for overnight airplane rides.

Ted ordered Toad in the Hole at Piper's: bangers in Yorkshire pudding with onion gravy, which turned out to be motherfucking awesome breakfast.

After that it was naps, and then we went out in the evening to the Brillobox, where delicious beers were again enjoyed, and I ate a plate of nachos for dinner.  Because I could.  Friends Carley and Lindsey and Acquaintances Tom and Amber were also there.

Ale aged in tequila barrels.  It was a hell of a beer.  I kind of want more of it.

Then Friday I got up and actually cooked a meal -- biscuits and sausage gravy and eggs and tea and orange juice -- cause it seemed like the hospitable thing to do.  But later it was out to Kelly's for happy hour.  There the three of us were joined by Will's friend Michelle, whom I'd met before, but upon being reacquainted with, I like a lot.  Many $4 cocktails of the day were had, along with Pittsburgh Bites and mac 'n' cheese.

On Saturday, Will made four loaves of zucchini bread shirtless in my kitchen.  Woo?  Then Ted and I ended up going out to Eleven to meet Friends Carrie and Roger.  More cocktails.  Plus a stop at the pop-up beer garden in Larryville for veggie dogs from the Franktuary truck.

Tomato juice is a vegetable ...

Then Sunday was BRUNCH, which is my favorite meal in the world, and I always LOVED having with Will be fore he inconsiderately moved away, and which I haven't had in AGES, cause blah blah broke.  We were at Casbah, and the prix fixe there is amazing, and so much food.  There're little muffins and scones and biscuits, and then my appetizer was a smoked salmon plate with truffled potato cake, capers, red onion, and aioli.  Then the main course was eggs benedict with prosciutto, served with roasted potatoes and fruit.  Plus a bloody mary and a mimosa.  Holy breakfast, Batman.

This is The Most Smoked Salmon.

Now this evening we're going to PD's Pub in Squirrel Hill for wings, and apparently tomorrow is happy hour at Tamari.  Then on Wednesday Will is going home.  I don't even know.  We have charged a shit load of food and booze, and eaten practically no vegetables.  I feel ... conflicted.  Mostly about the vegetables.  Still, it's been quite a staycation.  I'm sort of not looking forward to going back into spend-nothing, research-for-free mode.  I am looking forward to eating more vegetables.

If there is any more perfect thing than hollandaise sauce and runny egg yolk dripping over a toasted starch and a salty meat, I do not know what that could possibly be.

Equal Work, Equal Pay, Equal Hot Dogs

Today I wrote on my other blog about a matter near and dear to my heart, and appropriate to the holiday: Cookout Feminism.  More specifically, I wrote about how Major League Eating's decision to gender segregate the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is bullshit.  Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas is an elite competitive eater, who deserves the right to go up against the likes of Joey Chestnut; I demand she -- and other women eaters -- be released from the hot dog ghetto!

Check out my equal rights hot dog blog!

Respect the Beer. Also: Little Disabilities, or, Thanks for the Chairs, Sharp Edge.

I haven't blogged much this past week -- I honestly haven't had a whole lot to say.  The brokeness keeps our adventuring reigned in, and it's hard to make blogging hay out of tidying up and making lunch.  I considered doing some current events blogging, but decided that I didn't want to subject my own blood pressure to it.  I've got lots of opinions about lots of things, but if I start ranting about shit like John Roberts giving, apparently, zero fucks about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution, I think it's just going to make me an angrier, unhappier person in general, and no one wants that, right?

Saturday's breakfast. Ground peanuts and fresh blueberries make PB&J a little more wholesome.

So as I said, it's mostly been banal stuff around here: cooking lots of meals.  Let me think, in the past week I made fresh pesto pasta, creamy swiss chard and pea pasta, green curry, massaman curry, several breakfasts and lunches ... tonight is roast chicken, since it's comparatively cool today, with a mess o' veggies on the side.  Tomorrow is Taco Tuseday at the Spiher Robinson hacienda, which vaguely excites me.

Sunday's breakfast. That's a Parma Sausage banger. And avocados were on sale at Whole Foods!

Two pleasantries popped up, both involving Friend Sarah.  On Wednesday night, I met she and Acquaintance Dayle at Sharp Edge Beer Emporium in Friendship for a few after-work beers.  (After work for Sarah, anyway.)  I've always been a big fan of Sharp Edge's afternoon happy hour -- half-off Belgian drafts from 4:30-6:30, Monday-Friday -- but it turns out that on Wednesday nights they offer half-off Craft drafts, which is good to know.  Sarah and Dayle and I gossiped and talked about ponies; it was nice.

Last night, we again met Sarah and also Friend Davin, this time at Beer Nutz Bottle Shoppe and Grille in Aspinwall, as Ted and I had a Groupon.  I didn't have to cook dinner!  Sunday nights at Beer Nuts they've got $3 local drafts, and I much enjoyed my Penndemonium.  I enjoyed my Turkey Devonshire as well.  I think Sidelines Bar and Grill, my favorite Allegheny River hamlet bar, has better food than Beer Nutz in general, but one place Beer Nutz beats Sidelines is on the French fries -- Beer Nutz has some damn good fries.  I think I had more grease last night for dinner than I've eaten in the two weeks previous, combined.  One effect of eating mostly at home is that we eat a lot more healthily, or at least, a lot more wholesomely.  I mean, is creamy swiss chard and pea pasta low fat/low cal?  Hardly.  But I don't actually consider a cup of half 'n' half and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese to be particularly bad for (lactose-tolerant) humans, spread over three servings.  And there's about six cups of fresh vegetables involved, so nutrition seems pretty well addressed.  The thing is, after a long history of poor eating -- either poor in the sense of nutritionally unbalanced and downright unhealthy by almost any metric, or poor in the sense of fucked-up starvation dieting -- I don't think it's wise, for me, anyway, to worry about calories and carbs.  Rather, I try to eat as much locally produced food as possible, as little processed food as possible (or at least, as minimally processed food as possible), and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.  I try to take it easy on the white sugar and the deep fried and the cheese -- with much more success in the former two ventures than the latter.  Basically, if I made it from scratch and there's a lot of vegetables involved, I call it good eating.

Anyway.

Mmm.  Beer.

The one big event of the last several days was the Sharp Edge Great European Beer Festival.  Ted and I bought tickets to this way back in April, when they were a bargain-priced $40.  Held in the Sharp Edge's parking lot in Friendship, it's a nice set-up, similar to yet different from our earlier beer fest at Penn Brewing.  All of the beer is European rather than local, and much of it is Belgian, so almost everything is of very high quality and high alcohol content.  You get a guide to the beer and a little punch card at the beginning of the night, and each sample is punched out, so in theory you can only have one of each beer offered (though the pourers will sometimes fudge for you at the end of the evening).  There are probably in the neighborhood of 70 beers, so this isn't too much of a hardship.  One thing I liked a lot about Sharp Edge's beer fest was the availability of chairs right in the beer area (as opposed to up on a second level, far away from beer, as at the Penn festival).  My neuropathic leg does not like standing on concrete for three hours straight.  

Mmm.  Beer.

An aside, because I don't know if I've mentioned it here before: I have a bad back and a bad leg.  When I was 17, a herniated disk in my lower back contacted an important nerve locus that controlled a significant portion of the nerves in my left leg.  This was incredibly painful and also somewhat physically debilitating -- I could not stand up straight, and I walked with a limp.  My family physician at the time misdiagnosed my condition for several months, insisting that I was "too young" to have a severe back injury, and explicitly telling my mother that I was faking my complaints to avoid gym class.  We should have sued the living shit out of this woman.  Finally, my mother, who was inclined to trust the doctor, but who didn't believe I was lying either, insisted that something be done to take my complaints seriously -- this was after months of deterioration in my condition, to where I was bent over at the waist and in more or less constant pain.  So my GP reluctantly sent me to get an x-ray.  Later that day, she called my mother, very nervously, and told her that she had made me an emergency appointment at a neurologist, and to go that day.  After a myelogram, a spinal tap, a CT scan, and some other crap, including another painful month wasted on physical therapy while they tried to avoid surgery on my condition, my back was operated on, two of three herniated disks were corrected, and I was sent home to convalesce.

(Aside the second: my surgeon, although an apparently competent operator, was also a horrible dick.  He berated me and my mother for the fact that I was "unbelievably fat", even though, at the time, I was perhaps a size 16 on a broad 6'0" frame -- chubby but certainly not fat, despite what my [non-adult] bullies claimed.  When pressed, he would admit that my weight had nothing to do with my condition, which apparently was simple bad luck -- I was born, apparently, with a weak spine -- but then he'd go back to berating me.  Gee, I wonder why fat people don't go to the doctor for preventative and even urgent care, thus suffering graver and longer lasting injuries and illnesses -- which are then blamed on their fatness.  DO NOT GET ME STARTED.)

Anyway, five years later, when I was 22, one of the corrected disks reherniated.  From all I've heard, this, again, was simple bad luck.  There's about a one in ten chance that a corrected disk will reherniate, and one of mine did.  Unfortunately, whereas the only aftereffect of my first injury was occasional back pain, this herniation resulted in permanent nerve damage in my left leg.  I was given emergency surgery on my spine again, but now have uncorrectable numbness and weakness in my left leg, and a bit of a limp.

This is bothersome but not horrific.  I miss being able to wear high heels -- it's impossible for my weakened left ankle to balance in them now -- and I find that the limp tires me out sometimes: walking unevenly is more difficult than walking "normally".  I also sometimes get a lot of pain and sometimes increased numbness in the bad leg, particularly when I do shit like stand around on concrete for hours -- walking is actually easier on it than standing, for some reason.  And my balance is pretty poor on that leg -- no rocky uphill hikes for me.  (Luckily, as we all know, I'm not an outdoorsy type in the first place.)

My point in bringing this up is that, while I'm grateful to have the bodily integrity that I do, and am privileged to have a mostly healthy body, I also have a little disability, and it makes me aware in a way I never was before I was 22 about accommodations -- and specifically, the lack thereof -- for people with disabilities both little and large.  Sometimes a chair is a real godsend, and unfortunately, nondisabled folk, who, for instance, might be event organizers, sometimes just don't think of things like that, because they don't have to routinely in their own lives.  Sometimes the elevator being out, even for just a one-floor climb, is a real hardship; sometimes uneven ground will make it almost impossible for a person to enjoy an event, or even attend it.  And you can't always look at someone and know their level of physical ability: it's not like every disabled person is in a wheel chair or on an oxygen tank.

Anyway, thanks for the chairs, Sharp Edge.  

On the other hand, food was included in the ticket price at Penn's Microbrewer's Fest, while a piece of pizza cost $4 at Sharp Edge.  So, you know, there are cons as well as pros.

The beer schwag raffle.

Ted and I had a nice time, despite my encounters with the Beer Fest Noob Bitches.  This was a gaggle of girls seemingly in their mid-twenties, whom I at first thought were merely stupid, but then later discovered were obnoxious.  Look, if you don't know, here's how beer fests work: there are many tables behind which are the people with the beer.  You wait in a (usually) small line, get your beer sample, perhaps say a few words or ask a brief question of the brewer or distributor doing the pouring, and then move off -- 'cause, you know, it's a line.  Once you've obtained the thing you've been standing in line for, you move away, so the people behind you can also obtain the thing they've been standing in line for.  That's how lines work.

Except this gaggle of girls would get to the front of the line, get their beer samples, and then just ... camp out.  This, of course, blocks the people in line behind them from getting beer.  This, of course, makes them noob bitches.

After a while under the tent with them, though, I realized that they had strategery.  They weren't just camping in front of every line.  They were camping in front of the lines headed by good-looking (in a conventional sense) male beer pourers.  So they'd get their beer and then stand in front of the good-looking beer guy, giggling and squawking about how they've like, never had beer before, oh my God, this is really good, I like, think I'm getting tipsy.

Look.  Bitches.  Please.  I try not to be in the business of judging strangers, and I realize that being single is tough.  But at a certain point, if you can't respect the beer, and the sanctity of the beer fest, and the primacy of the beer as the focus of the beer fest, then you've gotta get the fuck out, because I don't fuck with girls like you, and I don't advise that others do, either.

The good news is, it was not any of these girls who won an awesome prize at the end of the night; it was me.

Sharp Edge does a raffle at their beer fest -- you put your name on your ticket stub and put it in a drawing for one of several prizes, the winners of which are drawn at the end of the night.  I put my stub in the box for a Baltika beach umbrella.  It had a base that you could fill with water for stability, and a sturdy-looking, large, collapsible umbrella that I could stand under and would shield two folding chairs from the sun.  At the end of the evening the first two people who's stubs were drawn for this umbrella didn't come forward to claim it -- mine was the third stub drawn.  Victory!  I am totes more fully prepared to drink outside now.  I want to go to the beach and bring my umbrella and sit in my folding chair and drink beer in the shade now -- this is a new goal of mine.

It's actually still in my dining room.

So anyway, that was the the past few days.  Today I've got to go to -- shudder -- Oakland, to Hillman Library to pick up a few books, and then it's time to hit the farmers' market.  I'm looking forward to Wednesday, when I'm going to get to attend a happy hour with Friend Lara, who will be here from out of town, and then Friday is payday, which is always a good day.  The downside of the week is that I've gotta read Foucault going on about prisons as unpaid research for the one new class I've been assigned to next semester.  Some of the readings seem like they'll be interesting.  Foucault is never interesting.  Blah.

We hadn't had a kitty picture in a while. Matilda always looks so stunned.

Skyler's tummy is a surprisingly common roadblock in my house.

Pasta Fest: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dear Readers, yesterday I went to Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest happens once a year for four weekdays at Casbah, which is a favorite happy hour site of mine (when I can afford things like happy hour).  Casbah is one of the upscale Big Burrito restaurants, and I was frankly shocked to discover that some people on Yelp are less than amazed by their quality and service, because 1) I consider myself an extremely exacting judge of restaurants, both in terms of food and service, and 2) every experience I've had at Casbah has been delightful.  I mean, as you'll see below, I can always find something to pick on, but I was particularly amazed that some Yelpers were less than satisfied with the service.  I have always, always had the absolute best service at Casbah.  (In fact, all of the Big Burrito restaurants, even the Mad Mexes, have good service in my experience, and it's much to the credit of the company.) Perhaps it helps to be a "regular" (during the school year, I'm usually there for wine over reading or quiz grading once a week), and perhaps it helps to frequent the bar -- Ted and I tend to be bar eaters -- but in any case, I love Casbah.  My mother is planning a birthday dinner for herself there next month, and I think I will finally give the restaurant a proper review then.  Until then, I just wanted to share with you my delight over Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest is pretty self-explanatory: a special menu of small-serving pasta dishes.  A few of the pastas are on the regular menu, so I'd recommend avoiding those, as you can try them any time.  (If you're curious, the regular menu items offered in smaller portions for Pasta Fest are the Orecchiette, the Short Rib Ravioli, the Red Pepper Casereccia, the Veal Tortelloni, and the Ricotta Cavatelli, if memory serves.  I'm not saying these aren't very good -- especially the Casereccia and the Cavatelli -- but I'm saying that you can try these dishes at non-Pasta Fest times.)   Ted and I made our Pasta Fest visit coincide with happy hour, to save some cash: $6 wines and cocktails at the bar between 5:00 and 7:00.  We ended up going through three courses of pastas.  My glee knew no end.  Allow me to present you with our nommings.

I am a sucker for a good potato dumpling. Not to mention some tender lamb.

Ted's first selection was Potato Gnocchi with braised Elysian Fields lamb shoulder, rapini, cipollini onions, rosemary, and Piave cheese.  I believe this was also his favorite dish of the night.  The lamb was tender and delicious, as were the gnocchi, and everything was well balanced, though I thought that the lima beans -- yes, there were also lima beans, though they weren't mentioned in the menu description -- were a titch undercooked (also I've never been a huge fan of lima beans).  Overall, though, this was excellent.

Fine Dining in America is having a "Put an Egg On It" moment, and I don't mind a bit.

My first selection was Egg Tagliatelle with pancetta, wee little croutons, Appalachian cheese, spinach, fresh oregano, and, of course, a fried egg.  I absolutely loved this dish.  The richness of the egg yolk alongside the saltiness of the pancetta and the tangy, herbal freshness of the oregano leaves was a wonderful combination, and the tiny croutons added a crunch that kept the dish texturally interesting.

Strangely revelatory.

For our second round, Ted picked Sage Linguini with pork ragu, grilled scallions, Burrata cheese, orange sea salt, and extra virgin olive oil.  This dish had strengths and weaknesses.  The scallion bulbs should have been sliced in half before they were grilled.  And the cheese was a mostly solid mass atop the dish -- it should have been broken into smaller pieces that would have been able to melt into the sauce.  However, the pasta itself was quite good, hearty and pleasantly flavored with sage, and the pork ragu provided me with a little revelation: meat sauce doesn't have to involve ground meat.  You see, I hate ground meat -- I despise the texture of it.  When it's compressed into a sausage I can cope with it, as the compression alters the texture sufficiently, but burgers and meat sauces and standard taco fillings are just anathema to me.  This ragu, however, was made of a tangy, tomato-y pulled pork.  The pork was tender and there was none of the grainy awfulness of ground meat!  I can't believe this never occurred to me before -- I am going to make such a ragu myself in the near future, I can assure you.

Skinny noodles: troublesome to cook.

My second selection was Capellini with goat confit, garlic, spinach, and Calcagno cheese.  It was a simple dish, and though not quite as interesting as some of the other plates we tried, it was fresh and well-balanced.  Goat, which can be troublesome to cook, was here lean and tender and very well done.  The dish's one flaw was the pasta itself.  The capellini was so thin that it just couldn't hold up to the big pieces of spinach and cheese on the fork, and it was a bit overcooked -- I'm not sure how anyone could fail to overcook fresh capellini; what do you do, just hold it over the steam of the boiling water for a few seconds?  In any event, I spread my little roasted garlic cloves on some of the tasty sourdough that comes with every meal, and was pleased regardless.

Certainly the best looking dish of the night. So cheerful!

My third course was Spinach Torchetti with chanterelle mushrooms, basil, cured egg yolks, and guanciale.  Guanciale, it turns out, is cured pork jowl -- yes, I was eating pig face.  And I'm here to tell you that pig face is delicious.  I liked this dish a great deal.  The pasta was eye-catching, substantial, and al dente; the chanterelle mushrooms were delicious and cooked perfectly, toothsome and warmly caramelized; and the guanciale was salty and chewy and outrageously tasty, though I wish it had been sliced a bit more thinly.

Kind of makes me wonder about the state of my own liver.

Ted chose, for his third course, the Rigatoni with Madeira, foie gras, arugula, and rhubarb.  My relationship with this plate of pasta was complicated.  On one hand, I totally get what was going on, and I think if I had been another human being, I would have liked it a great deal: the ultra-rich fattiness of the foie gras alongside the tartness of the rhubarb and the slight bitterness of the arugula, all balanced with the slight sweetness of the Madeira and the heartiness of the pasta shape ... this might have been the most well-constructed plate of the night.  Except: I hate rhubarb.  Rhubarb is the devil.  So ... where does that leave us?  Well, it leaves us with undercooked rigatoni, but that was a different problem.  I think in the end, it was a good dish -- it's not Casbah's fault I hate rhubarb.

Hilariously, Ted learned what foie gras is as he was eating it.  I honestly didn't know he didn't know when he ordered the dish.  So when he asked me what was so delicious, as he savored the rich little chunks of diseased organ, I explained to him about force-fed geese and ducks and fatty liver.  He renounced foie gras on the spot, mid plate; I finished the liver for him.  I also pointed out his hypocrisy vis a vis animal cruelty and the factory farmed chicken wings he loves so much at Sidelines; he looked chagrined.  I think Ted might be creeping back towards vegetarianism -- or, at least, more ethical eating.  Jonathan Safran Foer, you might be winning a slow victory in the Spiher Robinson house.

So that's your food porn for the day.  Pasta Fest is still going on today and tomorrow, so if you want to treat yourself to some magical carbs, there's still time.  Oh, and if you're curious about the wines, I can only speak to the happy hour menu, but I'd recommend the Casal Garcia Vinho Verde -- it's crisp and effervescent and perfect for hot days like these -- and they also have a delightful sparkling lambrusco on the happy hour wine list at the moment, and it's just fun -- I mean, how often do you get a sparkling lambrusco anywhere?  (And no, it's not that dreadful Riunite crap.)

I realize that there's some irony to me posting this right after I posted a blog about being broke.  I want you to know that I charged the whole meal and I regret absolutely nothing -- Pasta Fest comes but once a year, and you'll pry my noodles from my cold dead hands, bank balances notwithstanding.

Eating Animals, or: I'm Lazy and Morally Weak, or: Seriously, What's Wrong with Me (Us)?

I didn't blog yesterday.  In fact, I did exactly two things yesterday: watered the plants, and made dinner.  Well, there were other actions taken, of course: the making of tea, texting, microwaving lunch.  But basically nothing.  I did start Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which frankly gave me a little existential crisis, because about half of the first 60 pages is all about the inevitability of death.  I'm hoping a nascent wedding plot picks up soon, there.

What I avoided writing about yesterday was Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I finished on Sunday night.  It's a book that's chiefly about the abuses of factory farming.  Foer is in large part concerned with the ethics of how the vast, vast majority of animals are confined and slaughtered, though he also discusses the truly disgusting practices of modern agribusiness in terms of its consequences on human health (the nullification of antibiotics, the release into the environment of literally billions of metric tons of animal feces, etc.).  Did you know that the USDA is perfectly cool with the poultry industry standard that 11% of the factory farmed "chicken" you buy is actually a slurry of fecal- and disease-infested waste water that the chicken absorbs in the vat cooling process?  ELEVEN PERCENT.  That is motherfucking disgusting. Buy air chilled chicken people -- if you take nothing else from today's blog, buy air chilled chicken.

As horrifying as eating that is, of course, it's nothing like what the animals suffer, which was already known to me.  Most of what Foer reports is familiar to me, because I've spent many years worrying over the ethics of food, particularly in regards to animal welfare.  Foer, though, is not primarily a journalist -- though he spent three years researching this book -- and as a novelist, his descriptions of the processes by which we obtain meat are perhaps particularly ... affective.  I literally got sick to my stomach reading about how cows are often not killed at the start of the assembly line that dismantles them, and so will be conscious and screaming as they are skinned, as their legs are cut off, and as their stomachs are split and their ribs pulled apart.  This is not some rare abuse or exception -- it is normal and usual.  Chickens living out their entire lives in a space the size of a piece of paper -- never turning, never flapping, never standing -- sandwiched into cages into the wire mesh floors of which their feet literally grow, crushed on either side by other chickens with equally little space, while the waste of chickens stacked above rains down upon them.  They are often -- often -- also not killed at the front of the assembly line, and so are frequently scalded alive.  Perhaps worst is the pigs, because pigs are notoriously intelligent. Their suffering is intense and horrifying.

It's possible that you just don't care at all about how animals are treated, but I doubt that.  Most people, I think, would agree that even if you intend to eat an animal -- and after a lot of consideration on the subject, I've decided, for myself, that there's nothing immoral about killing and eating an animal per se -- it is morally objectionable to torture it first.  Think of the way people dote on their pets.  Think of the outcry when a notorious animal abuser is caught and put on the local news.  Granted those abusers exist, and I've known some people who would honestly remain unmoved to see an animal abused to death in front of them -- I grew up in one of America's fucked up small towns, after all.  Crystal meth is a hell of a drug.  But I think in general, we can all agree that even food animals deserve to be treated humanely.  I mean, I swear before God and everyone reading this that if I came into my house to find an intruder threatening one of my kitty cats with real harm, if I had the power to do so, I would kill that son of a bitch and never, never regret it.  So, you know, I know that I, at least, can get pretty intense about animals.

Look, my purpose here is not to exhort you to go vegetarian.  It's more that I keep wondering why I'm NOT a vegetarian.  I was a pescetarian -- I ate fish but not meat -- for four years, and often times that amounted to eating vegetarian, because fish is expensive and a pain in the ass to cook, and frankly, I only really like fish when it's in its sushi form, or if it's shellfish (crabs, shrimp, clams, mussels, etc.).  A fish fillet has never excited me.  My point is that I have known about the abuses of the factory farming industry for many years, and yet I, who would kill a human to protect my pet cats, who harbor the deepest hope that the lowest circles of hell are reserved for the people who abused my rescue cat Floyd, or Friend Katie's rescued dog, just keep eating shit like chicken wings.

Don't get me wrong, I make a half-hearted effort.  I only buy organic eggs, which according to the research I've done, means a marginally better existence for the layer hens.  ("Cage Free" or "All Natural" mean absolutely nothing -- you have to get the actual certified organic eggs, or eggs from a trusted local source.)  I always buy my chicken thighs from Whole Foods, because they are marked with this little sticker that says the thighs have an animal welfare rating of "2".  I gather this means that the chickens had an "enriched" environment, though it's hard to discover what this actually means.  I do know that factory farmed chicken -- which makes up 99.9% of poultry in the US (no, you didn't read that wrong) -- does not qualify even for a rating of 1, so I am comforted by that.  (Here's a piece on the system from the Chicago Tribune, and here is the system as described by the group who created it, a nonprofit called Global Animal Partnership.)

But here's the thing, yinz guys.  I don't just eat Whole Foods chicken thighs.  First, of course, there was the exchange from Monday's blog with the guy behind the counter at Parma.  It sounds like their prosciutto pigs might count for an OK animal welfare rating, but clearly, the sausage pigs wouldn't.  And clearly, if I'm out at Sidelines for chicken wings, they can't sell a dozen of them for $6.75 if the chickens have been treated well.  There's no honest way for me to say that it's morally acceptable to pay for and eat an animal that's been horrendously abused, and yet, boy, do I ever.  In general, I don't consider myself a bad person, but here we are.

You don't need meat to live, I assure you, and in fact, many studies have shown vegetarian diets to be healthier than omnivorous ones.  What Foer doesn't account for sufficiently in his book is the cultural weight of eating.  He takes stabs at describing how starting the new tradition of refraining from meat for ethical reasons could be just as rewarding as the old family traditions surrounding food, but frankly, that's horseshit, and I kind of think he knows it.  A lot of how we interact with friend and family, how we identify ourselves as part of a culture, is wrapped up in food.  I'm not saying that justifies anything, I'm just saying it's harder to give up some foods than he makes it sound, for a variety of reasons that aren't all about taste and satisfying one's oral fixations.  (Though it dismays me how easily my morality is put aside because bacon tastes good.)

Ted -- who is a kind-hearted man, and who is sympathetic to this ethical plight -- and I have thought of how we might array ourselves as ethical eaters.  Invest in a used chest freezer for the basement; purchase meat from regional farms that have good standards of care for their animals (there are a surprising number of such, if you're willing to make a day trip out of buying half a hog or a quarter of beef); refrain from eating meat when out, unless we're at the kind of classy joint where they can tell you where the meat came from (of which there are a good enough number in Pittsburgh, for sure).  It's easy to buy nicer eggs and kindly procured milk -- the cheese, though, the cheese is a problem.  Who the hell knows where fine cheeses come from, honestly?

But we never seem to put this plan into action.  I think one part of the problem is the effort involved: it's not just laziness, it's that living gently in the world is real work, and when you also have, you know, work to go to, plus the work of keeping a home, maintaining relationships, and etc., adding more work on top of that can be daunting.  And while just giving up animal products might be the "easiest" solution, I'm here to tell you that being a vegan sucks.  It sucks.  There is usually a vegetarian option on any given menu -- there is NEVER a vegan option, and making vegan shit at home is boring and laborious, unless all you do is eat processed patties, which are sort of gross since you just know those things are a chemical shit storm, and frankly, eating vegan all the time is deeply unsatisfying, I don't care what anyone has told you, and the two times in my life I've gone vegan (for Lent) I emerged unusually pale and tired and somewhat angry.

Another thing that makes me angry is the prevailing economic, cultural, and government conditions that make it this much work to eat reasonably ethically.  How in the hell much governmental corruption is required for the USDA to allow feces to be classified as a "commercial blemish" so poultry slaughterers are allowed to sell chickens whose intestines have been split open in the butchering process, coating them in disease-ridden shit?  How disconnected from the world and basic compassion are we as a society that almost every animal that is slaughtered in America is tortured first -- which was absolutely not the case as late as the middle of the 20th century, when factory farming began to supplant traditional animal husbandry?  How heinous is the late capitalist economy that no concern for animal, human, or environmental welfare (let me tell you what miles and miles of lagoons of pig shit do to a watershed sometime) is permitted to stand between the owners of production and their rich-ass shareholders and the last possible cent of profit?

I don't know.  I've lost the thread of where this blog is going, I think.  I'm a lazy, morally weak person who keeps eating meat even though I am well aware of the horrifying conditions that most of our meat-providing animals live and die in, as well as how absolutely disgusting it is to put these carcasses into my body -- ELEVEN PERCENT WASTE WATER, people.  Absolutely nothing excuses it; my mind just paves it over, the way it naturally does all death.  I'm not sure how other people handle this question.  Well, I know how Jonathan Safran Foer does -- he's a vegetarian.

My extremely delicious homemade green curry.  Maybe next time I'll leave out the chicken thighs?

BEERFEST! Also: Dolphin Grey is More Like Pigeon Purple

It has been a full three days, yo, in spite of our newly imposed frugality.  To begin with, on Friday, I had a fucking day as a housewife.  First, one of the "kids" woke me up at 5:00 am -- George the kitty nosed me awake, and when I grabbed him and squoze him in retribution, he just flopped over and fell asleep.  Lucky for him, but I never got back to sleep; finally, as Ted was leaving for work at 9:00, I just got up to do the errands.

The first stop was the Strip District, and -- and granted, I am out of shape, but -- that was a fucking workout.  Hauling 50 pounds of groceries around for 45 minutes at least felt like a fucking workout: that cabbage was the heaviest cabbage ever grown by man.  Now that we're broke all the time, the Strip seems like the best primary food shopping destination, as it's substantially cheaper than the grocery store, and at decent quality.  Stan's Market doesn't have vegetables as beautiful as Whole Foods, but with the farmers' market up and running now, that's OK, I can augment.  I'm still going to Whole Foods for some things, like local, pastured milk and chicken thighs that have come from marginally better-treated chickens, as I look at these things as ethical matters.  Of course, I also hit up Parma Sausages, and asked where they sourced their pork from, which was a mistake, at least mostly.  Apparently, the prosciuttos have to be made from a special kind of pig, a Berkshire, and those pig parts all come from one farm in Iowa.  The guy behind the counter was like, "Those are some happy pigs -- right up until the last minute, anyway."  And I can live with that.  But the other pork comes from "all over", so you can bet, since 95% of American pork is factory farmed, that the pigs who make up the sausages and salami I bought were not "some happy pigs".  Le sigh.

I mention all of this because I just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals last night.  I think I'm going to mull it over and write about it more fully tomorrow, but the Parma experience weighs into the whole affair.

Meanwhile, after hitting the Strip, I drove over the Whole Foods (for chicken thighs and local dairy products), and ... my car stalled.  This happens about a half dozen times a year.  Marshall, my Honda Accord, is 15 years old.  He just passed inspection, so I can't tell you why he stalled, other than to say that every now and then he just does.  I called AAA, but then luckily I got to cancel my tow when the engine finally turned over.  After that I took my perishables from the Strip home, just in case, and then returned to the grocery store, but as is typical after such a stalling incident, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the car, and no problems have occurred since.  I think sometimes Marshall just gets fussy.

At home, I made batches of green curry to freeze, as well as batches of black beans in the slow cooker. Kindly, hearing of our brokeness, Friend Davin offered to come over with a bottle of good liquor that evening, and in return, I included him in taco night: chicken thighs stewed in Mexican seasonings on Reyna's flour tortillas with cheese, sour cream, some homemade salsa, black beans, and cabbage.  I love taco night.  Then we got to sippin' on some Knob Creek Single Barrel Reserve, which is 120 proof and might have tattooed the inside of my esophagus, and after they were done with work, Friends Sarah and Roger stopped by too.

The downside to Friday was that I managed to sprain my foot somehow (as diagnosed by Friend Frank), and it hurt to walk on for the next two days.

On Saturday my mother came down and took us to lunch at Pusadee's Garden, which regrettably we don't get to eat at as often now that they're only open at lunchtime on Saturday.  I firmly believe -- and yes, I've been to Nicky's and The Smiling Banana Leaf -- that Pusadee's has hands down the best Thai food in the city.  Those other places are good, but they're not that good.

Green Curry.  Yum.

Then Mom and Ted set about painting the dining room and kitchen.  We chose Glidden's "Dolphin Gray", which turns out to be more lavender-ish on the wall, but is still an acceptable "pigeon color", as I like to call them, by which I mean, when we started picking paint colors, I realized that I always gravitate to colors that one might find adorning a pigeon's feathers.  That project continues today, insofar as Mom is down here, painting.  I try not to get involved in these projects -- I suppose it is exploiting my loved ones, but I'm strangely comfortable with that.

After that little project, it was time for ... BEERFEST.  Before we were broke, Ted and I bought tickets to the Penn Brewery Microbrewers Fest.  We had been several years ago, and there since then has been a real change in the festival's composition: almost every brewery featured was actually a local or regional brewery.  From Pittsburgh metro alone you had Penn, of course, Fat Head's (which is technically brewed at their small facility in Cleveland but is still a Pittsburgh establishment and company), Church Brew Works, East End Brewing, Full Pint, Rivertowne, Rock Bottom (a chain, but the beer is still brewed here), and Arsenal Cider.  There were also breweries from Altoona, Erie, Youngstown, Slippery Rock, and other nearby points in Pennsylvania*, Ohio and New York.  There was a Philadelphia brewery that had a little sign up saying, "We did NOT brew 'Crosby's Tears' - that was ANOTHER brewery!"  There were a few non-local breweries -- Rogue, Avery, Harpoon, and etc., which were being represented by local distributors rather than actual brewers -- but you got the feeing that they were there just to fill up the remaining spaces.  (One non-local brewer came all the way from Missouri, and was actually really good: O'Fallon.  I really liked their Wheach**, which is strange, because I am normally not a fan of fruity beers.  And another, New Holland, from Michigan, had what Ted thought was the best beer of the day, their Charkoota Rye.)

The Beers.

The point is, a few years ago, I don't think a microbrewers' fest in this city could have been populated by a majority of local and regional beers.  I think the fact that now it can be is a great sign for like, how awesome Pittsburgh is for you if you are an awesome person who likes good beer; but I also think it's a good indication of the region's health in general: I have no science to back this up, but I would bet that areas that are doing well have a lot of microbreweries, and areas that aren't, don't.

By the by, part of the price of admission was noms from Penn's restaurant.  I had a sausage and sauerkraut sandwich with a side of warm potato salad, which was tasty as hell.  That place has really good German food.

Food to eat while drinking beer.

Sunday rolled around and I missed the Queen's Diamond Jubilee flotilla down the Thames to go to mass, because there was supposed to a meeting of the Parish Life Committee's youth group organizing subcommittee, and ... then there wasn't.  I've decided not to air my grievances about this here, out of tact, but let me just say this: do not join a church committee.  Just don't do it.

Sunday rounded out with an awesome visit from Ned, who is an old college pal of mine.  He lives in DC now, but was up in the Burgh visiting, and so we got to have some wine and chat, which was great.  I like Ned a lot, and we always make the effort to see each other when I'm in DC or he's in Pittsburgh.  Except college pals always make me feel old.  Sigh.

Oh, and dinner was stuffed shells, which I bring up so as to report on what I regard as a strange thing.  This is my second round of stuffed shells, and on both occasions, I used a very simple tomato sauce: a can of whole plum tomatoes, an onion, and butter.  (The onion is halved and allowed to simmer in the sauce for about 45 minutes, then removed -- blend tomatoes if they don't break down in that time.)  On the first occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce can of Muir Glenn plum tomatoes, one white onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  On the second occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce  can of San Marzano plum tomatoes, one yellow onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  (Neither can of tomatoes contains anything but tomatoes in juice.)  The sauces turned out completely different in color and flavor!  I don't know if it's more to do with the onion or the tomatoes, but this time the sauce was golden red and very cream-like in consistency, whereas previously it had been much redder and had much more of a tang.  I find this sort of fascinating.

Plus isn't that a great looking salad?

So anyway, as I said, Mom's back again today, painting away, and then we're going to get lunch, hit the farmers' market, and maybe get a drink.  Ted is in Columbus for work today, and this is awesome, since he's going to return with a case of Two-buck Chuck from their Trader Joe's (Fuck you, PLCB.  Fuck.  You.) and a box of Tim Horton's donuts.  It's the little things.

We moved the hutch to paint, probably for the first time since we moved in, and discovered a treasure trove of lost kitty toys.  The kitties were VERY excited.  (We also found a lot of dust.  Ahem.)

* One of the brewers there was Stoudt's, which I now have a fatwa against.  During the Pens-Flyers play-off match, Stoudt's Twitter account tweeted "Pittsburgh dirty city = dirty hockey".  I don't really mind the accusation of dirty play -- sports is sports -- but the "dirty city" line was sufficient for me to be like, "Well fuck your beer then."  I bring this up because I think it's illustrative of the importance of handling your business's social media with care.  I don't follow Stoudt's on Twitter; rather, a local brewery that I do follow retweeted the remark.  If you have a business situated near Philadelphia that also sells in Pittsburgh, I don't think anyone in the Burgh would deny you your right to root for Phily per se -- but the extent of your commentary on the subject ought be no more than "Go Flyers!"*** and "Nice game, Pens."  Because, seriously: common sense.

** Also, HOW CUTE IS THE WHEACH?  They should have stickers and buttons with this little guy on them. 

*** Except actually, no one should be like, "Go Flyers", because they are The Worst Thing on the Planet Earth.

Atonement and an Onion Volcano

Today was a great day.  I did the four things I like the most: wrote, read, ate, and drank.  I also waited most of the day to brush my teeth, and spent some time cuddling kitty cats.

The writing today turned out to be an undertaking!  I got up, made myself my tea, and sat down to write a review of the book I just finished, Ian McEwan's Atonement.  Turned out I had a LOT to say about it.  I'd really like you to read it: you can find that blog here.

Matilda's all like, "Eating WHICH animals?"

The reading took the form of some random internet dicking around at first, and then I started to read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  So far it's not much I don't know, but I've spent  many years worrying over the ethical questions surrounding food.  In any case, it's good to revisit the moral quandaries of eating.  Someday, when I'm a better person, I'll stop eating sausages and such.

Cherry tomatoes, butter, garlic, salt, pepper, parmesan, hot pepper flakes.

Speaking of eating, that took the form of a lunch that used up some leftover pasta and cherry tomatoes that were beginning to fade, plus some leftover trailer provisions -- not bad at all.  But the exciting part was dinner: we had a coupon to Nakama for our anniversary (which was technically on the 8th, but the coupon was good all month).  Mmm, shrimp hibachi.  Who doesn't like dinner and a show?  At least during the week -- Friday and Saturday that place turns into fucking Bros 'n' Hos 'R' Us.

HIBACHI ONION VOLCANO.

Now I'm at home, drinking wine.  Day: complete.

Dungeons & Dragons: Pretend Baseball Edition, The Trailer, and the Importance of 50 Cents' Worth of Pasta

Today's main victory was Indian Lunch Buffet QUADFECTA.  By this I mean, not counting the three days I spent away over Memorial Day weekend, I've had Indian lunch buffet four days in a row.  Today I went back to Tamarind with Friend Jay, and had a tasty lunch -- I still think they've got the best-tasting lunch buffet in the city -- and nice conversation.

Speaking of Memorial Day, Ted and I and Friend Sarah took a vacation to The Trailer, and I'm hoping you'll read about it here; for one thing, you will learn of the existence of Sponge Candy.

Ted in front of some typical rural New York art. Painted saws. Who knew.

Otherwise, today I finished Ian McEwan's Atonement, which I plan to write a full review of.  I'm ... I don't know.  I've got a lot of feelings about the book, but I'm not yet sure what to say about it.  Hopefully I'll be able to work on that tomorrow.  Next up on the summer reading list is either The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  It's not a momentous decision, because whichever I don't pick to read first will get read second, but still, if anyone wants to voice an opinion in the comments about where I should go next, feel free.

Meanwhile, it seems my wondrous vacation month is over.  We exhausted this month's money over the vacation weekend (oh, the perils of the once-a-month paycheck), and there's not another one, for me anyway, coming, so we're upon our annual period of brokeness.  I've got a coupon for a nice dinner at Nakama for our (sacramental) anniversary that came earlier this month, and Mom's visiting on Thursday, which always means a nice free lunch, but otherwise.  My habit is to like things to start on tidy times, so I'm going to finish out the week as though we were still fully in glorious May.  But next Monday, since I have to be all pathetically cheap anyway, I'd like to start a routine of ... stuff.  Less-than-fun stuff, like brushing up on Russian and such.  Self-improvement stuff.  Maybe even, God help me, a little exercise.  (Lord, I hate exercise.)  So let's see how next Monday goes.

Today's other small awesomeness was dinner, which was late, because Ted was off at the bar undertaking some kind of stratometric fantasy baseball match.  I think the word is stratometric?  Stratomatic?  I don't know.  Baseball is boring as shit already, and fantasy baseball is like some sort of godawful mathematical abstraction of baseball, and apparently stratospheric fantasy baseball is like fantasy baseball except with boards and papers and dice, so it's basically like playing Dungeons & Dragons: Pretend Baseball Edition.  That's what he was doing tonight.  If he weren't already married, he'd be consigning himself to a protracted, late-life sexlessness, I suspect -- he might be anyway.  Ahem.

How beautiful is rainbow Swiss chard?  Seriously.  What beautiful leafs.

ANYWAY, in the meantime, I used the rainbow Swiss chard that remained in the veggie drawer from last week, and was only now beginning to wilt, to make a pasta.  I've published the basics of the sauce recipe already, recently, so I don't know what made tonight's extra tasty, but swiss chard and peas in creamy parmesan garlic sauce came off extra delicious tonight, accompanied by a Parma sausage.  Part of the deliciousness was that I used Colavita pasta (radiator shape!), which I picked up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company last week.  It's dried pasta, about fifty cents more expensive per bag than the store-brand pasta I usually buy, and I don't really know how this is possible, because as far as I can tell dried pasta is basically flour and water, but man, that 50 cents was well worth it -- the pasta itself was much better than the usual stuff I use.  I'm going to buy more after pay day when I go grocery shopping.

I'm pretty terrible at taking food blogger pictures, but trust me, this was delicious.

Other than that, Chief demanded a lot of extra cuddles because we left him alone over the weekend.  Chief's Idiopathic Vestibular Disease seems to be clearing, and the steroids are making him spunky.  There's much to be happy about, upcoming poverty aside.

His "How dare you leave me without my permission?" attitude comes across pretty well in that look.

A Lego Ragemonster Stocks Up for The Trailer

Today was a laid back day. I met my fuzzier half in Squirrel Hill (where he works) for lunch at Coriander India Grill.  (Of course Friend Sarah and I have rated Coriander!)  This means that I officially ate Indian lunch buffet three days in a row.  TRIFECTA.  There is no better $8 lunch.  Ted always orders off the menu, though -- he hates buffets; he thinks they're unsanitary.  He might be right, but if there's one thing I love in a meal, it's tasting lots of different things -- guess who has a blog and loves tapas, y'know?  Ted ordered the lamb vindaloo, and I stole a little, despite all of my buffet offerings.  Here's the thing about Coriander's buffet: it's good (today the chicken makhani was the stand-out), and I like that there are usually lots of veggie dishes (it let's me pretend the lunch is healthy).  But there's a huge downgrade in quality from the food off the menu to the food on the buffet.  Now, since the food on the buffet is still good, this should tell you something about their off the menu items -- delish.  They have the best vindaloo in the city, as far as I'm concerned, and the chana masala is also tremendous.  It's just always a little frustrating that that doesn't translate as well to the buffet as at some other Indian places.  Ah well, it was still a really tasty lunch, and I got to eat with my favorite guy!

No, I never get tired of eating Indian food.

Other than that, I just ran a few quick errands to finish provisioning for the weekend.  As previously mentioned, we're going with Sarah to The Trailer, and though we'll likely eat out in nearby Ellicottville one night, in general The Trailer exists for drinking, snacking, reading, and sitting quietly in the air conditioning.  So I've stocked up on provisions.  We're bringing:

~ Prosciutto, pepperoni, and salami from Parma Sausage Co.
~ Taleggio and Humboldt Fog cheeses
~ Whole seed bread and wheat crackers
~ Fresh apples, raspberries, and tomatoes
~ Dried figs and mango slices
~ Mixed nuts
~ A variety of olives, and pickled peppers and artichoke hearts
~ Tea
~ Dark chocolate
~ Tins of smoked oysters and clams
~ Bourbon
~ Vodka
~ Two pounds of assorted gummi candies

This isn't counting whatever Sarah is bringing, but I hear she's stocked up on Doritos, which makes me happy.  We may be overstocked, but I like having a picnic of delicious, only semi-perishable items available while I relax in the wilds of New York.

Gummi bear cubs, cola bottles, Swedish fish, and fried egg gummis.

The gummis, by the by, came from The Chocolate Moose on Forbes, which has a great selection of bulk gummis.  Also while in Squirrel Hill, I got to check out this year's Lego contest at S.W. Randall Toys.  I LOVED Legos as a kid.  You have no idea how much I loved Legos.  And it makes me a ragemonster to see how increasingly, Lego markets itself only to boys, and only in really gender essentialist ways -- back when I was a kid, there were sets of Legos, sure, but it was like, Lego Town, and you built gender-neutral things like ambulances and little stores, or Lego Pirates, which everyone everywhere could think was awesome.  And mostly, you just had plain Lego sets, which were just nonspecific giant mixes of bricks, and you made whatever you wanted; I liked to build elaborate, multistory houses, complete with furniture and grounds.  But now Lego sets are 1) hyper branded with other corporate products, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, etc., and I'm not saying those things aren't cool, but I think that corporate shilling shouldn't be ALL that Lego does, and 2) hyper masculine, with all kinds of like, combative wolf robots and stuff aimed exclusively at boys, which a) alienates young girls from the awesome experience of Lego (and suggests that girls can't build complicated, difficult stuff, which is horseshit), and b) alienates young boys who don't like hypermasculine combative war games all the damn time.  I mean, it's bad for all the reasons gender essentialism is bad, and it's bad for boys and girls and all gender points in between, and it sucks, Lego, it really does.  But the nice thing about the Lego contest is that you can't enter a set, it has to be something of a kid's own design, and it's remarkable how NOT gender essential the entries are, almost as if kids aren't ultra-delineated in interests based on their genitalia or something WHO COULD EVEN BELIEVE SUCH A PREPOSTEROUS IDEA.

My favorites are the Ms. Pacman characters and Troy Polamalu.

Anyway, I'm certainly not the first person to talk about this.  Here's one such little discussion, on Sociological Images.

Also seen in Squirrel Hill today were about ten times more elderly people than I've seen in months, seen by me in the span of about 30 minutes.  I'm not opposed to the elderly per se, I'm just saying it was sort of an odd demographic shift -- I'm not sure it bodes well for the neighborhood.

After that it was a grocery store quick hit, and since then I've been dicking around on the Internet, periodically telling myself I should read a book instead, while Floyd naps on the couch next to me.  Later tonight, we've gotta tidy up and pack, and at the moment I'm wondering if 4:36 is too early to start drinking on a Friday.

I know, Floyd, sometimes reading can just be too taxing.

Oh, and before I close out for the weekend, here are two things I missed from earlier in the week.  First, here is a picture of bees that I took at this Monday's farmers' market, where I bought some honey from the Fine Family Apiary.  Apparently, the queen in here wasn't doing well in her hive, so they replaced her and moved her to a smaller set-up to see if she does better; in the meantime, she's reppin' the apiary.

Bzzzzzzzz.

Second, we had a mildly fascinating arachnid encounter earlier this week.  I was sitting at the kitchen table, and felt something tickle first my arm and then my leg.  I looked down, and on the floor was a pretty intense looking black spider, who escaped uncaptured.  The next day, he was spotted again on a wall, and this time Ted caught him in a glass and released him outside, where he leapt away into the grass.  Some googling tells us that we had a daring jumping spider on our hands, which sounds pretty impressive to me.  I didn't get a picture of our actual spider, but here is a good photo of what he looked like.

He was a pretty intense little dude.

He was probably about the size of a dime.

So that's that -- enjoy the holiday weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday.