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.

More Death. (And a Boyz II Men Concert.)

I did a lot of cool stuff between Thursday night and Sunday morning.  Then my aunt died unexpectedly.

Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life.  But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age.  Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.

I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago.  I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it.  There is no way now to amend for this.

What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me.  It cannot matter to Liz now.  Nothing can matter to her.  Liz is dead.  All the matters of her life are over, and that is that.  Someday nothing will matter to my mother.  And nothing will matter to my husband.  And nothing will matter to me.  And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.

***

I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely.  Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life.  I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying.  Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life.  I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future.  I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.

Of course, this was all horseshit.  I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on.  My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school.  I seemed to know without knowing.  I began to suffer from panic attacks.  I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind.  It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.

I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude.  One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent."  Really.  That was it.  I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where.  I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto.  I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.  I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions.  Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.

I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day.  I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress.  I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry.  So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.

I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want.  Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me.  Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not.  More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.

I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer.  But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out.  Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me.  My doom cloud finally dissipated.

My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment.  Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die.  I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me.  Finding a way to do it took a few years.  I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles).  Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek.  Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends.  Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book.  Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.

I am, basically, happy.  I love my husband and our little family of cats.  I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?

But it is a very small life.

And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they?  Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day.  You will die, and nothing will matter to you again.  And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously?  Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what?  You're dead now.  So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine?  You're dead now.  I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is.  I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.

P.S.  Still haven't heard from God.  After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.

***

As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio.  It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically.  Except this event was for grown ups.  We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.

On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood.  I was so, so happy to not cook dinner.  Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.

Apparently, this is what tailgating looks like.

On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life.  Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game.  I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit.  BUT.  After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT.  HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD.  Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game.  This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking.  Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer.  We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking.  Sweet.

But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game.  It was only the fourth inning.  Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer.  SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT.  Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light.  I literally was so grateful I teared up a little.  I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer.  These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.

SO INTERMINABLE.

The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us.  His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me!  Excuse me!  Coming through!  Make way!"  Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through.  Then go back out again.  Over and over again.  So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him.  "You're an asshole."  "I hope you fall down the stairs."  He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you."  "Why?"  "Because you're obnoxious.  GO SIT DOWN."

Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old.  No, I have no regrets.

But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform.  30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee".  They played all the hits.  It was fantastic.  The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course).  Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out.  It's kind of a weird phenomenon.  It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men.  Their moment is more or less over.  But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road".  I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring.  In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out.  They sang a Journey cover on Saturday.  If nothing else, they know their audience.

But Pittsburgh is The Best.  Ever.

A Trip to the Museum. Plus: Biscuits! And: Don't Feed the Sexist Trolls

Yesterday I got a little thwarted.  Ted had dug up online that there was to be a free science seminar at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as part of the R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Series.  Past topics included things like, "Origin and Evolution of Dinosaurs: An exemplary evolutionary radiation", and, "It's a slug's life: The ecology of terrestrial slugs", which I am very sorry I missed.  Fortunately, though my student ID doesn't get me into the museum for free over the summer, every year Ted and I buy a couple's membership to the Carnegie.  Though it's a little redundant for me for part of the year, it's very cheap, considering -- $98 -- and it gets us year-round admission to the Art, Natural History, and Warhol Museums, and to the Science Center.  Plus it's kind of like a little charitable donation, you know?  

One thing I love about the Carnegie is that the building itself is beautiful.

Unfortunately, when I got there, the lecture had been canceled.  But there are worse things than having two hours to kill in the museum.  I headed to the Natural History Museum, which is a stunning place.  The one lamentable thing is the children.  It must have been like, field trip day for half of the schools in the Pittsburgh area yesterday.  I would absolutely pay extra to be able to attend the museum on a No Kids Day.  They run around, they're loud, and you can tell that the vast majority of them are only barely interested in learning anything.  I really don't like kids.

There used to be a pretend Egyptian tomb, that you had to crawl through a tiny fake rock tunnel to get to, and then you emerged into this display, like you were an archaeologist that had just discovered it.  They have the fake tomb/tunnel part sealed off now, and they moved the display out into the open.  Which sucks.

But luckily, the kids and I enjoy different parts of the museum.  For instance, one of my absolute favorite parts of the NHM is the corridor on the third floor between the Egyptian and the Arctic/Native American Rooms.  One hallway is lined with shells and, somewhat inexplicably, time pieces; the other is lined with taxidermied birds.  Everything's in these very old fashioned wooden cases, and you can tell it was all installed and put together decades ago. It's quiet and there are little hobbit-sized doors that run along the corridor, leading who knows where, and I always enjoy the shells.  Like the late, lamented Stephen Jay Gould (who's own research centered on "shells" -- or rather, land snails), I don't really like the parts of the museum that are flashy, with screens blinking at you and interactive this and that; I like the collections, the mute presentation of specimens and artifacts from which one is free to draw their own conclusions and experiences.  I'm not saying the museum shouldn't affirmatively teach, or separate fact from the uninformed speculation of its visitors.  But I think a museum should be contemplative as much as it is interactive -- I want a quieter experience.

Someday, if I am ever rich, I will go shell collecting on far flung, tropical beaches.

Which is why I usually have to avoid the dinosaurs.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE dinosaurs.  When I was a kid I read every single book about dinosaurs I could get my hands on. I read Bob Bakker's Dinosaur Heresies when I was only eight.  And the new dinosaur exhibit at the museum is beautiful.  I still remember the old hall, which was only half as big, and the dark, old fashioned wood cases holding specimens along the walls, and the dinosaur skeletons that were the real bones(!) mounted in the most scientifically false positions imaginable.  It was grand and all, but mostly wrong.  The new mounts are accurate and beautiful and compelling.

This overlook was child-free.

But of course, the whole space is swarming with kids who all want to punch the touchscreens and run around and scream.  So rather than confront that, I took in the Halls of North American and African Animals, and Botany.  I couldn't find insects, or the great old dioramas about the evolution of sea life.  I suppose part of my museum visits just satisfy my nostalgia.  As a kid, despite the fact that we lived an easy 45-minute drive away from the city, I got brought into the city exactly once a year, to go to the museum.  Because folks where I'm from didn't go to the city.  'Cause ... yeah.  I hate where I'm from.

MINERALS FOREVER.

I also always peruse the gems.  They fit my museum criteria really well: big mute collections to quietly contemplate, with just enough learning thrown in to feel edified (this is how particular crystalline structures form, this is how phosphorescence works, etc.).  Plus the kids don't seem to like it much.  I did encounter a group of Japanese businessmen in the gem hall, each wearing a nearly identical dark suit and carrying a nearly identical leather briefcase, looking around quietly at the cases of minerals.  I'm sure there's a story there, but I don't know what it is.

Why not me?

Anyway, maybe in a few weeks when schools are well and truly out, there will be fewer kids.  Or maybe next time I just need to go to the Art Museum.


Back at home, after lunch I read some Dostoevsky, and then I tackled Biscuits.  You have to understand that as much as I love to cook, I cannot bake for shit.  It's too precise and nitpicky -- I have mastered the baking of a single object, the chocolate chip cookie, and everything else is a disaster.  But I love biscuits, and they're cheap, and you can't ever find them anywhere for sale (except the ones that are choked with transfats and shit), so I set about a few months ago to make Friend Mark T.'s biscuits.  The first time I tried to make these seemingly extremely simple biscuits, it was such a sticky disaster that they were actually inedible.  The second attempt ... eh.  Edible, but not exactly good.  Yesterday's attempt went much better, though I've no idea why things worked this time and not the last two times.  I think they needed another minute or two in the oven, but they were definitely tasty, and so we had chicken 'n' biscuits for dinner, and I was very proud of myself.

I have cooked SO MANY MEALS this month.

Oh, and yesterday's other Thing That Happened was that I made the mistake of feeding a Facebook troll who was all like, "It's not patronizing and infantilizing and sexist for a man to come up in a public place to woman he doesn't know and demand that she smile for him!  He has good intentions."  First: yes, it is.  It is patronizing, infantilizing, and sexist for him to do so: that's why women never do this to men.  Such behavior stems from the belief that women are public property, and it is their obligation to please others, either with their bodies, countenance, or attitude.  That belief manifests itself in douchebaggery like, "Smile, honey, it's not so bad!" (except it is -- this came up because Friend Katie was getting this crap from dudes and her father just passed away), and then goes all the way up on a continuum that ends in rape and violence.  Are the dudes that tell you to smile rapists?  Probably not.  But as soon as you believe a woman you don't know has some sort of obligation to you, to make you more comfortable or to conform to your wishes, as soon as you believe she exists for you, you're on that spectrum.  So get back off of it.  As to intentions: who gives a shit about your intentions?  It's not the offending party who gets to decide what's offensive; that's the right of the offended party.  A woman walks down the street, and a strange man tells his friend, so she can hear, that he'd like to fuck that bitch; this is very common, and very intimidating for a woman.  Am I supposed to think that the fact that the man just meant to "give the woman a compliment" is what's really important?  Bullshit.  It doesn't matter at all. What matters is the sexual harassment of a woman in a public space, and how it makes her feel.  Period.  The end.  Full stop.  You douchebag.


So, anyhoodle.  I know, I know, don't feed the trolls.


Anyway, today I have to go to Giant Eagle, which I hate, but then this evening Ted and I get to go see Friends Sarah and Roger give dance performances at their work, which should be nice.  


Oh, and, full disclosure, I have so far completely failed to undertake any of the self-improvement projects I wanted to start this week.  Why, God, why aren't I one of those kind of people who doesn't despise exercise?

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.

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.

Sports! Also: Much Chicken is Eaten

So, no, I didn't post on Friday.  I felt like bloody hell all day because of Ted's cheap brandy, and didn't feel up to typing.  But!  That doesn't mean I didn't do anything on Friday -- indeed, I went to Union Pig and Chicken for lunch, and it prompted many thoughts on gentrification, race, and urban redevelopment, which I wrote into a blog and posted here.  Please read it: I'm curious about others' thoughts on the subject.

And then the weekend was busy!  Saturday, first of all, was a big day of Sports.

Ted in his West Ham kit, from back when Dr. Martens was their sponsor.

Ted's English football team is West Ham, and last year they got relegated down into the Championship League.  (My team, Middlesbrough, was relegated in 2009, and there they seem likely to stay for the foreseeable future.)  But, the Hammers were in the Championship Final against Blackpool on Saturday morning, and the winner got to move back up to the Premier League.  So off we went to Piper's Pub to watch the match.

English Breakfast Boxty

Piper's is the best place in the city I know of to watch soccer, and this seems to be confirmed by the number of expats that are there every weekend.  Plus they have delicious United Kingdom comfort food to nom.  I actually special-ordered an English Breakfast (fried eggs, bangers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and baked beans, usually with toast) atop a boxty, an Irish potato pancake.  Needless to say, that couldn't possibly have been a bad idea.

West Ham pulled it out in the end, and Ted is very excited, because this means that next season he'll be able to watch their matches on TV at Piper's Pub.  (The poor Champions League doesn't get televised in America, that I'm aware of, except for the big League Final.)

After that, it was back home for a little relaxation.  Then we set off for the Consol Energy Center to see ... the Pittsburgh Power.  Yes, we went to see Pittsburgh's Arena Football League team.  I'd never seen Arena Football before, and it's kind of odd.  The score runs up much higher, but the play's no faster, because the field's so short north-south that after about five yards or so, the rushing player just gets crushed into the wall; pass plays don't come off too well because, well, they're not the best QBs out there, y'know?  It was hard to judge the fan investment in the affair, by which I mean, I couldn't tell what percentage of the enthusiasm on display was ironic, as compared to earnest.  Ted and I watched with more interest in the spectacle than investment in the winner (and a good thing, because the Power lost to the Kansas City Command), but we had a nice time anyway.  EXCEPT.  I went into the affair super excited because there was supposed to be a Tim Horton's stand in the Consol, and God knows I love me some Tim Horton's.  Except when we got there, the stand had been converted into a motherfucking Dunkin' Donuts kiosk.  Dunkin' Donuts is so mightily inferior to Tim Horton's it is impossible to even quantify the exact level of inferiority -- you like, need an electron microscope or something.  Plus, the Consol Center is Pittsburgh's ice hockey arena; eating Dunkin' Donuts at a hockey game makes no fucking sense, whereas eating a Tim Horton's donut at a hockey game makes infinity sense.  If you don't know why, educate yourself.  So anyway, that was a huge letdown.

Let's go Pixburgh Paher!

Interesting aside: when I was an instructor at the University of Michigan, one of my students was Terrance Taylor.  He was a senior on the UM football team.  At the time people expected him to be a first or high-second round draft pick after he graduated, but then scouts got wind of the fact he was lazy in the off-season, and he dropped to the fourth round.  He bounced around between Detroit, Jacksonville, and Indy, and now he has landed in the AFL as a defensive lineman for, you guessed it, the Pittsburgh Power.  The world is really fucking small.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to see Terrance play, though, because he is apparently on the IR/suspended roster -- the AFL doesn't bother to distinguish between these two states of inactivity, which is sort of hilarious.

Look at how the grease glistens!

After the game we went to Sidelines for dinner, and I ordered the Kitchen Sink Crunch Burger (except with a chicken breast instead of a burger, because ground cow is disgusting).  It was the unhealthiest thing I could think of, and it just felt right, given the evening's activity.

Speaking of unhealthy chicken sandwiches, on Sunday evening we went out to dinner at Burgatory with Davin, which was tasty.  One could also consider it a celebratory chicken sandwich: on Sunday, Ted and I finally finished our jigsaw puzzle.  I did not know those things were so fucking difficult.

VICTORY IS OURS.

Today, I took myself to $5 Movie Monday at Waterworks Cinema -- you get a free small popcorn, and free air conditioning, too.  I watched The Avengers again, 'cause it was awesome.  After that I picked up a hoagie, which I ate in the park -- by which I mean, I parked my car and rolled all the windows down and ate in my car in the park, because I'm not really a sit in the dirt kind of girl.  Then after that it was off to get more leafs at the farmers' market in East Liberty, where I got swiss chard, beet greens, carrots, lettuce, and a quart of absolutely delicious strawberries, plus some local honey.

These are so fucking good.

Currently, I'm making some simple tomato sauce for the stuffed shells we're having for dinner tonight along with the wee lettuces.  I have no regrets about the unhealthy noms of the weekend, but I'm glad I went and bought some leafs to eat today.  A person needs leafy greens to feel OK about themselves.

Road Trip to Nowhere, Or: Mmm, Golden Pig.

Today I went on a little road trip adventure!  Everyone has been raving about Golden Pig, the tiniest Korean restaurant, clear out in Cecil.  When I say "clear out in Cecil", I have to say, before I set out today in Marshall, my Honda Accord, I didn't have the faintest idea where Cecil was.  Honestly.  I'd read and heard people going on about Golden Pig, and they'd be like, "It's in Cecil," and from that I figured out that Cecil was 1) within relatively reasonable driving distance of Pittsburgh, and 2) ... *cricket cricket*.  It turns out that Cecil is south and west.  It's actually easy to get to Golden Pig, it just takes a while.  The thing I find curious about Pittsburgh is that there's the city, which is a city like any major urban center (except better), and then there're the inner-ring suburbs, which could easily be mistaken for part of the city proper, and then -- nothing.  Nothing whatsoever of interest.  Highways.  Trees.  The odd small town, but really, just nothing.  It's instantly rural, like, 20 minutes outside the city in all directions.  It's bizarre, frankly.  But so anyway, to get to Cecil, go through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, get on 79 South, get on 50 West, keep an eye out on your left after a few miles, and there you go.

Desolation.  Picturesque enough, though.

So wee.

Golden Pig is about the wee-est place I've ever eaten.  There are 11 seats inside.  The cooking happens in the same room as the eating, and everything is prepared fresh by two very nice Korean ladies.  Friend Mark J. joined me for lunch, and I don't know about him, but I liked the atmosphere.  It was homey.

There's a theme, you see.

I ordered us a "Korean pancake" to share.  I'm not sure what it was made of, though Mark surmised buckwheat flour.  It was crispy on the edges and had the particular glutinous consistency that I have only ever encountered in Chinese and Korean cooking.  It was filled with kimchi and quite tasty; we also got little dishes of kimchi and other pickled vegetables, which we nommed at with stainless steel chopsticks.  I mention the chopsticks because it occurred to me that I had never seen stainless steel chopsticks before -- I'd eaten off very nice, lacquered wood chopsticks, but never stainless.  Well, there you go.

Pancake and various yummy pickled things.

For our entrees, both Mark and I ordered the daeji bulgogi, which was thinly sliced, stir fried pork in a super rich (but not thick), spicy, succulent, just fantastic sauce, plus a side of truly delicious sticky rice.  Good rice is easy to make and common -- great rice is an art.

*Homer Simpson gargle*

SO FUCKING GOOD.

Seriously.  And my half of the meal came to $12.57.  Plus whatever I spent on gas, but, whatever, I practically never leave the city, so it's good to burn a little gas from time to time.  I listened (sang along to) Hot Hot Heat on the drive home and just generally was pleased as punch.

Home again, I watched two more episodes of Downtown Abbey, which I discovered yesterday and already totally heart.  Dowager Countess v. Mrs. Crowley -- I don't even know who to root for, because they're both so fucking fabulous.

Other than that, the day rounded out with MORE awesome food, because I decided it was Taco Night -- remember those Reyna's tortillas?  Ted always really likes Taco Night too.  

TACO NIGHT!!

Then Ted and I went back to work on the jigsaw puzzle we started last night, which he had picked up on sale last week.  It's based on a Frank Lloyd Wright carpet and we spent four hours on it last night and barely put a dent in it.  We went to work again tonight, and made a bit more progress, but we had to stop because ... well ...

We couldn't do it without him.

Chief was helping.  Poor little guy goes back to the vet for his follow-up appointment tomorrow morning, so he gets some slack.  By which I mean, lots and lots of extra love and anything else he wants.

Making Love to Mushrooms and Stripping

First things first!  I wrote a recipe post for the blog I share with Friend Sarah.  It contains an easy, wholesome pasta recipe and includes an illustrated explanation of how to make mushrooms taste really good.  Perhaps you already know how to do this; if you don't, read the blog and then you will.  I guarantee that anyone who says they don't like mushrooms only says that because they have been subjected to rubbery, slippery, undercooked, overcrowded mushrooms.  Well no more!  You can change any mind about mushrooms, and all it takes is a really big skillet and patience.  Read that blog here.  (Please!)

Really good mushrooms. And a happy spoon.

Yesterday I mentioned my successful farmers' market run. Point #1: I didn't buy enough leafs for the whole week -- from now on I'll know better.  Point #2: I was a little brain dead last night, so I just threw some dinner together in a stew pot.  Red kale, beet greens, onion, garlic, chicken thighs, salt, pepper, cider vinegar, Red Hot -- stew stew stew for an hour.  I served it with bread and butter.  I accidentally oversalted it a bit, but Ted liked it enough to get seconds.  This was actually my first time using beet greens, and I really liked them, so now I know.  Now, of course, I've got beets in my vegetable drawer, but they'll get used, don't worry.

Still, man cannot live by leafs alone, so today I headed down to the Strip.  My first order of business was lunch, since it was already almost 1:00 and I hadn't eaten yet.  I ducked into Reyna's to buy some tortillas, and the taco stand tacos smelled so good I went with those, one pollo and one carnitas on fresh corn tortillas with queso fresco, sour cream, lettuce, tomato, onion, salsa, fresh squeezed lime, and a few dashes of Cholulu hot sauce for $5.35 (with tax).  The carnitas won the day.

"Buy some food that's prepared near the stre-eet, who knows you might even see this guy ..."

Really nice and fresh.

From there I headed over to the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, where I availed myself of their cheese counter for some delicious Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog goats' milk cheese and a pound of fresh ricotta.  I also picked up some sour cream, some dried pasta, and some fresh linguini.  Onwards, I went to Stan's Market and got three orange bell peppers for only $2.50(!), some savoy cabbage, some fresh basil, and some limes, since Friend George was good enough to bring me a giant bottle of my favorite gin (Bombay Sapphire) for my birthday, and we're definitely getting into gin 'n' tonic season.  After that: delicious delicious pork.  I hit Parma Sausage for hot Italian and Sicillian sausages, some pepperoni, and some prosciutto.  It's all made fresh by Parma and it's the best fucking stuff around.  Seriously.  Get thee to the sausage men.

They look humble, but do not be deceived.

Oh, and I also picked up some chocolate truffles for Ted and I from Mon Aimee Chocolat.  Cause, yum.

It is taking all of my willpower to not eat my little packet right now.

So that's that, and I've got dinners planned for the rest of the week: tonight is going to be swiss chard whole wheat linguini and Sicillian sausage; then chicken tacos, stuffed shells and Italian sausage, and I'm going to take a crack at Ethiopian food on Friday.  Saturday we're going out, and Sunday is going to be curry.  I just have to pick up a few more leafs tomorrow.