Since Pompey's Feast

Did you miss me? Apologies for the enormous delay between posts. I mostly blame this on a spring break trip up to NYC. While I got to see friends and family, and eat some amazing food, I did very little in the way of blogging or cooking. We should be returning to the standard schedule at this point.

I've been hyping up this author dinner mash-up thing (Shakespeare vs. Katherine Anne Porter) for a while now, and now that it's here I'm a bit nervous. I'll come straight out and say that the company and the experience made for a lot of fun that I won't be able to entirely demonstrate here. So much like my cooking, I've decided to mix all the metaphors in a bowl and see what happens.

O, for a blog of fire, that would ascend
The brightest kitchen of invention.
A restaurant for a stage, waiters to act,
And patrons to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the cooklike Justin, like himself,
Assume the role of host; and at his stove,
Leash'd in like hounds, should skillet, pan and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy blogpost to bring forth
So great a shindig: can this webpage hold
The vasty pot of stew? or may we cram
Within this mangled speech the very couch
That did contain the guests at Silver Spring?
O, pardon! since a blurry picture may
Attest in little place a muffin;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of this blog
Are now confined some mighty recipes,
Whose cooked-correctly and delicious foods
The serving forks and spoons will part asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one cake,
And make imaginary small-talk;
Think, when we talk of courses, that you see them
Printing their proud stains i' the receiving floor;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our plates,
Carry them here and there; tripping o'er legs,
Turning the accomplishment of many hours
Into an accident: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who (nervous) asks your humble patience please,
Gently to view, kindly to judge, my peas.

Mr. Shakespeare, I am so, so sorry.

My main plan for the party was to remake an old recipe (Flounder with Dried Plums) as a main dish since it had already been proven in combat, and then try something new for a side dish. That turned out to be Sweet Pea Purée with Capers. I thought that peas were a good combination with beef (to complement the other main course), and the minty/capery side of things would work well with the fish.

It's a theory, anyway.

I was doubling the recipe since there would be so many dinner guests, so step one was to make sure that my ingredients would actually fit in the appropriate saucepans. Don't worry, I took the peas out of the bag before cooking them.

Seeing as how the pre-measuring worked so well the first time, I did the same thing with the mint. I was worried that I wouldn't get a cup of mint out of the package I bought, but it turned out I had just the right amount. The recipe might as well have said ALL THE MINT.

ALL THE PARSLEY SOME OF THE PARSLEY

ALL THE BUTTER HALF THE BUTTER

And into the food processor they go, to await the peas. And then we're back to...

ALL THE CAPERS

I love capers. I'll tell you a story about how much I love capers sometime. I was really sad to have to drain them, so I actually poured the brine back into the jar for use in martinis. Trust me, go make a dirty martini with capers, or even better, caperberries. You will not regret this, unless you have an addictive personality, in which case, "My bad."

Peas join the herbs and butter in the blender. There was a brief moment of panic when they hit Caliban's maximum food limit, but I invoked my knowledge of high-school-level science to determine that pureed peas would take up less volume than solid peas.

And I was correct! After just a little bit of processing, there is room for everypea.

After the first set of ingredients are fully pureed, the capers enter Caliban's maw for a few quick pulses.

BLEND ALL THE THINGS!

Have I mentioned that I love capers?

The final product! I made some vague attempts at being fancy here. That's a sprig of mint inside the caldera, and I may have gotten all zen rock garden with a fork. The whole thing was really easy and really tasty, and I highly recommend it.

Now that the new food was out of the way, I decided to move on to the fish. We've already done this once before, so I won't be reposting every single step. Instead, we can focus on the important changes - like the wine. Which, incidentally, wasn't very good even accounting for the fact that I forgot to chill it after cooking with it.

Another major change was that I actually had the correct ingredients this time around. INGREDIENTS, ASSEMBLE!

Not that it's a major change, but I poured the seasoning into the pan after the wine this time, which led to little floating Spice Islands®.

This is what the ingredients look like for double the standard amount of sauce, since I was making twice as much fish.

It worked out really well because the sauce was never in danger of thickening up early due to the longer cooking time. All the fish cooked, and then I had a chance to make sure the sauce hit the right consistency. There was, however, an issue with the fish itself. This was... not what I expected to see when I opened up the package.

Let me explain. I picked up most of my ingredients for the meal at Safeway, just because it tends to be cheaper. They were carrying flounder for about $8/lb, but I thought I would check out Whole Foods just in case. The fish counter at Safeway has a nasty habit of smelling like fish, which even I know is a bad sign. If the prices weren't too much worse, Whole Foods would be the way to go. And if not, I'd double back and pick up the flounder.

I failed to take into account the helpfulness of the fish counter guys and my personal laziness. While there weren't any filleted flounders (or any other flatfish, for that matter), there were definitely two whole flounders on ice. The whole-fish price seemed reasonable, and after some weighing and discussion of fish weight vs filet weight, I decided to just go for it. Honestly, I would have felt really bad about walking away after the guy put the fish on the scale for me. He took them away to clean them up, and I stood around awkwardly while every single other person at the fish counter tried to help me. I attempted to return the favor by informing patrons that I had taken the last two flounder so that no one had to walk around the counter to the barrels of ice to search for them. Also, I refrained from laughing maniacally at the other customers, which I thought was very big of me. I wound up with almost three pounds of fish for $36, which was half again what I would have paid at Safeway. But I also saw the fish it came from, and I guess that's a thing that influences me in a positive fashion? 

Back to that picture. When the fish was being wrapped up, I saw that there was some skin left on at least one piece, but that was no big deal. People cook fish with skin on, I'd received it in restaurants before, I could deal with that. However: 

That red circle? That's a mysterious organ of some kind. Luckily, it just came right out when I tugged on it. The lines? Those are outlining the fins, which were still entirely attached, and composed entirely out of bones sticking into the food-to-be I wanted to feed my guests. I may have panicked a bit. People had already begun to arrive by the time I unwrapped this (since the fish cooks quickly, I thought I'd wait until the last minute), and I bombarded them with questions. Does anyone know how to cook a fish? Clean a fish? Fish? Is a fish? Is Aquaman? Anything? Three things calmed me down. First, a couple of people suggested I just ignore it and cook and see what happens. Second, Angela volunteered to try and eat all the bones. Well, "volunteered" is a strong word, but close enough. Third, Edward and Kristen brought mead with them. You can see it here as it descends from heaven into my outstretched hand, to make my life better. If I had thought to switch my camera to video mode, you would have also heard a choir of angels.

On to the party food! I'm going to hit all the non-Katherine Anne Porter stuff first, since Susanna sent me some notes about that side of things. I'd like to keep it slightly coherent. And there is nothing more coherent than starting with dessert. Ashley brought us Emily Dickinson's gingerbread cake, a very clever way to sneak another author into the mix.

Oh, speaking of dessert, I had been completely and totally overthinking the whole dinner while I was out shopping, so I also picked up a bunch of kiwis to make foole in case anyone wanted it. People wanted it, so  I made foole (which I accidentally over-maced). People ate it anyway.

Angela made carrots lyonnaise. Either that or "something with potatoes," according to the planning document. But they tasted a lot like carrots and she kept mentioning carrots lyonnaise, so I'm going to assume they are carrots.

Are you sitting down? Go sit down. Kristen and Ed also brought eggplants stuffed with more eggplants. If only there were an internet meme that I could use to comment on putting a thing inside another thing to enjoy twice, but alas, there is not.

EDIT: One of my loyal readers has fallen for my clever scheme to get someone else to make a meme for me.

I didn't get any pictures of Bethany's pumpkin dip or cheese-beer dip, because they were, uh, invisible. Yeah, that's the ticket. Delicious and invisible. So let's move on to the bridge recipe. Susanna gave Heather KAP's corn muffin recipe, since Heather is a baker of renowned renown. If you are too lazy to click on the picture, the post-it on the left explains that it is the vegetarian side and no pigs were harmed, while the note on the right thanks a pig for its contribution to foodness. The real reason I explained this was so you wouldn't click on the picture and discover that the bowl on the right contains one of the "invisible" dips I was talking about. Merde.

Here we go! This is Katherine Anne Porter's Beef with Imagination Sauce, the dish so whimsically named that it set us on the path to dinner-partydom. Turns out, it is a stew! I'm stealing Susanna's commentary from our email conversation, which I didn't tell her I was going to do until afterwards.

Using KAP's recipes was a bit like...hm. What's something that's harder to prepare for than to actually do? I'm awash in metaphor emptiness. But the prep work for these recipes was the booger. First, I had to translate her handwriting. Loopy loopy. I wouldn't have been surprised to find a heart-dotted i. This code-breaking revealed something I hadn't seen before...the recipe called for something called 1812 Sauce. A bit of internet-ing discovered that this is not available anymore in stores, but can be faked with various combos of alcohol, lemon, Worcestershire, hot sauce and several other ingredients. So that was a fun side-adventure. Then, I had to interpret sentences on the Beef With Imagination Sauce recipe like this one: "Throw in anything and everything you have." So like...MnMs? Frozen Pot Pies? Socks? Fireplace utensils? I have all those things. I decided that "anything and everything you have" should be limited to three places: veggie drawer, spice cabinet, and alcohol stash. Since I couldn't "start it no later than 10 in the morning" and stir every hour like KAP recommends (um...blue blood?), I used the slow cooker.  

Next up was Guinness Punch, which I had been eagerly awaiting for over a semester.

The Guinness Punch was a breeze, and quite delish. Major ingredients include 1/2 and 1/2, Guinness, Bourbon, Sugar, vanilla, and coffee. It also called for raw eggs, but I like having friends, so I left that out. If I made it again, I'd serve it over ice. Maybe with real whipped cream on top. 

Oh, that's Susanna in the yellow shirt. Hi Susanna! The punch may sound gross if you hate things that are delicious, but I assure you it was not. Gross, that is. It was quite delicious. The following picture is to prove that we started with a lot of it, and then quickly had very little.

And since I don't have a better wrap-up, some final KAP commentary:

...having poked around a bit more in KAP's writing and archives--her recipes are very HER, both in style and her philosophy about other people's talents. She believes that people who don't naturally know how to write well can never learn. Seems she has the same understanding about cooking: if you don't know how to interpret "throw in anything and everything you have," well...I'm not gonna tell you. And maybe you don't deserve to be eating good food anyway. .... Anyway, a neat study in recipes as narrative.  

Indeed it is, Susanna. Indeed it is.


Nobody ate my peas.

And that's a good root

Buying groceries is complicated. This should not be the case! There are only two real options for groceries in my neighborhood: Safeway and Whole Foods. Safeway is cheaper, and has standard brands (sometimes a better spice selection). Whole Foods has a more nuanced selection, and their fresh food (meat, fish, produce) is better. This seems simple, yes? I have found ways to make it not.

This past Thursday, I decided to break in the as-yet-unnamed food processor with Puréed Carrots with Currants and Spices. Why this dish? Mostly because the word "Puréed" was right in the name, which seemed suggestive of whirling blades. Also, the ingredient list is pretty short, ginger marmalade is on it, and the only real steps are 1) soften the carrots, b) mix everything up using various methods of mixing stuff up. Of course, this is a side dish, which leads to a separate problem. But I decided to fix that problem with Grilled Bass with Fennel. This was chosen because there were very few ingredients, the cooking takes all of ten minutes, and I'd get a chance to use my broiler for the first time. Flame on!

I came up with a shopping plan. Safeway would not have fennel or ginger marmalade, I decided. But it should have everything else. So I would go to Whole Foods, get the fancy stuff, and then move on to Safeway for a nice, cheap finish. The Whole Foods leg of the journey was complicated by the fact that I, ah, didn't know what fennel looked like. As it turns out, fennel is what onions would look like if you looked at an onion and decided "No, this isn't cute enough to be a Pokemon" and then fixed that shit. BAM!

That photo was actually taken later in the story, I just thought it would be educational. The whiskey is there to prove that when a friend on the internet says that it's whiskey time and I make a joke about joining in, I'm actually playing for the realest of realsies.

Anyway. There was also ginger marmalade, but we'll get there.

On to the Safeway. Lemon, parsley, carrots, butter, check. I even picked up a moro and a gedesa because I had no idea what the hell they were. The answer was "blood orange" and "plum," respectively. Plums are delicious (and in this case, yellow), and blood oranges are not. But you know what my Safeway doesn't have? Bass. They have tilapia! They have tilapia filets, and whole tilapia, and if there's a third form of fish (tilapia plasma?) they probably had that too. There was salmon. And swai. Wtf is swai? I'd never even heard of it, and not in the jokey way that I pretend to not know what leeks look like. As it turns out, swai has a way cooler alternate name: IRIDESCENT SHARK. And you know what iridescent sharks are? Shark catfish!* That's two different kinds of fish at the same time! AND ALSO CATS! What I really wanted there was a double-italic that would lean even harder, but that's not a real thing.

But I didn't know all that about swai at the time, so instead I threw my hands up in disgust and went back to the Whole Foods. Whole Foods had bass. There was Chilean sea bass, and also whole black bass. As it turns out, Chilean sea bass is ridiculously expensive. Whole black bass are apparently pretty cheap, poundwise, until it turns out that they weigh the fish before they do any requested filleting, which makes it possibly more expensive than the other kind. Standing there in front of all those fish mocking me with their dead impassive eyes, I knew hopelessness. The guy behind the counter suggested cod, mostly to keep me from crying in front of the other customers. I took the fish and ran.

So, the cooking. The Carrots are up first. The recipe calls for eight medium sized carrots. What counts as a medium sized carrot? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm thinking that these eight sort of average out into medium size.

They get cut into inch long pieces, which would have thrown me for a loop just a few months ago. But now I know that you can use your thumb to estimate an inch. So simple!

After the carrots get cut up, they go in a pot with two cups of boiling water, covered, to soften for 25 minutes.

That means it's time to prepare the remaining ingredients. The carrots get puréed with butter, cinnamon, and verjuice, so those can hang out in the food processor until the carrots are ready.

And since I have some extra time, this is a great opportunity to check the broiler. I've never used one before, and I'm already starting to wish that my oven had heating elements up top so that they functioned as an in-oven broiler with adjustable racks. Because this thing is intimidating. That's not a lot of room in there for tall things down the line. And do I cook straight on that grate? What's going on? I spend a lot of the carrot-cooking time looking at sites about how to correctly use a broiler.

I do find the time to set up the remaining carrot-related ingredients. After puréeing, you fold in the ginger marmalade preserves and currants golden raisins, so I set those aside.  I'm showing off the ginger preserves here because they are amazing and delicious, and I think they deserve attention.

Then I realized that if I show the jar and tell you about everything, there's no real reason to include the closeup photo of the preserves sitting on the raisins. I rectify this by adding a face, since it worked so well on the fennel.

The original plan was to use the time while the carrots were softening to actually make the fish. But that time is cut short when I realize that there's a burning smell in the kitchen and it's coming from the carrots. See, the cookbook never mentioned a temperature to boil the water at, or reducing heat, or stirring, or otherwise checking on the carrots, so I assumed they would just be fine. This was an incorrect assumption.

As it turned out, the carrots themselves were relatively unscathed. The pot was not so lucky.

Here are my carrots in the food processor. If asked, I'm going to lie to everyone and claim that the idea was to caramelize the carrots.

Post processing. 

And post processing with raisins and preserves folded in, which now that I think about it, looks a lot like the previous picture but in a bowl. Ah well.

Rather than a cleverly timed meal, I now have a side dish and nothing to eat it with. I decide that the Puréed Carrots with Currants and Spices will also taste good at room temperature, and advance to the fish.

TIME OUT: There are confessions I need to make regarding the lateness of this entry. The first is that I have the amazing ability to procrastinate procrastination. The second is that I thought that Community would be a good show to start watching while I typed, and that is the WORST IDEA I'VE EVER HAD (Jeff/Annie OTP). And third, I'm making carnitas tonight and that somehow involved tequila and now I'm definitely paying attention to the blog and not to this AMAZING episode of Community which is the best half-hour of television I've seen outside of Firefly and making me want to watch An Americal Tail. Also I miss having pet rats.

Ahem. So this cod walks into a bar. And there's a series of crazy events, and it winds up filleted and on my kitchen counter. And that would have been a great intro before I actually uploaded the photos and realized that the first one involves fennel, and not cod. This is what slicing up fennel is like. The end result is partway between an onion and bootleg bok choy, but it smells like cheap licorice.

The following items go into the fennel mixture. The fennel itself get softened up in oil first for a few minutes, then fennel seeds and parsley go in at the end. The remaining parsley is for garnish. 

Here's that fish I was talking about. I think the trouble here is that the whole thing originally came from one animal, which meant it wasn't exactly mirrored or parallel. What I mean by that is that cutting everything in half leaves me with a wide, flat piece, and a thick, raised piece of fish. These are going to cook at different rates, and there's not much I can do about it.

The fennel mixture. This will go on top of my fish. It is aromatic and kind of delicious, but it has a problem. Its taste does not spread. It is not a sauce so much as a collection of objects. We'll come back to this.  

The fennel mixture is keeping warm on top of the stove, and so its time to examine my preheated broiler. I imagine this is what the gates of hell look like, if entry to hell was based on successfully figuring out kitchen equipment. And now I can't tell whether success is a good thing or not. Whose idea was it that the hottest function of the oven can only be successfully operated when you are awkwardly positioned on your hands and knees on the kitchen floor?

The bass cod goes in for a few minutes per side. That's pretty simple except for two issues. The first is that I haven't oiled the broiler pan enough, which leads to awkward flipping and some random fish bits stuck and burning. The second is that I forgot what the second was. The third is that I didn't want to keep losing heat by opening the broiler and checking two separate pieces of fish to see if both were done at the same time. 

In the end, I cooked the two pieces of fish until the thicker bit was done, and wound up with this. Despite everything, it looks like real food.

The verdict: Heavily mixed. The Puréed Carrots with Currants Raisins and Spices was really nice, despite the burning. The cinnamon and ginger pair really well with the sweet taste of the carrots, and keep the verjuice from overshadowing everything else. There were some tastes I associate with baked sweet potatoes and burnt marshmallows floating around, but it was an easy dish that I would happily repeat again on lower heat. It should be very easy to scale up as well, which means I can bust it out for dinner parties. The Grilled Bass Cod with Fennel is a little more problematic. The fish itself is just peppered and salted and cooked, and that's fine. The fennel mixture that goes on top was pretty interesting. But it's very contained. This isn't even a sauce that can be spread around, it's like individual pieces of vegetable. I ate it, and enjoyed myself. And in the end, the biggest issue was that if I wanted to make fish I might as well go for the Flounder.



*Shark catfish can be found at Cave Mountain Lake National Park, home of Cave Mountain Lake String of Nouns.

Flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified

On Sunday, my girlfriend Michelle came over to pick something from Shakespeare's Kitchen for me to cook for her. It was kind of like Iron Chef, but with a whole recipe.

Eventually, we settled on Flounder with Dried Plums. Boring name, but the dish itself seemed interesting. There were a number of other recipes that had to be vetoed due to a lack of Renaissance Stock - we decided to err away from cheating with storebought stock. So it was off to Whole Foods to pick up ingredients. We hit up the fish first, and learned that Whole Foods did not actually have flounder. Thwarted immediately! Luckily, the fishmongers there are extremely knowledgeable and monged us a replacement. Here we have the American Plaice in its natural habitat. And as it turns out, plaice is a type of sole which is a type of flounder. So we both did and did not have the right fish.

Whole Foods is really good about providing me with replacements, but surprisingly annoying with not having things in the first place. There was a distinct lack of both mace and savory in the spice aisle. While I futilely scanned the shelves for hidden spices, Michelle did some internet research for substitutes. As it turns out, you can replace savory with sage or thyme. Sage and thyme are already in the dish. Ah well. Marjoram also works, so we went with marjoram. We also discovered that mace is a part of nutmeg, and I totally had nutmeg. In fact, getting to reuse the dried plums from the Chicken with Wine, Apples, and Dried Fruit really drove home the fact that I have useful items in my pantry. The sage, thyme, nutmeg, brown sugar, raisins (standing in for the ever-elusive currants), plums, and verjuiceish were all in existence in my kitchen even before I started. We almost made carrots because I had carrots. I'm like a real adult.

I've started to notice that as I cook, I'm really good at putting away all the contained ingredients (bottles, boxes, spice containers, etc.) immediately after I use them. It keeps the kitchen clean, keeps the work area clear, and keeps me from adding the same spice twice. Although sometimes I still have to lean in really close and stare at the pile of mixed spices in the middle of the pan and decide that no, I didn't accidentally add sage without putting away the sage. Not that this happened. I blame the fact that the things I was working with weren't exactly the same as the list in the cookbook. I also learned that grating nutmeg straight into a pan is extremely gratifying.

Next, I pulled out a plate to put the fish on to season it. After getting two pieces on, I realized that the fish wouldn't actually fit. I think I had something like the panko-crusting or dredging in flour in mind, but I'm not sure why; I was just supposed to use some salt and pepper. Laying the fish out on the paper it came in was a much better idea. Michelle commented that she had been wondering what I was doing, and I had to explain that if I appeared to be messing up while cooking, I was probably messing up. So that's one plate wasted (you can see it in the sink in the pic below). The one bright side is that the plate issue led to me holding the plate over the saute pan and realizing that the fish wouldn't all fit in the pan either. Don't worry, we improvised.

Here we are, ready to go. That's butter and the verjuiceish hanging out in the middle. When I reconsider this, maybe leaving a cutting board with a knife on it hanging off the counter between the fish and the pan wasn't my best idea. Especially since I was done with all those things, so the only reason to leave them out was to inflict self-harm.

The plums are getting occasionally mashed and starting to color the wine, which means it's just about time to put the fish on. Michelle has snuck a taste, and is beginning to suspect maximum delicious is on approach.

Speaking of sneaking a taste, the one thing that I forgot to do with this recipe was taste along the way. It's the advice I've been getting most often from people who cook, and I never remember to do it. Michelle was snagging the bits of fish that broke off and poking at the sauce the whole time, and I was sort of bemused until I realized that by the end I still didn't know what the whole thing would taste like. This recipe doesn't offer a lot of room for corrections, though - all the spices go in first, so it's not like tasting the fish when it's done lets me travel back in time to change the sauce. So that's my excuse this time around.

Back to the cooking. The fish goes on top of the simmering sauce, and sits there. I may not have mentioned it before, but this recipe is really quick and easy.

After a minute or two, the heat goes away and the whole thing gets covered. Another minute or two and the fish is done. 

Since the pan wasn't big enough, we had to remove the first two pieces of fish and then repeat the previous two steps. So here they are again.

Meanwhile, Michelle has been hard at work steaming asparagus for a side dish. The biggest problem with Shakespeare's Kitchen is that the dishes are really self-contained. Most of the animal entrees don't have a significant vegetable component, and none of the vegetable dishes are really something you'd want to use as a vegetarian entree. Michelle also picked out the wine we used (a Viognier which I failed to take a picture of) at Adega, which is a fun little wine cafe in downtown Silver Spring. Any place that asks you "for here or to go?" when you hand them a bottle of alcohol is ok by me. Finally, Michelle was also also responsible for the decision to make cherry pie w/ice cream one of the ingredients of the meal. What I'm trying to say is that she did all the important parts.

Once the fish was done, the sauce was ready to be thickened. I turned the heat up, and it was done fast. I think it was partly due to the resimmering for the second batch of fish. Adding the verjuiceish and butter had to happen immediately, and the heat came off right away.

All that was left was plating. We were worried that the sauce had thickened to the point where there wouldn't be enough, but a little of this stuff goes a long way. It was seriously good, but the taste was very strong. It's mostly the plum and rosemary, but everything does its part. Any more than what we used and you wouldn't be able to taste the fish underneath. On a side note, I was a little upset that there wasn't any left to try on the ice cream. Although, I do have all the ingredients necessary to make more...

This is also where I learned that Blogger won't turn pictures for me. Oops. Anyway, turn your head to the right and feast your eyes.

Verdict: delicious! Possibly the best recipe so far. The fish picks up some very specific flavors while cooking, and they're not exactly the same as the sauce. The whole thing is really quick and simple - I think slicing the plums was the most difficult part of the prepwork. And since almost everything in the recipe comes from the pantry, this is pretty cheap to remake. I'm almost out of dried plums, but I'm going to purchase a larger container to keep around. If I were the kind of person who could keep an open bottle of wine around for more than a day, the only thing I'd ever have to pick up at the store for this would be the fish itself. I think this is going to be a staple in the repertoire. When I get around to having a repertoire, that is.


The night went well enough that I'm going to claim this is what we did for our anniversary.