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.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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