torley manor

My new silkscreen station/workbench/desk is now complete and operational. Earlier in the week I did the final painting of the top of the desk using black spraypraint. Not the best idea to do that much spraypainting inside in the winter in a house without any additional ventilation. I had to open up a window and the backdoor (despite the freezing temps to make sure that neither Emma or I suffered any permanent brain damage. The result turned out nice though.

Here are some shots:

Photo from below showing off its snazzy lime green undercarriage

The worktop in action — note the new large squeegee that Emma got me for xmas!

Other exciting news is that I was asked by one of the members of the Just Seeds collective to have my OBTAIN A YIELD print sold through Just Seeds. This is really exciting as Just Seeds is a great bunch of artists and i’m honored for the chance distribute one of my prints along side their art. Today I finished up a batch of prints to send their way. Exciting stuff!!

Oh, i’ve been ignoring my Fun-A-Day project, but I may get back into it this week. We’ll see.

DAY EIGHT
Friday I didn’t have to go to work. Not because of the snow, but rather due to a lack of warm spaces at my work. Dirty Pete (my boss) needed a warm space to spraypaint some stuff and the office/showroom area was the only area warm enough to make this happen. Sooo, he told me not to bother to come in (lest I inhale too many paint fumes and become useless to the company).

So I slept in and then got up and shoveled the walk, ate some breakfast, and decided to brave driving to go to a cafe for my Fun-A-Day project. I opted to check out Enrico’s Tazzo D’Oro in Highland Park. Over the years I’ve only ever gone there about 4 or 5 times. Its a nice cafe, but for whatever reason, we just never go there. Its a bit strange because as avid tea drinkers, you would think that a cafe with an extensive loose tea selection to choose from would warrant more visits.

Braving the icy roads
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Monday afternoon after leaving work in Millvale, I headed over to Lawrenceville to hit up the Dozen Bakeshop. On the way there, I saw Emma walking down the street — she had been checking out some of the Butler Street stores on her day off. I stopped and picked her up and we hit up Dozen together.

Some people have a problem with Dozen. I believe the warcry was “Fuck a motherfuckin’ $2.50 cupcake.” Honestly I think their vegan cupcakes are decent and have been known on occasion to throw down the required $2.50 to acquire one. However, on Monday I had my mind set on a different sweet — their vegan molasses ginger cookie. $1.50 for a cookie might also be questionable, but damn are they good. A nice crisp outside, yet very chewy, coated in big grains of sugar. So damn good. To go with my cookie, I got a cup of Earl Grey. Dozen carries teas by Intelligentsia who not only make a delicious tea, but who work to do a great deal of direct trade with growers. Their Early Grey is mild, yet pleasant. It comes loose leaf and Dozen offers packets for sale at the bakeshop.

Emma got a veggie sandwich and some Sencha tea. Chomp!

Afterwards we took an excursion to Shadyside to stop by Kards Unlimited so Emma could buy a 2010 planner. Mission accomplished we began to walk back to the card when we both asked “What’s that weird smell?” I noted that it smelled like someone burned up their car’s engine. As we turned the corner and looked in the adjacent parking lot, we saw what appeared to be a vehicle on fire and say “ohhhhh — that’s what’s making that smell.” I stopped long enough to take a photo and then we determined it was probably best to move along. Fire engine sirens were heard, so no need to call 911.

And thus ended that day’s Fun-A-Day adventure.

UPDATE 1-8-09 — Somehow when I typed this up last night I totally had my days messed up. Monday’s cafe visit was missing from my equation. I’ll write about that later. Oh how winter fucks with the mind!!

We’ve been having some trouble staying excited for Fun-A-Day this year. Emma has abandoned her project as an actual Fun-A-Day project (tho’ she is still working on elements of her project). After skipping out on going to a cafe on day three, I had plans to attend cafes for other events the following two days, so it made keeping my Fun-A-Day going much easier.

DAY FIVE
Since early November, Morning Glory Coffeehouse has been hosting Twin Peaks nights every Tuesday night. One episode each week projected on a “big screen.” As Emma has never watched Twin Peaks and i’ve only seen some of it, we’ve been going each week to watch. Cherry pie is served. Tuesday was the beginning of Season Two. Its been a really fun time.

As our time there was spent watching an episode of Twin Peaks, I didn’t get a chance to do any of my writing work, but we did partake of some hot beverages and pie. The tea selection at MoGlo isn’t great — only about 8 varieties — i think they might just have Bigelow teas. Long ago the owner Jeffery talked about getting some loose teas, but it hasn’t happened yet. Regardless of the mediocre tea selection, MoGlo does, as I said previously, have cherry pie for the Twin Peaks nights and also offers vegan sweets from My Goodies. In addition, MoGlo has a great relaxed atmosphere, Jeffery (and the rest of the MoGlo staff) are super cool, and they host cool art shows and music events. For these reasons MoGlo ranks among my top cafes in the city.

Morningside will be hosting a show featuring ex-Lungfish frontman Daniel Higgs on January 30th. Last year’s Daniel Higgs show at MoGlo was one of the best shows I attended last year. Get there early if you’re going cuz it got packed last time.

DAY SIX
Yesterday I had a meeting scheduled for the Kiva Han at the corner of Craig Street and Forbes Avenue. Kiva Han is a pretty standard cafe when it comes to their tea selection. Where Kiva Han excels is in its location — its a great place for people watching. Located between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon and across the street from the Carnegie Museums and main library, there tends to be a interesting selection of people flowing both through the cafe itself and the streets outside. I’ll often take walks into Oakland to go to the main library, pick up a new book, and spend awhile reading at Kiva Han, all the while checking out the people flowing through.

Yesterday I ended up showing up for my meeting about 15 minutes late. This was on account of a frozen water meter at work. It had frozen over the long weekend. On monday we worked on thawing it out but it turns out that the meter and the backflow preventer both cracked. The water company fixed the meter on Tuesday but Wednesday was the earliest we could get a plumber in to fix the backflow preventer. The plumber ended up getting delayed due to some other emergency issue, so he didn’t get to us until mid-afternoon rather than the morning. Anyway, this means I didn’t get out of work until 4:00, got to the meeting at 4:15 and slid directly into my meeting without getting any tea. Also once again, no writing was accomplished.

I forgot to take photo documentation of either my Day 5 or Day 6 cafe excursions.

DAY SEVEN
It seems that every third day I may fail to get a cafe. I could have hit up a cafe after work but it seemed like investing in some groceries would be a better thing for the household. Hit up the co-op and got some food, picked Emma up from work and we came home and hung out. At this point the snow had started coming down pretty good, so I opted to just stay home. Tonight is TV night (Parks and Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock) — reruns, yes — but it seemed like a better option that trudging out to the Crazy Mocha just to drink some tea.

Anyway, it looks like I probably don’t actually have to go into work tomorrow, so I should get a chance to venture out to a new cafe tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.

Yesterday I braved the icy temperatures and walked down to Lawrenceville to fulfill my obligation to my cafe-a-day project. I made my way to a relatively new cafe called Espresso A Mano, which as you can guess by the name is a bit more focused on the coffee than the tea. Regardless, they do have a modest tea selection and a great atmosphere, so it seemed like a fine place to get away to do my work.

When I got there the place was actually pretty packed. Mia, who is the member services coordinator for thePennsylvania Association For Sustainable Agriculture as well as a new member of the East End Food Coop board of directors was in line, so we took the chance to catch up on the goings on at both organizations. I procured a cup of red rooibos and took a seat by the front windows and set up to do some writing.

As I alluded to previously, Espresso A Mano’s tea selection isn’t particularly exciting or expansive. Just a small display of about 10 boxes of teabags on the counter. The rooibos is an option that you don’t see at too many cafes, so that is a bonus for them. They do give you a nice size mug with saucer and tiny spoon, which is also a nice touch. The space itself is spacious with high ceilings and a large glass garage door style window at the front (that they open up in nice weather and that offers a wonderful view of the outside on a cold winter day.)

I got some writing done. Unfortunately nothing too impressive, but at least it was a beginning. Hopefully the ideas will flesh out a bit and the writing will become more satisfying as the days move along.

DAY 3
Today things didn’t go completely as planned. We slept in (that was planned). We talked about some house projects (not planned, but not completely outside the realm of what was planned). I ended up watching the whole Steelers game (not planned, only planned on watching a couple quarters). Furthermore, I ended up laying on the floor wrapped up in a blanket for a while longer. That was the period when I originally meant to go on my daily cafe excursion, but it didn’t happen. At that point we made some dinner and discussed heading out to a cafe awhile after dinner. Afterwards we curled up in our respective blankets and read our books. After awhile of being wrapped up and warm reading books, I had no interest in heading out into the cold just to go to a cafe. Sooooo, I am here at home (Torley Cafe), drinking a big mug of oolong, working on this blog. The oolong is a loose tea from the bulk section at the coop. I don’t remember the name of the variety, but its a nice medium strength oolong. The atmosphere at this cafe is overall pleasing to me, though perhaps a bit chilly.

I’ll get back into the real ‘cafe-a-day’ project tomorrow — probably heading somewhere directly after work. But now its time to work on a little bit more of that zine writing.

It’s been since July since i’ve last posted on this thing; October since Emma has posted anything. We have been neglecting this blog. It’s not as if we haven’t been doing anything. We’ve just got out of the blogging groove and just haven’t made the effort to get back into it. But with a new year, we have decided to breathe some life back into this blog.

FUN-A-DAY!
Of course, January 1st means many things to many people around the world and one thing that it means around Pittsburgh in recent years is the beginning of the Fun-A-Day project. As you may recall, both Emma and myself participated in the project last year. Emma wrote a 12-Bar Blues Song A Day and I did a Pgh Drawing-A-Day. This year we are both participating again. Emma is doing another music-based project that will be more like 4 week long projects rather than a project per day. I’ll let her post more about that. My project involves me going to a different cafe each day this month, doing a quick review of the cafe and their tea selections, a little photo documentation, and spending the rest of my time at the cafe working on writing. Two specific writing projects will be getting some attention — 1) this blog, and 2) writings for a new issue of the long overdue tenth issue of my zine Here.Be.Dragons. If all goes well, you’ll be kept updated on my progress on this very blog.

DAY ONE
For day one of my project, we visited one of our neighborhood regulars — The Quiet Storm. The QS has the advantage of being relatively close to our house and offering veggie food options, so it was the perfect stop for a relaxed New Year’s morning visit. As a tea drinker, I really like the QS because 1) they use loose tea, 2) their teas are excellent quality, and 3) they give you your tea in a tall glass. I forget where they get their teas from, but their Earl Grey and English Breakfast (my two standards) are incredibly delicious compared with their teabag counterparts at most other local cafes. They have a modest selection of teas — about a dozen — with a handful of them being herbals. Nothing too fancy. Depending on when you are there, the QS is notorious for having slooow service and the quality of the food can be hit or miss. New Year’s morning service was great however, as was the food.

Tall glass of English Breakfast with soy creamer. Emma’s just rockin’ some coffee
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Bulb time! Plant your garlic! We are preparing one raised bed to grow nothing but garlic, in the hopes of having a sufficient harvest next summer to last us all year. We figure we eat a head of garlic per week, so we’ll need to plant about 50 bulbs. Get ready for some pictures once we get ‘em in the ground!

Hello little sweet potatoes! I wanted to eat some sweet potatoes, so Q went out to the backyard and pulled up a handful.

Chop and pan-fried an onion, a few garlic cloves, a good sized chunk of ginger, and then add the peeled and diced potatoes, about two tablespoons of curry paste (cheater!), about a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and a can of coconut milk. Let that heat up and start bubbling, add a few big handfuls of chopped fresh spinach, and let the works simmer till the potatoes are tender. When it’s about ready, add a shot of soy sauce, and serve over rice.

Blurry and steamy photo, but photo nonetheless.

Simple as that, and DANG! It’s remarkably good for such a simple dish. Would be even better with some firm chickpeas or some good fried tofu like the thai trucks know how to make. Maybe that’s my next project: deep fryer!!!!

I feel like I hear all the time about how people can’t afford to eat a vegan diet, because vegan food is so expensive. This annoys the hell out of me for two reasons:

1. I think it’s really important to spend money on food, to really honestly put your money where your mouth is. Food, clothing, and shelter are necessary to survival, right? So why not spend the money on food that will sustain you and your local economy?

2. The stuff that’s too expensive to make regular meals out of is the ultra-processed fake stuff, like soy cheese and deli slices. Make a treat out of it. You really don’t need to eat that much dairy cheese, and you sure don’t need that much soy cheese. It’s a matter of being a smart spender.

That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about where my priorities are — is it most important to me to eat a vegan diet? To eat an organic diet? To eat a local diet? Or to do the best I can with those three criteria? Where do I compromise and where do I stand my ground? I don’t really have a lot of answers, other than that it’s more important than ever to me to support local groceries and local farms.

Allegro Hearth baguette, market broccoli, sauce and spinach ravioli from the co-op.

Dinner tonight featured foods from a local bakery, a local farm, and two really good deals at the food co-op, which meant we fed ourselves a fine meal on ten bucks. It’s not hard to do, but it does take some planning. Get into the groove, etc etc.

PS: Got a bushel of Macintosh apples at the market today! Sauce is in our future! Here’s half of ‘em:

Living room, with carpet and no furniture.

Why, it’s layers of various wood stain, just as you suspected!

In an allergic panic a few weeks ago, I convinced Q that tearing out the carpet in the living room would be a good project for the day. We ripped it out (still have to tear out the dining room and hallway carpet, and then THAT IS IT! NO MORE CARPET IN THE WHOLE HOUSE!) and then realized we had no idea what we actually wanted to do about the floor.

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