The Weirdest (Best) Sandwich Ever

Sandwich making is an art. You need to be careful in considering you choice of fillings, the correct balance of condiments, proper elements of crunch. All of which could summarily fall flat if placed on the wrong bread. See, it's an art. A complex, yet delicious art.

On Wednesday night, I made soup. When we eat soup, we like to have "a spread." The bowls of soup, a cutting board with some bread and cheese, butter, and various pickled things in jars. On Wednesday, one of the pickled things was beets. And I decided I wanted to try buttered bread with pickled beets on it.

And now I'm about to lose you all, because I'm about to declare that a pickled beets and butter sandwich is the most delicious thing ever! Seriously. There's the slippery, spicy, juicy beets, the sweetness of the butter. The bread must be whole wheat, dense, and moist, preferably with some oats in there as well. The beets should be juicy, but not so much that they sodden the bread. And the butter should be applied zealously, in thick, creamy drifts. It's a masterpiece, a gustatorial delight.

Say what you will about beets. This is the best sandwich ever.

My little blue book

It all started innocently enough.

I've always known notebook people. Fabulously creative, energetic, interesting folks who make a point of carrying a little book with them, everywhere they go, just in case. The things these notebook people think of are so brilliant that nothing, no idea, no thought, no rough sketch, can afford to be lost.

And, well. Usually I'm pretty satisfied with the stuff I can remember long enough to jot down. But having embarked on a quest to see if I can write, that is, become a writer, I figure I might be better off becoming a notebook person, as well. Notebook people are often writers. Writers, or designers, or artists. Brilliant creative types. Good company.

So, to set the scene: it's a Wednesday night at Cyber Cafe, Patrick's and my home away from home. There's some tinkly synthesizer music happening on stage, there's a mug of hot tea on the table, and there's me, writing and sketching.


After a few pages of little flowers and leaves and such like, I turned to Patrick for inspiration. "What animal should I draw now?" I asked. Patrick loves animals, I knew he couldn't pass this up.

"Raccoon, of course." Easy enough.

Giraffe was next. Then he started in with the adjectives. "Pregnant Unwed Teenage Wallaby."

My husband, the goofball. But he didn't stop there, oh no.

"Clinically depressed zebra." I giggled. Depressed zebra is way more fun to draw than ordinary zebra.

After I'd dispatched the first two challenges, he upped the ante. "Cow with multiple personality disorder," he said. "But I'll settle for schizophrenia. And it has to be a Holstein cow."

Piece of cake.

"Okay. But you know the one drawing I'd really like to see? Cheetah, desperately awaiting a bone marrow transplant."

If laughter is indeed the foundation of a happy marriage, I'd say we're in good shape. I'm grateful for this guy I've found. He can make a lackluster Wednesday night into just about anything-- including, apparently, a zoo of emotionally complex animals.

Blueberry Peach Cobbler

Ooooh what a lovely thing it was to be able to greet Patrick with a glass of wine and warm cobbler when he got home from class .

(That's right, class. Which means Patrick is not only our sole breadwinner, he's now taking classes, too. Sheesh.)

There's so many colorful, friendly names for those old-fashioned fruit desserts: crumble, cobbler, crisp, pandowdy, grunt. Yes, grunt. Would you eat something called a grunt? How about if it had peaches and cinnamon in it? I'm not sure.

I love them because they're quick, easy, and not all that bad for you, either. I mean, yes, there's some butter (some), and sugar, but you also get big whopping gobs of fruit. And that's a good thing, right? Especially on a cold night.

Anyway, here's my (incredibly easy) recipe for cobbler.

Fruit Cobbler

8 cups frozen fruit, thawed (choose from blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears, cherries, or plums)
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the fruit, lemon juice, 3 tbsp flour, and 3/4 cup sugar, and dump it into a 7 x 11-inch baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, sift together the 1 cup flour, 2 tbsp sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the butter is the size of teeny tiny peas. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, buttermilk, and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just barely blended. Once the fruit comes out of the oven, drop the dough in evenly spaced spoonfuls over the top.

Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes, until the top is golden-brown and lovely. When you put the cobbler in to bake, you should take your ice cream out of the freezer so it has time to soften. Serve warm.

Winter blues

Well, it's January, nigh unto the winter doldrums. I love the sweet sheltered feeling of a warm house on a cold night as much as the next person. I love hot soup, (anyone who reads this blog surely knows that) and hot bread, and oatmeal on chilly mornings. Winter has its joys, but right now, I'm missing warm weather. Maybe it's the seed catalogs I keep getting in the mail. Maybe it's the mung beans in the mason jar, reminding me how long its been since I saw something sprout. Whatever it is, I've got a doozy of a case of mid-winter melancholy.

Each year, Christmas comes way too fast: no matter how much time I spend on preparations, it's not enough. It comes and goes far too quickly. All of a sudden you wake up, it's January, and there's a sad anachronistic Christmas tree in your living room. The celebrating has all been done. There's no more carols to sing, no more stockings to hang, no cards in the mail. All that's left to anticipate is long, cold weeks with no punctuation, and somewhere far ahead, a glimmer of springtime. If I could change one thing about the calendar, Christmas would be in February. Two months between Thanksgiving and Christmas, plenty of time to savor the long, slow buildup of expectations and excitement. Does this sound good to anyone else? Maybe we'll start a movement.

How do you get through these ho-hum months of the year? Me, I'm off to research soup recipes, and plan my garden.

... and spend a few minutes laying in the sunshine with Olive. She knows how to beat the winter blues.

Happiness

These ginger cookies.

The curled edges and fountain pen script in the archives at the local history center.

Little heart-shaped purses.

Little red berries in January sunshine.


Our neighbors' new kitten, whom I can't wait to meet.

Valentines.

The sushi-fish.

The kind, thoughtful, amusing words of blog comments.

Hope everyone's having a lovely Saturday.

Spruced up

Ahhhh...

We all have those moments, don't we? After slaving over something for the entirety of an afternoon, cursing and grumbling and sighing in frustration, finally... finally... the clouds part, the sun's rays shoot down, you can damn near hear that heavenly choir. The breakthrough. You finally got it just right.

Web design is an irresistable frustration for me. The nitpicker editor in me loves the scavenger hunt for dangling brackets, but the technophobe loathes the highlighting, the scrolling and clicking. A paradox. Oh well.

I hope everyones' weekends are lazy and warm, as weekends in January should be.

P.S. I should point out the new link banks on the right-hand side: Tutorials, and Recipes. After re-visiting every recipe I've published, I have two thoughts. 1) I'm hungry 2) Maybe I should write a food blog?

El Diablo

Now, friends. You may remember, back in the Oft-Mentioned Canning Frenzy of 2008, that my endeavors included vast quantities of salsa. Yes? Well, what I didn't mention was that I made a double-batch of salsa that was fiendishly spicy, too hot for man or beast. I labled it El Diablo, and since its creation, I've been fretting over what to do with the thirteen quarts I have languishing in my basement. So caustic it could strip the enamel off my Le Creuset. Seriously.

And this is where I'd love to post a great success story: how I turned the too-spicy salsa into a big pot of chili that was just right. Alas. The salsa overwhelmed even the beans, and the corn, and the tomatoes that went into the chili. I managed to choke down my bowlful only with liberal application of sour cream and grated cheddar. And cornbread slathered with butter, and root beer. Even now, an hour after eating, my lips look like they had an encounter with a hiveful of angry bees.

Sigh. It sure makes for a pretty picture, though, doesn't it? Thankfully I have an asbestos-tongued husband who will undoubtedly clean the pot for me. Thank goodness.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches upon the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
~Emily Dickinson

Happy Inauguration Day, everyone.

Cabin fever

It felt so good to get out after being cooped up inside all week. This time of year, I snatch hikes whenever I can, greedy and impatient for activity. There's no garden to tend, there's no farmer's market to visit, no raking leaves or washing windows to be done. The best I can manage is to get out and hike, breathe that crisp air, and rejoice in using my limbs.

Yesterday, we drove down to Salt Springs State Park, near Montrose, PA. It's not hard to work up a sweat on their trails, climbing hills and following rambling old stone walls through the woods. Fortunately, that's exactly what I wanted.

Does this sound crazy to you? Being out of breath was actually exciting! It felt good to be physically tired. All around there were bright trees, snowy fields, and the personable coversations of chickadees. There were tracks in the snow: house cat, squirrel, rabbit, coyote? Back at the car, there was the sense of we did it! and the tingle of chilly earlobes being warmed again.

And inquisitive looks from the resident llamas.

Peas porridge hot

I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in upstate New York it's been snot-freezingly cold all week. It's getting old. It's the kind of cold where, you can be standing in the middle of your house, wearing four layers, drinking hot tea, and you still feel the chill coming in from outside. Brrr. Simply put, it's soup weather, ladies and gentlemen. So yesterday, after coming home from the shower, soup is what I made. It went a little something like this.

Split Pea Soup

8 cups vegetable stock or water (I used 4 cups of each)
2 cups yellow split peas, sorted and rinsed
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium potatoes, cubed
2 medium carrots, sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
4 allspice berries
4 whole black peppercorns
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried marjoram
2 tsp salt

It's honestly this simple: bring the stock/water to a boil in a big pot. Dump everything into the pot. Bring back to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer about 1 1/2 hours. It's a good idea to stay close by and check it periodically, in case the heat is too high and your soup starts to scorch.

Dunk in a spoon and make sure everything's well cooked. If the peas are still grainy, let it cook awhile longer. Once done, puree the soup in batches, using a blender or food processor. Pickles go really well with this soup. We tried chopping up a dill pickle and mixing it in, (post-pureeing)
and that was pretty tasty. The garnish on top of the soup in the picture is some escabeche I made this summer in my canning frenzy. It's sort of like that Italian pickled-vegetable mix giardiniera, which you can buy in the store. Good stuff.

Enjoy, and stay warm, wherever you are.

Rosemary scones

Sometimes you just need to fuss. Sometimes you need to fiddle with a batch of scones that call for three different flours, little rosemary sprigs, and a sprinkling of turbinado sugar. They are absolutely worth the trouble: that sweet melt/crumble of buttery inside and crunchy sugar outside. Are you drooling yet?

These are from one of my favorite cookbooks, Brunch.

Rosemary Cornmeal Scones

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups corn meal
3/4 cup cake flour
1 tbsp plus 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary (not dried)
3/4 cup light brown sugar
3 sticks butter, well chilled
1 egg plus one yolk
2 1/2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup plus two tbsp heavy cream

Turbinado sugar (or regular sugar, if it's what you've got)
Little fresh rosemary sprigs

Combine flours, cornmeal, baking powder, minced rosemary, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cut the butter into pats and give the mixer a good five minutes to incorporate it into the flours. The butter should be holding into little pea-sized clumps. Add the eggs, honey, and cream, and continue mixing, pausing to scrape down the sides, until the dough holds together as a lump.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Turn the dough out on a floured countertop, and roll it to 3/4 " thickness with a rolling pin. Cut it into your desired shapes (mine are about 2 1/2" squares) and arrange 1 inch apart on a greased baking sheet. Gently press turbinado (or regular) sugar into the tops of the scones, and stick a little rosemary spring into the center of each one. Bake 25 minutes, until golden.

The recipe yields about 18 2 1/2" squares, more or less depending on how big you make yours.

If there's any lemon curd lovers out there, these scones are absolutely divine with lemon curd.

A blanket for "Baby Mac"

While the thermometer hovered around zero all day, I stowed myself away in my studio, with the space heater, and devoted the day to careful piecing and precise stitching. 143 playful little squares, and so many good thoughts for the family-to-be filled my head. I love making gifts.

The prints were all sitting (like ducks in a row) on the sale rack of my local fabric store. It took me about two minutes to grab an armload and head to the cutting table. All but one is from Windham's Brights Circa 1930 collection. I love how cheerful and boisterous they are, and maybe a little Asian? They remind me of origami paper. Good fabric stores are easy places to get inspiration, lemme tell you.

And I guess I should explain about the name? Well, Mom and Dad's last name is McNamara, and they've chosen to be surprised as to the sex of their child. Hence, Baby Mac. I can't wait to meet him or her!

Polenta

Second to central heating, (see previous post) cooking dinner in the oven on a nasty sub-zero day is another one of those simple winter pleasures. The kitchen becomes fragrant and bright and downright pleasant. The whole house smells good. My favorite part, though, is that little Zen time you get in between sliding the food into the oven, and sliding it out. I'll relax in a chair with a mug of tea and my cookbook stacks, (or the latest Anthropologie, or Williams-Sonoma) revelling. It's Zen time, I'm tellin' you. The work has been done, all that's left is the sweet anticipation of a hot meal.

This is sort of like ziti, with polenta in place of pasta.

Polenta Bake

1 1/2 cornmeal
2 1/2 cups tomato juice
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp adobo sauce (from a can of chipotles in adobo, found in most supermarkets, which will happily live in your fridge for months, providing great bursts of chipotle flavor whenever you need it.

Bring the tomato juice to a boil with the salt, oil and adobo sauce. Then, slowly whisk in the cornmeal. Break up any lumps. Stir continuously for 15 minutes, meditating on the meaning of life (or some similarly deep and engrossing topic). Pour the polenta into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish, smoothing the top with a spatula. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Meanwhile:

2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 15-oz can stewed tomatoes
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1 10-oz pkg frozen spinach, thawed
1 4-oz can sliced black olives

Saute the onion and garlic in a little bit of oil until softened. Stir in the tomatoes, mashing with the back of your spoon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the watery tomato juices have been reduced to a nice, thick sauce. Throw in the spinach and olives, and stir until combined and heated through.

By this point your polenta should be set up. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a knife, cut the polenta into little sticks about four inches long. This is not an exact science. Remove half the polenta sticks from the pan, and arrange the rest in a regular fashion on the bottom. Spoon about half the sauce over top, then sprinkle with a copious amount of:

Grated mozzarella cheese.

Follow with the rest of the polenta, sauce, and more cheese. Slide the pan into the oven, and bake, uncovered, for thirty minutes. While you wait, enjoy your Zen. If you want to be fancy, you can finish the top under the broiler so your cheese gets all brown and melty.

Enjoy!

Eskimo crossing

Sunny days in winter are such a gift. Everything looks bright and cheerful: the snowy rooflines against an azure sky, tree limbs glazed with white icing, long blue shadows. When I woke up to sunshine streaming in through the blinds, I knew it was the perfect morning for a long walk.

The gazebo at Rec Park, slightly less magical, but no less pretty in the snow.

It was cold. The snow was squeaking underfoot, and I could feel the chill even through my long underwear. The rest of me was warm, though, thanks to my new winter coat.

This is just the beginning of my love affair with this coat. During the long, cold winter, my happiness pretty much comes down to just one thing: am I warm? I'm overflowing with gratitude for the opposable thumbs of my species which allowed us to invent central heating. The privileges of warm hands and warm feet when it's below freezing outside are enough to fill me with joy. Birds and squirrels are out there in the snow, and I'm inside wearing fuzzy slippers. That's enough.

How great it is, now, to go winter walking with warm ears. I may look like an Eskimo, but I don't mind too much. I'm warm. All of me.

Field Trip

We're not fussy people. Our needs are simple. We like to go for neighborhood walks, or hike in state parks. We go for little drives: we have our favorite farms, our favorite horse pastures, our favorite fallen-down barns. Most of the time, we content ourselves with our place, and the things that can be seen or done in it. Binghamton is, after all, an okay place to live. We like it.

But, now and then, we need to escape. Sometimes, and for no reason, a snowy Saturday will find us embarking on a field trip. We tell no one our plans. We take nothing. We have no expectations, excepting maybe the thrills of unfamiliar street corners and discovering cool old buildings.

On days like this, only the most exotic of upstate New York locations will suffice. Today, we went to Syracuse.

What? That's right, folks. It's exotic. There are cool buildings and unfamiliar corners, and also a slick, big-city feel that Binghamton definitely lacks. There are museums we've never explored, regional microbrews we've never sampled, restaurants whose menus we don't have memorized. There's a first-rate cooperative craft store, and maybe the finest indepedent music store I've ever seen.

The Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) is housed in the old armory building, which makes it cool even before you set foot inside. Why did they build armories that look like castles? There's something so mysterious and old-world about them.

We liked the butterflies.

I'll pause here to give a little of the back story. As usual, there's a dorky, under-lying reason we find Syracuse enchanting. (Deep breath.) Well, back in 2006, when Patrick and I had been dating a mere three months, (imagine!) he drove me to Syracuse to take my GRE's. When he came to pick me up after the test, he had a dozen roses in the back seat. I spent the rest of the day in a daze: it was May, all the trees were blooming and the birds were singing. An afternoon rain shower had cleared the air, and my boyfriend of three months had just given me a dozen roses! We ate dinner at a charming little place, drinking wine and talking about the future. Since then, Syracuse always brings me back to that day, not even so very long ago, when our life together was something we were just starting to think about. It was a nice time. So is this one.

Dinner was at the Empire Brewing Company. Microbrews for Patrick, Chilean red wine for me.

And lots of playing with my camera.

Strawberry bread pudding with banana ice cream. Oh my.

And the price we paid for taking a road trip despite the Winter Storm Warning. Yee haw!

Dancing in the kitchen

The holidays left our kitchen in the usual post-holiday rut. Maybe you can relate: a plate of stale Christmas cookies on the counter, the soured remnants of a carton of egg-nog in the fridge, a bowl of candy canes, and little else to eat in the house. Patrick and I moped around last week in a perpetual sugar crash, sticky-mouthed and weary. This week, I vowed to return to our usual routine: whole grains, beans, and lots and lots of veggies.

This is how I explain the posting of two foodie blog posts in as many days. The kitchen is just where I want to be right now, with a mug of tea and my new cookbooks spread out on the countertop, poring and pondering. From my mother-in-law, I received the mammoth Bon Appetit Cookbook, which features no less than thirty different cakes. I really appreciate having it, since my cookbook collection isn't exactly rife with dessert recipes. And sometimes you really just want to make a fussy little cake. My mom gifted me with Sundays at Moosewood, an equally thick volume of ethnic recipes from all over the world. Just about everything is vegetarian, from the paella to the gumbo to the moussaka. Yee haw.

So, last night at Cafe Strain I had great fun whipping up a colorful meal of soup, salad, and popovers, listening to the Oldies station ("Oooo-oooo, baby love, baby love...") and sipping my tea. I've even been known to twirl on my way from stove to sink with a dirty pot in my hands, singing. Cooking ain't fun if you don't dance in the kitchen.

Anyway. The popovers were great. There's a historic hotel in Cazenovia, NY, called the Lincklaen House, which is famous for popovers. Until last night, it had been the first, and the only place I'd ever eaten one. Seeing a recipe for them in one of my books, I decided to try my hand. They're pretty easy, and beautiful and delicious.

Popovers

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

3 eggs

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

First, prepare your baking setup: the recipe I used called for buttered ramekins, which is what I used. But I bet these would work just fine in a muffin pan, if that's what you've got. Grease up your pan, and preheat the oven to 450.

In a bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Add the water and milk, stirring just until moistened (don't overmix). Add the eggs one at a time, making sure there aren't any streaks of white in the batter (those will turn into scrambled eggs when you bake them!). Last of all, gently stir in the cheese. Fill your cups half full only, these babies rise a lot. Put them in for 10 minutes at 450, then lower the heat to 350 and bake for another 25-30 minutes, until they're puffed and golden and amazing-looking. Dig in!


I am just love love loving the digital macro lens on my new camera.

Ratatouille!

It's just a fun word to say. When we're eating ratatouille for dinner, the evening is anything but ordinary. In fact, since the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of red wine (leaving us to dispose of the rest of the bottle...) things are liable to get downright goofy.

I love recipes that call for wine. It adds a lovely depth of flavor to the food, but also there's the treat of drinking the rest, guilt-free. Once you've opened that beautiful, sleek, 750 mL bottle, well, you don't want it to go bad, now, do you? That would be criminal. Better to just fill 'er up, and drink, and meditate on the wonders of fermented grapes.

Here's our recipe. Enjoy!

Ratatouille

1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 small eggplant, cubed
1 cup tomato juice
1 medium zucchini, sliced
2 bell peppers (one red and one green are nice), diced
3 tomatoes, cubed, or 1 15-oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp hearty red wine
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced
fresh parmesan cheese

First, heat the oil in a large saucepan. Throw in the onion, garlic, bay leaf, and herbs. Saute until the onion begins to get translucent, stirring occasionally. Add the eggplant and tomato juice. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Then add the zucchini and peppers, and continue to cook, sans lid, for another 10-15 minutes. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, and wine. Continue to cook as you adjust the seasonings: salt, pepper, another splash of wine, a sprinkle of cayenne if it needs some pep. Right before serving, stir in the parsley. Serve over your choice of carbohydrate-- quinoa, cous cous, pasta, bread, rice-- with cheese on top.

When we cooked last night, we were able to employ our frozen eggplant, peppers, and parsley, canned tomatoes and tomato juice, and onions from our 50-pound bag hanging from the basement rafters. They are keeping perfectly well. The whole bag, which we'll certainly empty before spring, cost $8.

This might be as good a time as ever to reflect on the canning and food storage frenzy of 2008. Early in the New Year, everyone else is reflecting on something, so for me it might as well be this. Here's my Resolutions of 2009:

1. Winter squash, though it keeps like Egyptian royalty, is an easy vegetable to get sick of. (Note: there are still over 20 squashes in our cellar, and we are sick, sick, sick of squash.)

2. Canned roasted red peppers and homemade vegetable stock are awesome, wonderful, things.

3. The 27 quarts of canned whole tomatoes were not overkill.

4. The 65 pounds of apples were not overkill. Gasp! I've been making weekly batches of applesauce, and the Macoun apples I picked are still shiny and crisp.

5. The 50 pounds of carrots, the eight cabbages, and the thirty pounds of beets emphatically were overkill.

6. I need a bigger freezer.

We'll see if I have the time next year. I hope that I do. I almost miss it, as strange as that may sound. Okay, I miss the virtuous feeling, and the industriousness. I don't miss the fruit flies, or the sixteen layers of overspilled jam on my cooktop. Sigh. This year is going to bring a good many changes. Yesterday, I had a job interview. My new challenge will be finding creative and blogworthy things to do with my (soon to be limited) time. I don't think it'll be too hard. In some ways, too, it'll make me value my creative time all the more. Here's to this new year, whatever it brings me.

Hiking with friends

Our friends Sarah, Jeff, and Monroe were in town, and on this sparkling gem of a sunny January day, we decided it was a good day for another outing to yuuup, you guessed it, Chenango Valley State Park.

Right as I took this picture, Jeff was warning Marley (the dog) to be careful as she trotted out onto the ice.
Something about a picture of the sun setting over a frozen lake. I love those long blue shadows, and the starkness of that trackless frozen expanse.
The happy family:

You may remember Monroe as the star of this post, from when Patrick and I journeyed to Vermont this fall. Fun things happen when he's around, that's just the way it is. His parents aren't too bad, either.