Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Facebook Fairytale

Arrrgghhh! No camera in the foreseeable future...... I was mid-photoshoot (more about that in a moment!) when the camera DIED! So this week and maybe the next (and so on, and maybe so on.....) I will just be bringing you a story !
Haha! Lucky you!
The initial plan was show you what I eat several nights a week, but as I began to write,I decided to mix it up a little.

The www. : instant access to information and people in just countless ways. My favourite way of connecting to people via the internet has to be Facebook....
Corny? A little I guess, but having grown up in Kenya and with most of my childhood friends important people now spread across the globe, I have slowly lost contact with nearly everybody (ok, EVERYBODY!) I knew before I was 19.
But through Facebook, I am now back in regular contact with a couple dozen of my old friends. Nothing in depth. A little comment on a status here, a brief reminisce there. It isn't about clinging to the past, but about knowing how those people who were such a big part of my childhood are going as adults.

As an aside; last year I became fb friends with an old uni pal, on what just happened to be the very same week he was coming to the Canberra Show with some of his students.....and just like that, less than a week later, we were having our very own 17 year reunion!
Bless Facebook!

But I digress....there is the story I want to tell you. This past month, I have been having my very own Facebook Fairytale!

Here are the main characters:
Me: a girl who loves to muck around with a Nikon D60 in her spare time- Canberra, Australia
Troy: a boy who was 3 years ahead of me in high school -USA
Shauna: tutu designer, also Troy's nephew's fiancee'-USA

Troy sent me and maybe all of his friends a link to Shauna's business Milah's Tutu Closet. I accordingly became a fan, and wrote her a message something to the effect of "Those tutus are so gorgeous. They would be awesome photo props for a shoot."

No sooner had the words left my 'comment ' button, than I recieved a friend request, from Shauna (but sent from networking Troy!)
I remember chuckling a little to myself, thinking 'ah, he senses a sell!' And with another click of a button, Shauna and I became 'friends'. For several days, I would comment on her daily status and she would comment on my photo albums.
I messaged Shauna that I would be ordering a few tutus in the near future and all was good.

And the likely path would have been suchly:
1. I would have bought the tutus
2. I would have set the tutus aside,stored all frothy and fairylike in a special box so as not to squash them, for that photoshoot op that would probably never happen..... do I lack confidence...um....GUILTY!

But then...
THEN one day I got a message from Shauna that changed everything..... She wrote: 'What is your mailing address. I think I am going to ship you some tutus! On the house! If you get some photos taken of them do you mind if I use them for my website?? Just a thought! '

I freaked right out!!!! No-one has ever, EVER given me free stuff. I tried to talk the girl out of it...but she would not back down, and when I emailed Troy to get him to do something about her stubborn refusal of my business, he backed her decision.

So it came about that I got a package of 4 (not the 2 I was expecting, but 4) of the most beautiful tutus ever. Tutus with ribbons that tie in a delicious bow at the back....Tutus made uniquely, with little bits of tulle woven around the ribbon in such a way thatf they froth up and sit perfectly around a child's waist, sit in a way that the ones from a dept store never would. My inner child fell in love with these tutus.

And then I did the only thing I could....I got on fb and called out for little girls to shoot tutus in.

The fallout? From Shauna's generosity?

-Photots! Shauna now has a wide range of photos of cherubs wearing tutus from Milah's Tutu Closet . .
-A name! I was forced to create a name for my photography to put copyright on the pictures. I came up with the Swahili word Kazuri which means 'small and beautiful'. Kazuri pics.... :) It sounds right to me.
-Experience! I got invaluable experience photographing and working with children other than my own.
-Confidence! I did 3 photoshoots in one week, and I had to learn to improvise and be creative and cope with lighting disasters. And I was happy with a lot of the photos. I actually said outloud to someone...." I think that after today's photos, I might now call myself a photographer."
-A logo on its way! Another fb friend (a second cousin I have met only once, and then for less than 10 minutes) messaged me to ask if her new graphic design company could design a logo for my business to help get their name out!!! I have a business? Woohoo!
-Paying work! I have recieved several offers of photo jobs that otherwise would never have been sent my way!
Want to see some of the tutus? Thought you might!


































do you have a cool Facebook story?

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Sudanese Welcome Feast

I got a phone call on Monday inviting us to a Sudanese feast….and also requesting the use of our church hall for that same function…….talk about last minute! So all week I have been super excited about being able to share some photos and descriptions of true home style food from Sudan with you guy. And then……my camera died on the eve of the feast. When I realized it was not going to come good, I threw a 3 point hissy and then assumed the foetal for a full hour, till someone else needed to use the bathroom , I put the catastrophe into perspective, in the light of how some people have it these days and decided to make the best of it. So the pics will remain small this week, and we will all just need to put on our imagination caps!

Sadly, the party venue didn’t work out and it all had to take place in the couple’s tiny home…but nonetheless I took the 4 year old along with me, to get his first true taste of African hospitality!
Please note: if you are the type of person who gets irritated at being put in the waiting bay at a McDonald’s drive thru, the African hospitality experience is not for you. Waiting is a big part of the process, the EXPERIENCE. This is sloooooowwwww slow food. In Kenya, we would go to a home for dinner, only to find that the main course was still tethered to a post outside, alive and well. I am talking slow food, people.
The party had begun at 4, and it was to welcome back my friend and her baby daughter after spending the best part of a year being nurtured in Sydney by extended family. This is a very common thing within a Sudanese family when the first child is born. The village mentality kicks in.
When we (we being: myself , the 4 yr old and 2 half-charged inferior, ancient point-and- shoots) got there at 4:45, the women had just finished their tea, and the men were having theirs made before their eyes…..I really wanted to watch and photograph it, but I felt a little intrusive. I did see that there was a tray of glass cups; each had only a mound of sugar at the bottom. I assumed the lady serving, would be pouring hot tea over that sugar.
The main living room was occupied by the menfolk…and all the ladies and little ‘uns were out back in the dining room. A large mattress hastily placed on the floor made up for the lack of seats….everyone was horrified that I sank down onto the mattress rather than try to oust one of them from their seats! HUH? And I sat there with a cheerful ‘I –have-no-idea-what –you- are-saying-or-laughing-about-but-I-will-pretend-I-do’ smile plastered on my face for ages. They all knew each other and my hostess was run off her feet. Half an hour in, once everyone realized we had Kenya in common (most Sudanese people in Australia have spent more than half their lives in Kenya) there were some sweet conversations.
I got my tea nearly an hour into the party. And it turned out to be chai, the very best chai I have had since I have being back in Australia…..not quite as strong in colour, but the exact same taste as the chai I used to queue up for at my boarding school in Kenya. ! No spices, just hot sweet milky chai with a thin film on top from the milk having boiled. When I got to the bottom of my glass (all too soon) I realized that it had been made on powdered milk. Mmmmmmm good. somehow, I made the pic of the chai into a video...it only goes for like 2 seconds, it is wobbly, but take a look and gnash your teeth that youdidn't get some.... :)




Oh so many children there were in that dining room, all of us waiting! Beautiful children all swarming around us hungrily for the next 3 hours , during which time the great metal tubs of food sat on the table and mocked our hungry bellies.
The mattress was a Godsend. The 4 year old organized some somersault competitions on it, just before he started teaching some of his new friends his hand-clapping games followed by him initiating a lively round of Chinese whispers. All the fun petered out after a while though; the kids started hitting and biting; the chatting stopped and we all sat in silence for a bit, then we began to set each other off in bouts of yawning. My hostess, who had stayed up the entire night before, cooking, was worried about me waiting so long,( I left 3 kidlets at home, see) She said that soon the others would pray and we would eat.


I assumed ‘pray’ would simply be a quick-yet-heartfelt ‘grace’ over the food, but, nay, the reality was an hour-long prayer meeting which involved singing and much discussion and demonstrating of church choir dance moves and uniforms!
But finally, FINALLY!!!! …..it was food time. The men and older ladies went first and they certainly did not hold back . I was more than a little disappointed to watch the one plate piled high with pastries ( that looked like rustic samosas), disappear well before us women even got a look in!!!!
I was practically frothing at the mouth to see what lay inside the huge metal tubs. And it was worth the wait…..


We feasted on:
Sudanese injera (which I have to say I like far less than the Ethiopian or Somali injera….not as fluffy.)
There was a fragrant stew; tender cubes of beef smothered in rich tomato sauce full of garlic, and cumin .





Another beef stew ( background) which tasted of the same spices, but dry and cooked with potatoes and carrot.
To my palate (palate, palate, palate! )both those stews tasted exactly like Somali food doeswhen cooked by a non-Somali. Ummm maybe only .5% of you will have any idea what I mean….haha, sorry! They were delicious.

There was a green stew (foreground) also….and I cannot lie; the texture was like eating a bowl of slime….. it turned out to be lamb ( fall-apart-in-your-mouth-lamb, mind!) in okra sauce!. The texture was nasty, but the flavour! Mmmm, I am a big okra fan! Never had it all dissolved like this, although I DID lick my plate.



Desert was icing-sugar-dusted rounds that looked like shortbread; they were EXTREMELY sweet and had the 4 yr old besotted. I had a nibbled and could have sworn there may even hav been a little shredded wheat in there! Delicious! Pah! Curse the sugarfree-life!


Coming Soon: dinner at the CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) training restaurant. Cannot wait to try it out!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Feeding Friend-zy-Starlight Yellow Cake-simple fluffy yet moist-ish cake!




This is the afternoon tea treat I baked for the kid’s friends the other day, along with the brownies.... though for some reason it was not as moist as it usually is on this occasion (note to self, stick to measuring the butter next time, can’t skimp on le buerre.)

It is one recipe that takes me back to when the older kids were young, and life was pretty intense yet so simple at the same time. It comes from the dog-eared, disintegrating Betty Crocker cookbook my Mom got for me on a trip to the States, I think. The recipe is printed on the only page in the cake section that hasn’t come loose and fallen out completely. Starlight Yellow Cake. It does have a yellowish buttery tinge; maybe the lack of butter is why this particular effort was more a creamy hue than yellow .

When we lived in a little country town in NSW, I had the kids all get involved in the local show (like a fair, if you are a North American). So they all entered the baking competition. 3 year old Kara and 6 year old Zac shared a batch of Starlight Yellow Cake batter (hmmm, was that cheating?) and made 6 cupcakes each out of it. The fact that in their category, Kara’s batch won 1st prize and Zac’s won 2nd, was due in part to the unfortunate incident on the way in to the judging when Zac’s nose and two of his cupcakes hit the dirt literally......ah, memory lane!

Again like most of what I do, this is a very simple recipe (well, it is if you have a Mix master, or electric beater)...everything gets thrown in together.

So here are our ingredients:



· 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
· 1 1/2 cups sugar
· 1/2 cup butter or stick margarine, softened
· 1 1/4 cups milk
· 3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
· 1 tsp. salt
· 1 tsp. vanilla extract
· 3 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 180C (or 160 if fan forced or 350 F )
2. Grease bottom and sides of rectangular pan, 13 X 9 X 2 inches, 2 round pans 9 X 1 1/2 inches, or 3 round pans, 8 X 1 1/2 inches with shortening and lightly flour.* (I actually use grease proof paper as I use a 9x13 cake pan and that never usually comes out whole for me with the grease proof!)
3. (my favorite part….look how simple!) Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.
4. (this you will find tedious with some kind of electrical assistance) Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally; pour into pan(s).
5. Bake rectangle 35 to 40 minutes, 9-inch rounds 25 to 30 minutes, 8-inch rounds 30 to 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or until cake springs back when touched lightly in center.
6. Cool rectangle in pan on wire rack; cool rounds 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire rack.
7. Cool completely, about 1 hour.


9. Frost as desired. ( I Myself, chucked in a half cup butter, nearly a full pack of no frills icing sugar, a capful of vanilla, and then added just enough milk droplets to make a creamy consistency while it got beat up in the Mix Master. No food coloring cause I wanted the fairy sprinkles to be the ‘hero’. lol!


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Feeding Friend-zy: where I get off my bum and cook for friends: Lazy Brownie


I made a batch of brownies last night ready for having four of the kids' friends over today.

I always thought brownies were a cake or cookie recipe gone 'wrong' but then tasted so amazing, that people kept making them..... didn't you? But no, it would appear ( I Google-researched it) that they were actually specially created for a ladies' fair in Chicago where the organizers wanted a snack that ladies could eat more simply than a piece of cake and that they could hold in their hands.
So the truth may not be so romantic as some chef accidentally discovering pure culinary gold, but we all love to eat brownies! I have eaten lots of good brownie, but didn't have a hard and fast recipe that never let me down.
That all changed when I started baking for youth group. Then I knew it was time....time to seek a legend to claim as my own. Cause what is the point of reinventing the wheel?

I did my research and learned that The Barefoot Contessa's brownie recipe is pretty much the unofficial world's best (please do not quote me on that) judging by all the raving comments of those who had tried it and ADORED it! I was desperate to try the recipe but it was late at night and I didn't have all the ingredients in my pantry....so I looked for the world's second best brownie and found it at: Kitchen Illiterate and since I made it the first time, I haven't strayed from it. No going back for me...though I have adapted it a little. Click on the link if you want the pure unadulterated recipe.....

As my blog states in its title, I am a lazy cook; I cut corners. This recipe is a forgiving and hardy one, and never lets me down, even though I skip through all of the delicate ( I read 'tedious') steps of its creation. And I double the recipe, cause if I am going to go to all that trouble, I want to not have to do it again for a loooong time! So if you do SIMPLE and BIG, we are going to get along!

Here is what we have to work with

I am a no frills gal. i bake a lot and haven't got the extra moolah to waste on pretty packaging, though there are exceptions. Whooops! Forgot the eggs, you'll need a bunch of those!


Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, very soft
2 1/2 cups. sugar
1 1/2 cups. plus 4 T. unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. or a bit more of cinnamon
4 cold large eggs
1 cup. all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups. chocolate chips (i just chuck in whatever I have, that is near enough really)

1. Heat the oven to 325F (180 C for OZ cooks or 160 with fan forced oven)
2. Grease your baking dish.
3. Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a bowl, stir well.
4. Stir in the vanilla extract and the cinnamon.
5. Stir in the eggs vigorously. Once the batter is smooth, shiny, and creamy looking (ummm, mine often isn't as I have skipped the steps that melt the sugar totally, I like the brownie to have a little crunch. If you really want a glossy batter refer to the above link.) This is what mine looks like.....
6. Add in the flour. Add in the chocolate chips, and spread the batter into the pan.
7. Bake the brownies for about 40 minutes, depending on your oven, until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.
8. I always cut the brownies before they are fully cool as they are easier to cut then! :)
Serve hot with icecream or cold with tastebuds!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Usually when I go to the bus depot markets, it is because I have a craving for Fekerte’s and can’t afford to go to her actual restaurant at that particular point in time....so everything else is a bit of a blur, 'cause my tastebuds drag me past any other temptations on their mission to get stuck into some injera bu wat.

Today was different; I promised the tastebuds that I will be taking them to Fekerte’s restaurant SOON for ‘research’, so today we would ‘look but not touch’ The injera, that is. Also I decided to ration myself to $20 of treats to bring home.





As soon as I passed the homemade drinks man, my mouth started watering and I was thirsty....



.....but I browsed a little first.



Saw some tasty looking food stalls....








I had gone early morning, so I knew I would not be getting any main meals....my original aim was actually just to get baklava....I had been craving it, but a day and a half into Naughty Day I wasn’t craving a whole lot of anything (read: full and overindulged belly...)

Baklava stall


Saw Fekerte’s .............mmmmmmmmmmm.....thankfully she was only setting everything up so I didn’t give in.

Then I came back past the juice man and got a glass of Apple & Lemon juice $4.

Sweet Mother! Tart, fresh, dominated by the lemon, mellowed and sweetened by the apple which lingered on my palate... (lol, I really think I want to say palate a lot on this blog. Palate, palate, palate!!!) I went away wondering if he sells by the gallon..


I decided to wander around and take some more pics before buying my baklava and heading home. As I did, someone asked me to sample their goods. It was ....the Classic Kettle Cornpeople!!!!



Someone at work first introduced me to kettle corn. It was that good, I went to Hall markets as soon as it was on again specially to get some....now the whole family is addicted and I didn’t get enough bags last time!



When I asked to take some pics, they kindly decided to show me the kettle corn- making process.
The kettle is massive (yes it IS cooked in a kettle) and has oil in the bottom.


The corn and sugar (and I am assuming the salt) mix is poured into the hot kettle. Once the popcorn starts popping, it gets a bit hairy! Check out the protective gear! There was random popcorn popping out as there is no lid on the kettle!


Then the man got real busy, stirring frantically as the popcorn exploded en masse.




The enormous kettle was then tipped over sideways (it is attached to a tipping apparatus thingy...aren't I awesome with technical terms?) into a great metal container to cool.


Kettle corn seems to have been something that originated in America, but these guys have brought it to Oz. Classic Kettle Corn’s catch line is ‘ slightly salty, slightly sweet’. It is a little reminiscent of caramel corn but lighter and that awesome salty touch brings out the sweetness. While I was there one girl was telling us how her boyfriend sticks his choc top (choc coated ice-cream cone you get at the movies for overseas readers) into his popcorn, so the popcorn had that sweet and salty flavour.
Sweet and salty just go together. They belong together. Buy some! The Classic Kettle Corn guys are at Hall Markets first Sunday of the month, I think, or Bus Depot Markets at Kingston on Sundays.




So this brought my quota to $14, so i realized that I would not be getting a $13 box of baklava goodies this time.... and I bought a loaf of Dom's Woodfired Spelt, the softest bread Dom had on offer, to please my children, even though i really wanted one of the crusty flavoured breads. The spelt was indeed soft and tasty but next time I will go for crusty! The way I like it!






It was nice toasted....Kara's lunch:




Next time I go, it will be for the baklava.....and it will be soon.

Mecca Bah

( I have to prewarn you that the lighting in the restaurant we were at was criminal for photography....The falalfel photos did NOT turn out....so sad about that. And most of the photos, have a hand holding a lit-up mobile phone in desperate attempt to direct some sort of lighting towards the food.)

A learning curve is always good, especially if it happens early in the piece I think. As per usual I get more than my fair share of the ‘how not to’s and the ‘so that is why you don’t do that’ experiences. And here is what I learned from my first food blogging dinner out!
Note to self: Saturday nights are BAD nights to go out for food blogging! Can you tell I never go out? Yes, we picked a Saturday night to go to Manuka to eat! Without a booking. Hehe. The plan was to stroll around and soak up the atmosphere as we looked for the place that ‘felt’ right.

Tracey and I strolled… well, actually, stop right there. You couldn’t call what I was doing ‘strolling’. This jeans and shorts girl wore a dress! And ‘because it was such a long dress, I wore my super high heels so I wouldn’t trip on the dress. So off course now I was tottering around trying not to trip on my HEELS. The heels hurt, so there was no gracefulness and my handbag is actually a backpack so there was really no delicate way to hold it. The upside of the backpack was that it was big enough to hide my lower-than-usual-neckline so I clutched it gratefully around my bosoms. Picture Nanny Mcphee on a big night out, if you will. Poor Tracey.


(here is the rotten dress, and the rottener shoes, before they caused me pain)
I had left my list of possibilities behind, so we worked off my memory. Ginseng, Legend or Saffron. In the end we ditched them all and went with Mecca Bah due to its ambience. But alas…FULLY BOOKED!
‘Book the next sitting and come back’ the waiter said. So we did.
We decided to go to Verve, which is right on one of the corners of Manuka and have a snack while we waited. That place was packed! Hopping with a lot of big groups. Once this little recluse acclimatised to all the noise, I could feel that it was a friendly vibe. We were quickly watered and fed. The maître d’ was a little preoccupied, but meh!; I would have been too.
Trio of House Made dips served with grilled pita $12.90
The dish was good and filling. It was not the best Turkish bread I have had, tasting a little like packet mix, but it was toasted and drizzled with olive oil and looked pretty! Needed salt, and there was a lot more bread than dip to scoop up into it. This girl likes a whole lotta dip!
The dips were mild, not in the least bit garlicky or salty (note that I need salt AND garlic, on pretty much anything savoury.). Both the carrot and the beetroot dips were sweetish and used freshly grated vegetables, not pureed. The capsicum dip was slightly more tangy and spicy and was my pick of the three.
So back we tottered to the Mecca Bah, where we were ushered straight in without even checking our names. The first thing I asked the waiter who took our drink orders was what the dish the restaurant was most noted for was. He was a little startled but quickly came up with an enthusiastic ‘Well chef’s lamb pizza is the probably our most popular dish’
I was rather disappointed on two counts:
1. On the way, I had told Tracey that the one thing I knew I wasn’t going to eat was pizza because I have it a lot and I make a great pizza! (if I say so ma-self!)
2. I adore all Middle Eastern cuisine having grown up on it…...well, NEARLY all. I do NOT like the pides (pizzas) or the tabbhouli….’cause what is it with all that parsley?
But, this was for research, so I decided I had to ‘take one for the team’.


For entrée we ordered:

Sweet potato falafels, on tahini sauce $10 (unphotographed due to bad lighting and bad handling of new lens)

I have had a lot of experience with falafels in my time, some not pleasant….it can be overcooked, cooked in bad oil, made with non-fresh ingredients, or worse it comes out of a packet. The best falafel I have ever had was at a takeaway stall at the local Croydon Park primary school. Generous balls, golden and crisp on the outside and steaming hot, delicately spiced chickpeas filling within.
When the falafels landed on our table I was a little disappointed. They were small and dark, and I thought 'overcooked!’ but one crunchy bite into my first ….I was transported straight back to Croydon Park. Perfect!!! The sweet potato filling was only a little sweet and I could identify garlic, cumin, coriander and lemon in it also.
The tahini sauce was light and mild and I wondered if it had a little yoghurt in it? I would love the recipe!

Kataifi pastry filled with Middle Eastern cheeses $12
This pastry is intriguing! I first saw it on MKR with Veronica and Shadi’s winning dessert. When I had my first mouthful of these little pastries, I spent ages trying to figure out what the pastry was made of, as it nearly tasted like it may have had a bit of parmesan through it (Kataifi is actually a shredded pastry resembling shredded wheat)
And inside the spun crunchiness of the pastries was a taste explosion of creamy cheeses (I am guessing labne and feta) with a smattering of pine nuts. I wanted to just eat those all night.





Main: Garlic chicken kebab, mjaddarah, yoghurt sauce & tabouleh $22.50

The chicken was cooked perfectly. Succulent moist cubes on a skewer. Mjaddarah is real Middle Eastern comfort food….rice, lentils and onions. It is something I have wanted to learn to cook first and then learn to cook well. It was delicate; maybe a little too delicate; it wanted a tad more grease and salt.






Pizza-Spit roasted lamb, rocket, yoghurt & sumac $20.50
There was a lot to like. No parsley for one thing!!! :) The meat was laid on the pide in tender grilled strips. The sumac added a nice light tang to the rich lamb and the bread, and the yoghurt drizzled over it was yum. I steered clear of the rocket to be honest; I eat enough rabbit food every other day to want to face it on naughty day. It was a shame the pizza got a little soggy on the bottom.


Dessert: ICE-CREAMS, 3 SCOOPS $9.50 (on the menu it is a little confusing as each flavour has the $9.50 price against it, but it is 3 scoops for that price.

We were pretty nearly stuffed; ok we were full as googs, so we decided to share a plate of 3 scoops of ice-cream.
Baked apple: You have to try this. I don’t know how they do it! I kept saying. 'They should call it Apple Crumble ice cream'…but no that description wasn’t quite right …Know what it tastes like? Apple Pie! How can ice-cream taste like Apple pie? Try it! Tell me what they put in it!
The Halva ice-cream was easily identified also, with chunks of halva through it. I loved it.
The Plum and Vanilla was a little ambiguous….I guess I could taste the vanilla….



Tracey and I relished the food at Mecca Bah overall. One of the very best things about it(probably just as important as its ambience) is its waiting staff. Friendly, efficient, constantly checking our drinks were full. And as we left, the waiter who had recommended the pizza, but had actually not served us anything beyond our drinks, came over as we were paying, to ask if we had had the pizza after all. I got a real sense from their behind the scenes banter with each other as we were leaving, that they enjoy each other’s company as well, a staff that gets along.