Healthy, easy, refreshing for a summer evening.

A post from daughter Sara . . .

As I’ve started watching my diet a bit, I find myself looking for flavorful, yet easy dinner dishes.  This is a true match for the easy and healthy.  I had my first Ahi Bowl at a restaurant called The Fish District in San Diego, CA (near where I live).  The crisp veggies with warm rice and fish make this a wonderful summer dish. I love the combination of sweet teriyaki with the nose-burning touch of wasabi sauce.  I cook the Ahi outside on the side burner of my grill (well actually, my husband does – I’m banned from the grill as I apparently don’t clean it correctly!)  This is my own at home version.

With blackened seasoning to go on the fish, and julienned veggies to fix, I can bring this dinner together in about 20-25 minutes. With a bottle of teriyaki sauce to drizzle and a squirt of wasabi sauce (don’t use the pure wasabi) it’s so easy to just make a big platter with everything on it (rice on the side) and everyone can take what they want from the platter. For me, it’s no rice, but my family loves the lemony rice to go along side. Everyone loves it! And by the way, I buy my Ahi at Wal-Mart. I’ve found it to be really fresh. I buy it in a big pack and stick it in the freezer, then defrost what I need (one small steak per person, usually).

What’s GOOD: my family particularly loves lemon rice (which I make to serve with other things too), and they like ahi. We all do, and we can pick what we want to eat on the “bowl” with, or without rice. I use spinach only instead of rice. Easy dinner and healthy too.

What’s NOT: nothing really – maybe only the time it takes to julienne the carrots and cucumber. Otherwise, it’s such a cinchy-easy dinner to prepare. Be sure to not overcook the ahi – you want it bright red in the middle.

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A lovely salad with arugula (or kale), olives, shaved fennel, Manchego cheese, radicchio, spiced garbanzo beans, with some toasted olive bread croutons and tossed with a succulent fig balsamic dressing.

It was a month or more ago that this salad was made at a class with Tarla Fallgatter. I was trying to not eat carbs, so I didn’t have any of the olive bread croutons, or any of the chickpeas, but I lapped up everything else and really liked the salad dressing with a hint of sweetness to it. Others in the class were ooohing and aaahing, so I know both the croutons and chickpeas tasted good.

The garbanzo beans (chickpeas) are added to a pan full of garlic and red chili flakes with oil, and you cook them for 6-8 minutes until they blister. Once cooked, you remove all the loose skins. You might think that’s too much work, but it won’t take but a minute of time. The skins come off easily enough.

The vinaigrette is made with fig balsamic (if you don’t have some, you need it in your pantry arsenal), a tetch of raspberry vinegar, some balsamic mustard (another item you need in your refrigerator arsenal) and olive oil. So delicious.

Meanwhile you need some radicchio (or red endive), some thinly sliced fennel, some roasted red and yellow peppers (jarred works here), some tasty Mediterranean olives (pitted and sliced), some shaved Manchego (mmm, me likes Manchego), and the arugula. If you favor kale, use that instead. For whatever reason, sometimes kale doesn’t agree with me. I know it’s good for me, and nearly every market these days has about 4 varieties of kale to choose from. I’ll use arugula instead.Toss it all together and you have a very lovely looking and tasty salad for a summer’s eve.

What’s GOOD: the combo of all the veggies is so perfect – the shreds of Manchego, the olives, the crunch of the toasted croutons, the chickpeas, some fennel and peppers. All delicious, then when you toss it with the figgy vinaigrette, oh, what a combination – serve it with a lovely grilled chicken breast and that’s dinner. I promise you’ll hear raves.

What’s NOT: It takes a little bit of time to put together, more than some salad preparations. Worth it, though.

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Is it hard to see what’s in that photo? Grilled sweet onions on the left, a nice pile of thinly sliced, grilled flank steak, then a creamy horseradish sauce with onion.

I can’t say that flank steak is one of my favorites. Although you can make it tender with a marinade (this one wasn’t marinated for tenderness, just spice rubbed for flavor), it’s tricky to do just the right amount of tenderizing without the meat becoming mushy. If you’ve ever had mushy meat, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This steak was served at a great cooking class with Phillis Carey, and although I love-loved the flavor of this combination, I think I’d do the same rendition but with ribeyes instead of flank. Or maybe with a nice piece of sirloin, sliced thin. By far, the onions were my favorite part (sweet onions grilled with a spice rub on them too) and I lapped up the horseradish spiked mayo sauce with every bite of meat.

This sauce, what Phillis called an Onion Blossom Horseradish Sauce (she was mimicking the jarred Orange Blossom Horseradish Sauce, is it made by Rothschild?) and it’s really good, and very easy. It needs a few hours to combine the flavors – do NOT just make the sauce as you’re preparing the meat – it needs at least an hour to meld. It wouldn’t hurt the meat to be spice rubbed at the same time then kept chilled until ready to grill.

You used to not be able to find ancho chili powder in stores, but you can these days, so do seek it out. The rub comes together very easily with standard ingredients in most spice cabinets. The rub is used on both the steak and the onions, with you having tossed the onions with some olive oil first so the rub will stick to it. You’ll use most of the rub on the steak and the remainder on the onions.

The flank steak is rubbed all over with oil just before grilling for 7-9 minutes per side (no more than that or it will be overcooked). Once grilled, transfer the steak to a cutting board and tent it with foil for 8-10 minutes, then slice thinly on the diagonal and pile it onto a heated platter along side the onions and then drape the sauce over the top. Delicious!

What’s GOOD:  the flavors are marvelous. I particularly loved the onions, but then I love grilled onions. Just remember to buy the sweet ones and slice them thickly. Do slice the flank steak thinly across the grain and pile them onto a serving plate (looks pretty that way).

What’s NOT: the meat will be a bit chewy – some folks like steak that way (me not so much). Otherwise, this is a stellar recipe – you’ll need only a green salad to complete the meal.

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It wasn’t too long ago I made a very complex salmon chowder. Here’s another one that’s just about as good, and a whole lot easier. Maybe the steam fogged up my camera lens, you think?

I must be a sucker for salmon chowder. I do love the stuff. And this one is relatively easy to make. It does have a bit of heavy cream in it, though. If you don’t want that part, just add more chicken stock. It will still be good! Onion and celery are sautéed, then you add some corn (frozen works fine here) and potatoes, some spices and stock. It’s simmered for 15-20 minutes (or less) until the potatoes are just fork tender but not falling apart. The cream is added and brought back to a simmer, then you add in fresh chunks of salmon and fresh dill, and that gets simmered for just a few minutes. You do NOT want to simmer it long or the salmon pieces will fall apart. Scoop into bowls and add another few tender twigs of fresh dill and serve. Hot. To mmmm’s.

If you like smoked salmon, that can be substituted, which will give the soup an altogether different flavor, but still salmon, of course. If you’re not fond of salmon, substitute another firm-fleshed fish in this (halibut, tilapia, sea bass, even sole would work). Altogether delicious in any of those riffs. This came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter.

What’s good: how easy it is to make, first of all. Then the delicious flavor – the aromatics and onion add lovely depth. Plenty of good texture too. Worth making for sure.

What’s NOT: nothing I can think of – this is a great soup.

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A vinaigrette riff – kind of regular ingredients – but with smoked paprika for flavor.

Smoked paprika may be an acquired taste. And really, until about 15 years ago I’d never even heard of it. Then it began showing up in food magazines, and cooking classes, and visiting Hungary, I enjoyed it in several things. I bought some in Hungary, and on a subsequent trip I bought the sweet, half-sharp (half sweet and half hot) and smoked. In fact I still have a vacuum sealed bag of sweet in my pantry. It’s about 5 years old (never opened) – I hope it’s still good. But I’m now out of smoked, so will have to find a local source, probably Penzey’s.

Awhile back, because I subscribe to a free book website called BookBub, they sent the daily missive with their list of special-priced e-books at Amazon. In the mix that day was a book called Modern Sauces: More than 150 Recipes for Every Cook, Every Day. It was a real bargain price – probably $1.99. For that day only. So I downloaded it to my Kindle.

If you really asked me, though, I’d tell you that I don’t much like looking at e-cookbooks. It’s not my favorite thing to go find my iPad stand so I can prop it  up on my kitchen counter to read and prepare a recipe. I suppose that makes me old-school in this regard. But I did order this one, because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have ordered the hard copy (for a whole lot more money, of course). So I did read it – in bed at night, over 2-4 evenings. And I liked the sound of a bunch of recipes in it. This is one of them. I brought my Kindle downstairs to my kitchen and flipped through all the recipes after I’d read the whole book, and I copied the recipes I liked into MasterCook. And here we are.

Lately I’ve been eating a lot of salads. In that salad above I’ve got a mix of all kinds of veggies, plus a few sliced almonds and bocconcini, the little fresh mozzarella balls.

I’m on a diet. Probably one of these days I’ll write a post about it, but for now, I’m sticking to this new diet that has been very easy for me. In the mornings, I eat my regular yogurt bowl (unsweetened, Fage, plain) with a few berries, walnuts or almonds, a scoop of whey protein powder, a squirt of concentrated liquid turmeric, a drop of vitamin D & K, a tablespoon of ground flaxseed, and now SAM-e). That’s breakfast. Mid-morning I have a handful of nuts. Lunch is usually a bowl of soup – mostly vegetables in chicken/mushroom broth with either ground turkey or chicken, or even lean grass-fed beef. The soup is loaded with all kinds of non-carb vegetables. It’s satisfying and filling. I’ve made 2 big batches of this type of soup recently. Then another handful of nuts in the mid-afternoon, and a 6-ounce “shake” mixture of prebiotics mixed with unsweetened almond milk (which I’ve found I actually like!), and sometime during the day I also have a square or two of intense chocolate (dark, 80% or higher). That’s allowed.

Dinner is usually a salad with plenty of good veggies, some kind of protein (chicken, tuna, or even some lean pork) and a good olive-oil based dressing. And eggs are fine. What’s OUT of my diet is any sugar. Period. (He does say stevia – I use Truvia – is fine in small amounts.) No desserts, and fruit (except berries, although there are a few other fruits you can eat in very small quantities). And it’s working. That’s what I’ll tell you. I’m not eating any complex carbs at all – no bread of any kind, no flour, of course, no beans, no grains, no starchy vegetables (including peas and corn, of course). And no dairy except yogurt and a dib-dab of butter if it’s essential to cooking something. He also allows small portions of cheeses. Do I miss all those things? Sometimes. But it’s not because of hunger. I’m positively amazed that I’m not hungry in between meals, but I’m not. The handful of nuts satisfy any in-between hunger. I can have canned soybeans or edamame beans, so I plan to pick up some of the latter at TJ’s this week. They’d be good added to a soup – for texture. I can have red wine or an ounce of liquor if I want. In moderation of course. There’s a whole lot more complexities to the diet, but that’s it in a nutshell. It’s a diet proscribed by Dr. Stephen Gundry (a heart surgeon). He’s the one who wrote The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain. The conundrum in that book is about the hidden threats in eating lectins, something that exists in lots of foods. There’s a cookbook that goes along with that as well. But his 2017 book is the one I’m following, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline. If you’re interested, go to amazon and search for The Plant Paradox and you’ll get to a page with all of his books and books written by others about his 2 books, including several cookbooks, even one for an instant pot!

But because I’m now eating a salad at least once a day, I’m wanting more variety in dressings. There are a whole slew of oils you can have on this diet, but EVOO is the fav. No cream dressings at all, no sour cream or cream anything (except yogurt, I suppose). I’m fine with salads, as long as I can vary them with different proteins, veggie options and a different dressing every few days. Thank goodness! Hence this new dressing came into rotation.

The author of the Modern Sauces book mentioned that of all the salad dressings she makes (she considers a salad dressing a sauce) this one is her favorite. When an author or writer says that about any food, I’m all in. I made a half of a batch of this to try it out. It’s gone already, so I’ll likely make it again soon. You may see more salad dressings here in coming months. And more veggies, I suppose, in one form or another. Probably not any desserts, though, unless they’re mainly fresh berries! And I’ll still be preparing a protein entrée, so you’ll see some of those recipes. I went to a cooking class (actually 2) recently and I’ll be writing up all those recipes. I took a teeny-tiny taste of each item so I could decide if it was blog-worthy. All of them were.

What’s GOOD: loved the smoked paprika scent/taste in this. Different. Good, for sure.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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Little did I know – there is comeback sauce, and then there is comeback sauce. Of course there could be riffs, and maybe that’s all this is. A riff with comeback sauce for fish, not meat or poultry. Or every other kind of food thing on the planet.

Seems like I read, or heard, that comeback sauce is a condiment almost as ubiquitous as salt and pepper on the dining tables of the South . Not that it could live there (out on the table) – no – because it has mayo in it. But it can live in the frig for quite awhile and be used for all variety of things over the course of many meals.

So I read, Comeback sauce was originally used on fish and shellfish, but since it’s been around a loooong time, it’s kind of morphed into something that can be universally  used as a condiment on just about anything. At least I think that’s the case – if I have any Southern readers, please correct me in the comments below!

I suppose this could be more like a tartar sauce, but it’s with more of the comeback additions. I wrote about Comeback Sauce awhile back. That one has more tomato type ingredients (jarred chili sauce and ketchup) than this one, though both are mayo based first.

Wanting to try this one, I made it to go with some shrimp I had left over from a restaurant meal. And I liked the recipe because it contained capers (love them), cornichons, and it had a bit of minced celery – which gives the sauce some lovely crunch. It took but a few minutes to prepare – I made a green salad and some fresh veggies to go with it, and there I had a lovely meal. I think, since I’ve been a widow (4 years now) I’ve become more inventive with making a full meal with stuff – left overs from various things I’ve made.

When I made this, I had only one recipe/post in the queue for posting here. Gracious! I needed to get busy. But then I went to a cooking class which created a whole raft of new recipes to write about, and I totally forgot I’d made this. As I write this, I still have the sauce in the frig, and it still tastes great. I’ll give it another week, and if I haven’t used it up, I’d best toss it out. The celery is about the only thing that could go “off.” Otherwise, I would think this would keep for a month. The recipe I used said it could be made 3 days ahead. Well . . . mine’s a whole lot older than that, and it still tastes as good as the day I made it. Amazingly, the celery still has crunch.

The making of this is so easy – grab a small bowl and start adding the ingredients. Stir, chill for a little bit to let the flavors meld, and you’re good to go.

What’s GOOD: as I mentioned, this is a kind of a universal sauce for lots of things, but this one lends itself better to fish (with the capers, cornichons and lemon), but I’ll tell you right off, since I made it I’ve used it to dip leftover chicken into, and even some asparagus. It was lovely. AND, I’ve used it instead of mustard or mayo on a sandwich.

What’s NOT: really nothing – it’s a great basic sauce to serve for fish, but don’t let that limit you to using it on other things.

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No, don’t be confused – my last post was DUCK with shallots and grapes. I adapted it to chicken. So good.

Don’t get me wrong – I like duck, but whenever I cook it, or eat it, I don’t want to look at the calorie and fat count. Those darned ducks store up fat like nobody’s business! So, after having the duck prepared this way – and after reading in the recipe that it could be made with chicken, a-ha! Chicken it is.

The duck was cooked with high heat and long. I knew chicken, with much, much less fat to render, would be a dried out mess, so I researched some braised chicken recipes and came up with a formula that worked. The timing I used was from Judy Rodgers.

What I want you to get from this recipe is the succulent sauce – I love chicken – but this recipe is so enhanced by the use of shallots and grapes. Serve it with some rice or mashed potatoes (or maybe some disguised mashed cauliflower?). And for sure serve some crusty bread along side to dip into those fabulous juices.

The making of this is VERY easy. Add seedless grapes (a pound) and about 12-15 shallots (yes, that’s a lot, but trust me), pour in some red wine and chicken broth, some aromatics, nestle the chicken right in on top and into the oven it goes for about 30 minutes at 375°F. Covered. Then you reduce the temp to 200°F, remove the lid and bake for another hour. THEN, you turn up the heat to 400°F and get it juicy brown in 15 minutes. Remove, put the chicken out on a cutting board, tent for 10 minutes while you finish getting everything else together, then slice and serve. Meanwhile, pour the pan juices into a fat separator, let it sit for 5 minutes, return to the pan and continue to reduce it some if you’d like.

What you then have is a great platter of tasty chicken with shallots and grapes to eat on the side. And some delicious sauce to serve on the side, or drizzle on top of the chicken. Do eat the shallots and grapes – they’re to die for (if you can get that excited about an onion or a grape, that is). My taste buds were singing.

What’s GOOD: how easy this was to make. No browning, just braising, really, with some varied ingredients. And the taste – well the grapes and shallots add a fragrant and tasty sweetness to the mix; the juice is out of this world, so don’t waste it!

What’s NOT: nary a thing, really. Takes a couple of hours; that’s it!

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You know the word unctuous? Not a word I use very often, and it doesn’t pertain to every dish you might prepare that delivered delicious results.

Having used that word, I decided to look it up. Unctuous, in relating to food, is only used in conjunction with greasy. Well. That brought me up short. This duck, well, yes, I suppose it did have a generous amount of fat in the pan, but it definitely was not greasy. So maybe unctuous isn’t the right word. I thought it had a more generous description/definition meaning soothing, rounded flavor. Which this duck was. So, if you’re turned off by the word unctuous, please disregard!

What this duck was, was EASY to make, and it was just bursting with flavor. My friends, Bud & Cherrie, invited me for dinner one night, and Bud, having read an article in Saveur about duck, decided to make this dish. Every once in awhile he gets a bug in his ear and decides to cook. So Cherrie took the back seat and made sides. I brought dessert.

Once I got home I looked up the recipe, and read that it could also be made with chicken, so my next recipe in a few days, will be this same recipe, but with chicken. As I’m writing this, I’ve just finished using up all of the chicken left over from making it (and  used the last of it in a soup). But this post is about duck.

The duck is only prepped with some salt. In a large Dutch oven you layer in the flavors – a pound of red seedless grapes and a boat load of shallots. A lot of them – at least 12 if not more if they’re small. You add some low-sodium chicken broth and an equal quantity of good red wine, add some bay leaves and fresh thyme, and you’re in business. The duck gets laid in on top of all that stuff and put into a HOT oven for about 2 hours, give or take, with some of it covered, and some not. By that time, the duck is just about falling apart, but it’s absorbed some of the wonderful flavors of the grapes, shallots and red wine.

When Bud removed it from the pot it still held together – barely – and he put it out on that platter (above), gently cut it into pieces and we helped ourselves. It was so moist and tender. We all dunked bread into the luscious juices too. That may have been the best part! When I made this with chicken, I poured the juices through a fat separator, used some for left overs, then used the remaining in a delicious soup I made.

What’s GOOD: first off, it’s EASY. That’s the part that I liked best. The flavor was full – you got a hint of the shallots and red wine and grapes. A domestic-raised duck will feed 4 people. If they’re smaller, you might need 2 ducks. As you likely know, they’re expensive (unless you have them on your property). Altogether wonderful meal; worth making for sure. And yes, unctuous still is the word I’d use, even if it might be wrong!

What’s NOT: the only thing I’d mention is the length of time it took to prep the shallots. Buy big ones, so you can use fewer of them, and they’re easier to peel. Overall, nothing at all wrong with this dish – well maybe the fat content. I didn’t want to know . . . and by the way, the nutrition count you’ll see at the end of the recipe assumes you’re going to eat all the skin and (greasy) juices, which you probably won’t do.

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Do you still have some cranberries stuck in the back of your refrigerator? Or maybe a package in the freezer. This one’s for you!

The other day I was trying to find cornichon pickles in my refrigerator. I knew I had some, but couldn’t seem to find them. People who don’t cook much don’t have that kind of problem, I’d guess, since you might be able to open the refrigerator and you can see everything in it at one glance. Not so with mine. I’ve got all kinds of stuff in mine, little jars and packages of this and that, some in little long rectangular box/trays slid onto a shelf, on rounders on the top shelf, etc. Anyway, lo and behold, I had a bag of fresh cranberries pushed up against the back wall on the bottom shelf. That package, unfortunately, had to be tossed out, but I also had a small amount of fresh cranberries in a ziploc bag in the freezer. Perfect for this cake.

Having been invited to dinner with my friends Cherrie and Bud, I was asked to bring dessert. And knowing my schedule on that date, I knew I needed to make it the day before. Whatever it was I decided to make. I scrolled through my to-try recipes and settled on this one, since cranberries were on my brain. One of my criteria was to NOT have to make a trip to the grocery store. So, this one fit the bill. I had everything, including Greek yogurt, Chinese five spice, almonds and both the frozen cranberries and dried cranberries. Zi-pi-dee-do-da. Did I spell that right? Haven’t a clue!!

The dry ingredients are mixed up together. Easy. The butter needed to be warmed (my Dacor microwave does a stellar job of bringing chilled butter to room temp with one 10 second period, a pause to turn over the cubes, and another zap of 6 seconds, and the cubes are soft but not too soft. The batter was begun by whipping the butter (adding lots of air), then the sugars were added, eventually the eggs, yogurt, then the dry ingredients and mixed just briefly. Once that was combined, the dried cranberries and the halved frozen cranberries plus toasted almonds were added and it easily slid into the greased and floured Bundt cake pan. It baked for over an hour, cooled for an hour, then I upended it onto my wood cutting board to cool completely. I covered it in plastic wrap overnight (since I don’t have a glass dome cake cover). It was easy enough to bring along a fresh orange and I decorated the cake just before serving. I also bought some vanilla ice cream on the way to their house.

What’s GOOD: loved the Chinese five spice (it’s different because of the little amount of ground fennel and Szechuan pepper in it). It gives this cake a different flavor – but you can’t quite identify it. It was moist and sweet. Liked the use of frozen cranberries (tart) and the dried cranberries (sweet). You will want ice cream with this. I brought more than half of it home (even after sharing some with Cherrie & Bud) and it’s now in the freezer from some occasion when I need a dessert in a hurry! On the scale of heavy cake to light cake, I’d say it was about in the middle. The cake pan was heavy. Just don’t overcook it (test with a toothpick) so it doesn’t get dry.

What’s NOT: maybe that you don’t have frozen cranberries on hand. The cake was easy to make, although the ingredient list might be daunting – it’s not really that difficult.

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No, it’s not pizza. Sort of looks like it, with some arugula on top. It’s a grain type crust with a filling that contains caramelized onions, sweet potatoes, Feta cheese and Swiss chard.

When I was served this tart, I’d only heard the name teff. Knew nothing about it. Had never tasted it. It bakes up kind of dark (see the crust at the back edge?) and it’s crunchy. Even though the grains are tiny, they don’t dissolve, but they remain crunchy through the baking. I liked that part. Teff is an ancient grain and is full of iron, in case you need some in your diet. It’s a carb, of course. You can buy both the grains (whole, tiny little things) or you can buy teff flour. In this recipe, don’t use teff flour, only the grains.

There at right you can see a photo of the grains. It’s hard to get a perspective with the photo – but those grains are about the size of poppy seeds. Golden brown, obviously.

So the crust you make here contains regular flour too, along with salt, butter and ice water to bring it together. You make it, then chill it for a bit, to make it easier to roll out and get into a tart pan. Use a tart pan with a removable bottom. You can press the pastry some to get it up into the edges. It’s chilled for a bit again, then you pre-bake it, blind bake with foil inside and filled with pie weights or dried beans. The only caution with this tart has to do with the baking . . . After baking for about 10 minutes, lift a corner of the foil. If any of the tart shell sticks to the foil, bake another 1-2 minutes and check again. It shouldn’t take much more than that. If it sticks, the shell isn’t quite cooked through and will get soggy.

Meanwhile you will have started on the filling. Sweet potatoes need to be baked, then cooled, peeled and chopped into small pieces. Red onions need to be rendered and caramelized, which takes awhile. Balsamic vinegar is added to the sweet potato mixture and another little jot added to the Swiss chard mixture. Some Feta is crumbled up and you use eggs to hold the filling together. Those things are layered in a particular order, then the tart is baked for 25-30 minutes, then the caramelized onions are added on top. They warm up just from the temperature of the tart coming out of the oven. Garnish the top with some arugula and serve warm. Or it can be served at room temp, but I’d recommend the warm version. The recipe came from Tarla Fallgatter, at a recent cooking class.

What’s GOOD: the crunch of the teff, for sure. Liked the combination of sweet potatoes and Swiss chard, plus the little bit of Feta. And the super-sweet caramelized onion add a lovely flavor. Altogether delish.

What’s NOT: this takes a bit of work on all counts – baking the potatoes, making the crust and blind-baking it, chopping  up all the other ingredients and cooking both the Swiss chard part separately from the sweet potato part. Just more work than you might think.

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