Cubanismo!

The Cuban artist Carlos Estévez believes “that works of art...are men’s supreme effort to conquer the universe.” Mr. Estévez, who was born and educated in Havana and still works and lives there, has a show up at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery called “Images of the Thought”. Earlier this month, we had the privilege of catering his opening reception.

The reception brought 200 people to the gallery, which is on the Main Floor of the UB Center for the Arts. As the guests arrived at 5, Mr. Estévez went through the galleries and briefly explained each work of art. He works in a wide array of mediums, from drawings to ceramics to painting to installation art. He has developed a distinctive visual lexicon that owes something to primitive mythology and cosmology as much as 19th and 20th century science. Human figures are prominently featured in his work; from a distance his canvasses, which have a somewhat neutral palette, resemble old-fashioned medical charts, like those used by palm readers or phrenologists. From mid-range to up close, the details in his work have the whimsy of Cornell, as well as the mandala abstraction of Kandinsky and Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes.

After Mr. Estévez finished explaining the exhibition, we started serving a buffet of Cuban specialties. We offered homemade beef empanadas, grilled eggplant on skewers, and plantain chips with mojo sauce, which is a light-textured, spicy citrus dressing, like a vinaigrette, that is common throughout the Caribbean (and allegedly originated in the Canary Islands). We made miniature version of the traditional Cuban sandwich with roasted pork loin, ham, mustard, and dill pickles grilled between bread. Lacking the necessary plancha that gives the sandwich its characteristic, panini-like flatness, we used a grill pan and weighted the sandwiches down under a baking sheet with a heavy, water-filled pot. Hundreds of guava-filled pastellitos were assembled and baked in advance by hand, and we fried up an enormous batch of savory, crunchy bacalaitos, a salt cod fritter. Without access to a good Cuban beer, we poured Corona and white wine and other soft drinks. We were pleased when the artist and many other commented on how authentic the food was; a Cuban émigré even mentioned that the bacalaitos were as good as she or her mother could have made.

“Images of the Thought” is up at the UB Art Gallery, on the UB campus in East Amherst, until mid-February 2010.

The National Bird

Thanksgiving Week reminds us that for several years back around the turn of the millennium, we prepared the holiday meal for members of the McCormick family, the Illinois-based clan descended from the early 19th century inventor of the mechanical reaper. Over the past two centuries, various McCormicks went on to prominent roles in American life, including Chicago politics and journalism. We knew Matt McCormick, who worked in high-end Washington, D.C.-area real estate, and over the years, he engaged us to cook and serve the traditional holiday meal in various residences in Georgetown, Kalorama Heights, and the Embassy Row areas for his parents and other family members.

After several days of preparations, as the guests entered the media room/lounge of Mr. McCormick’s residence, our assistant served Pimm’s Cups, Campari-and-sodas and Oysters Rockefeller. (The main event was adult-oriented; various nannies looked after the children.) Around four the adults moved the dining room and the huge, circular glass-topped table. Mary McCormick, Matt’s mother, oversaw the table setting, which included Royal Worcester china, Christofle silver, and Waterford crystal. Fresh flowers and votives completed the ambience while classical music piped throughout the house. At each place was a small, hollowed-out pumpkin with its lid. Then our work really began.

We’d prepared a soup with cooked fresh pumpkin, chicken stock, spices and cream. We called it a bisque although it wasn’t thickened with rice. Bringing the bisque just to the boiling point (so it would stay hot but didn’t curdle), we poured it into an enormous, hollowed-out pumpkin set on a ceramic serving platter. After pouring white wine for the first course, our assistant removed the lids from the pumpkins at each place setting, propping each at a just-so, Martha Stewartesque angle. We followed behind, lading piping hot soup into each. The assistant followed with a silver dish of homemade sage croutons.

After the guests finished and our assistant cleared and reset for the main meal, the two of us circled the table with platters of the traditional meal. One year we carved at table, but mostly we offered a heaping platter of sliced turkey or turducken with homemade cornbread or cornbread-and-oyster stuffing with individual hollowed-out orange cups of fresh cranberry-orange relish. The assistant followed with mashed Idaho potatoes—the McCormicks insisted on Idaho spuds put through a ricer—and giblet gravy. We continued to alternate with service of the various side dishes, including Grandma McCormick’s creamed corn pudding, mashed sweet potatoes baked en casserole with Bourbon and pecans, and fresh French-cut green beans with sautéed fresh mushrooms and a light béchamel. Once the entire menu was served, the assistant took over in the dining room with wine service—Mr. McCormick was fond of the wines from the Bourgogne region—while we refreshed each of the platters and quietly returned them to the table so the guests could help themselves to seconds.

Desserts included traditional pies with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and fresh whipped cream, served from the sideboard onto varicolored Limoges china plates with pewter scrollwork (which had to be washed by hand). Once the guests finished with dessert, some two hours after the start of dinner service, they adjourned to the living room for espresso-strength coffee brewed and poured from a silver coffee service, and served with rock candy sugar stirrers; Bigelow-brand teas were offered from a passed caddy.

We particularly remember that by Mary McCormick’s request, we passed assorted See’s Chocolates on a silver tray. See’s isn’t as well-known in the Eastern United States as elsewhere, and in certain circles the service of a domestic chocolate product might even be frowned upon. The late Claudia Cohen, for example, insisted on candied ginger and truffles from the famed Maison du Chocolate in Paris, and on the East Coast there are certainly better-known artisanal chocolatiers. See’s, however, uses E. Guittard chocolate—another Bay Area product—which is couverture-quality. This means that the chocolate has a higher percentage of cocoa butter, giving the end products more sheen, a mellower, creamier taste, and the distinctive “crack” when broken. See's Chocolates achieve a marvelous balance between American and European elements...much like that first Thanksgiving did way back in the early part of the 17th century.

Heart and Seoul

Stories about putting up grape jelly in Chautauqua County reminded the other Juicy Disher of putting up in the pantry on the other side of the continental United States--except that what was put up by the Gentes family was another matter altogether...

In 1970-71, our parents adopted three girls from Korea. They were biological sisters aged fourteen, twelve, and eight, all from the same orphanage in Seoul. The exact story of their relinquishment remains obscure, but has something to do with the father's coming down with tuberculosis, his relocation to the warmer, drier south part of the Korean peninsula, and the mother's being largely responsible for turning them over to the custody of the orphanage. In any case, our parents adopted the youngest first, and on discovering that there were two older siblings, cut through reams of paperwork and bureaucratic resistance to take the daring step of adopting all three, a decision unorthodox even by Seventies standards in California.

The girls brought Korea with them and within them. Whatever Korea was (and in many ways, the country itself was irrelevant), to us, the girls were Korea--its people, its history, its language, and above all, its food. Out went the creamed tuna on toast and stewed tomatoes of our mother's Midwestern background; out went the steamed clams and picalilli of our father's Francophone New England childhood. In came the rice, the bean sprouts, the lightly-cooked vegetables, the cellophane noodles, the dried fish, the exotic Asian mushrooms, the tofu. In came such oddities (to the rest of us, that is) as sungnyung, a beverage made by pouring water into a pot encrusted with leftover rice and simmering the whole like a soup; as with another other hot drink, the resulting "tea" is then sipped and savored...at least, it was savored by our sisters. Above all, in came the kimchi, staple of the Korean table, a kind of spicy coleslaw make from bok choy, sesame oil, rice vinegar, garlic, salt, and chili pepper. Lots of chili pepper. Think there's enough chili yet? There's not. With kimchi, like a pitcher's fastball, there can never be enough heat.

When the girls were still new to the country, our mother sought out the closest Asian market (this was the early Seventies, so it was still called the "Oriental" market) and bought some prepared kimchi. As soon as our sisters were old enough, however, they made it at home. They made it by the double-gallon in the largest mixing bowl in our cupboard, mixing the sliced greens with the requisite seasonings, adding so much red pepper and salt and garlic that the kitchen started to smell like...well, like a Korean household. The odors took over, and we American-born kids wrinkled up our noses at the prospects of all that "Korean cole slaw." Our mother was simply content to let the girls appreciate their heritage; our father, who appreciates foods the more idiosyncratic they are, couldn't wait to try some.

The kimchi had to be put up to ferment for a few weeks. We didn't have a basement or a garage--this was California, after all--so we put it up in the laundry room. As a family of eight (later, it became thirteen), we always had numerous leftover glass jars of all sizes--jelly jars, mayonnaise jars, pickle jars, and peanut butter jars. We had dozens of the latter with metal lids in a large two-quart size one seldom finds anymore. (Writing this, we realize that in this age of plastics and recycling, glass jars and metal lids have gone the way of the original Volkswagen, so the noise of the lid from a half-gallon peanut butter jar ringing on a cement laundry room floor has become a sound of the past.) Our sisters spooned the kimchi into the jars, topped each with a square of waxed paper, and screwed the lids on as tight as they could manage. The jars were put up in the laundry room to sit, and a few weeks later, the flavors, especially the chili, salt and garlic, had steeped, intensified. We kids...well, we didn't appreciate kimchi anymore than we appreciated tea made from water boiled after the rice was cooked. We tried it only because our father, as he helped himself to more, said that one should never simply categorically dismiss things without trying them first. We tried it; we just didn't like it. Fine, said our sisters, more for us. Which was equally fine with us.

Decades have passed since then, and even if we still don't appreciate kimchi, at least we appreciate the early exposure to such an exotic condiment. To be honest, we only have to imagine the sound of the metal lid of a peanut butter jar been unscrewed, and we can feel the crunch of the cabbage, taste the bite of the chili and garlic, the tang of the vinegar, the brine of the salt, and remember that we too, have our preserves...Seoul food, if you will.

Canning Time

Martin family life was farm life—genuine, largely self-sustaining farm life, with the bulk of the food on the family table coming from either our own farm or the farms of our Chautauqua County neighbors. We recently discussed the cost of food with Father Martin, who reminded us that the entire monthly budget for the Martin family averaged fifty dollars a month! Mother Martin therefore spent a good portion of the spring, summer, and fall putting up fruit and sundry items for the year. Because it’s October, we were remembering how she used to put up grape jelly.

Our cousins had a 175-acre Concord grape farm in Westfield, in the grape belt there along the southeastern shore of Lake Erie. The Concord grape, Vitis labrusca, is named for the Massachusetts town which also gave us the beginnings of the American revolution, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau. Our cousins’ farm was part of the National Grape Cooperative Association which provides fruit for Welch’s Foods. During the year, the fruit from our cousins' farm had to meet Welch’s standards for pesticides, soil conditions, sugar content, and so on. In the fall, when the fruit was ripe and had the right sugar levels, a mechanical picker went through and harvested the bulk of the grapes. Back then, the picker wasn’t technologically able to harvest the last hundred or so feet on each row of vines, so those grapes had to be picked by hand. Each year, therefore, rain or shine, on the Saturday after the mechanical harvest, the Martin family gathered bright and early to strip what the machine had missed before the first frost came and rendered the fruit useless.
We met around seven or eight in the morning for a hearty farm breakfast: pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, and juice. Then everyone, nearly two dozen grownups and kids of all ages, headed out into the fields armed with pruning shears, toting carts and a huge assortment of plastic and traditional wooden bushel baskets. At the ends of the rows of vines sat these huge wooden boxes—each about twenty feet square—holding fruit the machine had already harvested. They were sitting there, waiting for us to clear the last, good fruit; once we were done, a semi would come and haul the fruit off to the processing plant.
Even when it was sunny, there was often a cool autumn breeze off of Lake Erie. More than once, we had to pick in the pouring rain. Picking the fruit was tedious, of course, so we kids inevitably made a game and a meal of it. We’d race each other to see who could pick the fastest; we’d drift off into daydreams while we picked the slowest; we got into grape-throwing fights. As the morning passed the kids’ mouths and faces and hands turned purple from the juice in the skins (even with black grapes, the juice from the pulp runs clear; you have to press the skins to extract the color). We stopped for lunch, then returned to finish the work. By late afternoon, we were tired and sore and sick of eating grapes, but for our help, we were able to take home about six bushels of grapes in clusters.

The next day, back at our house, we fought over which one of us kids got to work the 2-quart food mill, our home kitchen version of the huge presses at the Welch’s processing plant, while the others picked the grapes from the clusters by hand. Once the juice was pressed, Mother Martin would get to work making jelly, about seventy-five jars or so. The kitchen filled with the syrupy smell of grape juice, sugar, and lemon, and the steam rose from the gleaming surfaces of the Mason jars waiting for the cooked jelly. When she was done, we kids helped carry the jars downstairs to the basement (yes, more than a few jars met with catastrophe over the years), but we remember with great affection the sight of those shelves of brightly-colored canned vegetables and fruits, jams, jellies, juices, sauces, preserves, pickles, and relishes. Mother Martin passed this May, so in her memory, and in tribute to her, we present a version of her grape jelly that doesn't require the trouble we went to each fall, back on the Westfield farm.

Ingredients
3 cups Concord grape juice. (Note: you can use 3 cups of store-bought grape juice.)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon unsalted butter (this is what gives Concord grape jelly its sheen)
1 envelope pectin
4 cups sugar

Sterilize a dozen pint-sized canning jars, rings, and lids on the hottest cycle of the dishwasher (without soap), or submerge them completely in boiling water for five minutes.
While waiting for the jars to sterilize, bring the fruit juices, the butter, and the pectin to a rolling boil and stir constantly for 1 minute. Gradually add the sugar, continuing to stir until dissolved and skimming off any foam that comes to the surface.
As soon as the jars are sterilized, remove them with canning tongs, and fill each one with jelly mix, leaving approximately 1/4" space at the top of the jar. Using tongs, and working quickly, place the inner lid and the ring on the jar. Secure each ring; you can do this with your hands as long as they’re clean. Set the sealed and covered jars in several inches of hot boiling water for five minutes to set the seal (this time, the jars don’t need to be submerged). Remove the jars, and check the seal by pressing on the center of the lid with your finger. If the metal makes a clicking sound, the seal isn’t set; close any loose seals with a layer of melted paraffin. Allow the jars to cool overnight, then store in a cool place until ready.

Remembrances of Diners Past

Since it's the 27th of September, we thought we'd tell a little story about the birthday of someone we once met...

We first ate the cuisine of Mario Batali back in the mid-Nineties at Po, and knew with a glance at the menu that a pasta tasting menu was the best invention since ice. We got ourselves to Babbo not long after it opened, and in the fall of 2000 started working there. Superlatives are inadequate to describe Molto Mario's cuisine, and we can still recite large portions of the menu by heart. Goat Cheese Truffles. Lamb Tartare with Mint. Whole Branzino, which we filleted at the tables in the centers of each dining room. The pastas: Goat Cheese Tortelloni with Fennel Pollen and Orange. Mint Love Letters--meat-stuffed, envelope-shaped ravioli. Beef Cheek Ravioli. We recently made Mario's sauce for Pappardelle Bolognese; Batali writes in his cookbook that the traditional ground meat sauce is normally tossed with fresh fettucine, but that he prefers it with the wide ribbon pasta, so we got out the hand-cranked Atlas machine. Though it wasn't as good as Mario's, it came close.

We were working in the second-floor dining room one night, when the maitre d' conducted a party up to our section. Nothing unusual, except that this party caused the kind of stir a celebrity sighting causes--only this was multiplied several times over. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, and Luke Wilson were seated at a four-top in our station, and around the room there were murmurs and nods and eyebrows raised and heads jerked almost imperceptibly toward said table. Complimentary appetizers were sent out by the kitchen; Molto Mario was absent for the night, so he didn't make a tableside appearance. In the usual way of celebrities, the three were very low-key. They were together in New York--and at Babbo--because Wes Anderson was filming "The Royal Tenebaums". Over the next several weeks, most of the all-star cast came in to dine in a variety of groupings, with and without Mr. Anderson. Particularly memorable was the night that the "youngsters" came for a late dinner and were joined by a post-theater Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston. We saw the maternal side of Miss Huston that night, and we actually made Bill Murray laugh--which still makes us proud.

The night that Paltrow, Stiller and Wilson came in as a trio, the two men spent most of the time talking to each other. We decided to chat up Miss Paltrow simply beyond asking her what she wanted to eat and drink. At one point we couldn't resist telling her that we'd admired her mother, the beautiful, patrician Blythe Danner, ever since we first saw her in "A Love Story: the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story" way back in the late Seventies. We confided in Miss Paltrow that we always thought her mother was the epitome of class, and that she was fortunate to have had such good parents. As if to prove that she had her mother's good taste, good sense and sensibility, Miss Paltrow picked up the tab of the neighboring table, a couple who was celebrating their anniversary, and asked me to promise not to tell that she had done so.

Anyway, it's Gwyneth Paltrow's birthday today, and because it's been a quiet couple of weeks, we thought we'd spend a little time walking down the lane of memory with one of the more memorable anecdotes from our days in the world when and where you never knew who was coming to dinner...

Zuni

Over Labor Day Weekend we were invited to a reunion at an institution--culinary, not academic.

Zuni Cafe has occupied at least some part of an odd triangular block on upper Market Street in San Francisco since 1979. The restaurant was founded by the late Billy West, who wanted to open a place people wanted to hang out in from sunrise to midnight and beyond. We worked at Zuni for two years in the early 1990s, but our own relationship with the restaurant goes back to 1984, and a pre-concert dinner. We remember the now-legendary margarita, made with fresh lime and served in a Martini glass. We remember the ambience of the restaurant, which was a mix of California comfort, Southwestern-style, urban edge, and San Francisco attitude. We don't remember exactly what we ate, but we returned to Zuni many, many times with other friends for many, many memorable meals.

The original restaurant expanded in 1986, and a year later Judy Rodgers came aboard. We knew of her because of the reputation of Chez Panisse, where she had once worked. Under Rodgers, the Zuni menu evolved gradually, organically, away from Southwestern cuisine and toward something more Californian, more seasonal, more Mediterranean--more Zuni. Though we missed the guacamole served in genuine pumice molcajetes, the new dishes were so amazing they often stopped us mid-bite. We kept chewing, but slower; we wanted to savor every flavor as long as we possibly could: fresh fettucine tossed with sauteed cherry tomatoes in a reduction of light cream with a chiffonade of fresh basil. The roast chicken with the bread salad. The Gateau Victoire--a sublime flourless chocolate cake--with whipped cream. The dish we remember most was a cold summer soup of pureed yellow tomatoes drizzled with good-quality olive oil and seasoned with exactly the right amount of salt. When Darrell, our waiter, asked if we wanted any dessert, we said, "You're going to laugh, but--" "You want another bowl of that soup, don't you?" he said with a smile. "I totally understand..."

We ourselves went to work at Zuni in August 1990, and were still very young, and very immature. In various ways and nefarious means, we got caught up in the chaos and silliness that often obtains among restaurant co-workers, yet amid the individual and collective dysfunction, something lasting developed: already familiar with Rodgers' cuisine from a diner's point-of-view, we now had the chance to experience what it was like to taste it, serve it, and watch it in action, day after day, meal after meal. Working there, we were even more intrigued by Judy Rodgers. Towards her, publicly, we acted less than honorably and less than professionally, more like a brattish student in an exclusive academic institution; privately, we realized that she was sui generis, that we'd never met anyone like her, and that we'd never been in the presence of a palate as developed as hers. We marveled that she could taste so much food over and over, and know so quickly and so exactly what was good about it and what it still needed. We sensed that she was a genuine professional, the first we'd worked with so closely, and that she was possibly some kind of artist.

It was a culinary education like no other, our first opportunity to taste the work of a chef who cooked with the deepest possible thought and care about what she was doing. And because the Zuni menu changed every single day, we got to taste every new dish. We got to experience the flavors of foods that were seasonal, that had been chosen expressly for that seasonality, that had been combined with other flavors in ways that made it seem that cooking was the inevitable next stage in the life of the food, as if cooking was almost another form of ripening. Salmon with a piece of bacon and mesclun greens over French lentils. Lamb shank en daube. Pissaladieres. Fritto misto with sprigs of fresh sage and slices of lemon that had been lightly battered and fried to exactly the right amount of crispness; we wanted to eat nothing else. Ribeyes with lavender. Fennel, its edges perfectly browned. Fusilli with breadcrumbs, anchovies, garlic, and parsley. Eggs en cocotte. The wines. Rhone reds. Bandol. Vouvray. And cheeses. We grew up on Velveeta, and now we were eating Bleu d'Auvergne drizzled with wildflower honey with an unctuous glass of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise in the rare San Francisco sun. Creamy Fougerus. Salty, buttery Morbier. And of course, the classics: the oysters, the burger, the shoestring fries.

We left Zuni, and California, and went on to eat at other restaurants, cook in other kitchens, taste foods we never had before because...well, because you don't find Atlantic lobsters in the Pacific, because there's no taste like the succulence of fresh pate eaten on the side of the Route Napoleon in Provence, because the experience of fresh fried squash blossoms on the North Fork of Long Island in August is one worth having at least once. We didn't make it to the reunion; we didn't need to: the foods and flavors of Zuni are something we carry with us every day.

Wedding Bells at Chautauqua

This past Sunday, we catered a wedding for 64 guests in the shadow of the Miller Bell Tower on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. The nuptials were those of Amy Klostermann and Mathew Lipp, who live in the Seattle area. We were recommended by long-time acquaintance Gerta Christensen, who does flowers on a freelance basis, and we very much appreciate that contact. The bride’s parents have a home at Chautauqua, yet because of the geographical distances, the entire planning process took place by phone, fax, and e-mail.

We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day or a more beautiful setting. The Miller Bell Tower dates to 1911, designed in the Italian style by Buffalo architect E. B. Green. The tower is Chautauqua’s icon, and is used as the institution’s symbol. A tent was set up with tables of eight, and we set them with china and glassware from All Season Rentals in Amherst. The cocktail hour began around 5:30 with Spanakopita, Bacon-Wrapped Medjool Dates Stuffed with Almonds, Smoked Salmon Canapes, and Caprese Skewers. These last are a finger-food variation on the well-known salad of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with cracked black pepper. We used grape tomato halves which we hollowed out with a melon baller and beckoning, and layered these like a sandwich onto a skewer.

For dinner, we served a plated salad of Mixed Baby Greens with Chevre, Toasted Pignoli, and a Lemon-Thyme Vinaigrette. The entrée choices included Hunter’s Chicken--the Americanized version of the French classic Poulet Chasseur, where chicken pieces are dredged in seasoned flour, sauteed, and simmered with mushrooms, the idea being that hunters in the field find fresh ones to cook with their bagged game. We also had Pork Tenderloin Stuffed with Apricots and Prunes with Rosemary, and we served both with Garlic Chive Mashed Potatoes and a side of Roasted Beets and Fennel. There were a few vegans in attendance, so their option was a Vegan Eggplant Curry served with Minted Green Peas and Indian Wedding Rice. This last is a biryani-style toss of Basmati rice with dried fruits, orange peel, and slivered almonds. We’ve done this dish with dried apricots, golden raisins and cranberries; this time we used Zante currants.

The wines served included a couple we didn’t know well. Mirth is a winery located in Sunnyside, Washingon, in the Yakima Valley appelation, and to give you an idea of how far north the vineyards are, that latitude lies north of Montreal, Canada. The valley is protected from the Pacific cool by three prominent Pacific Northwest mountains--Rainier, Adams, and Hood--and the growing season is hot and dry. (We still wonder whether a strange byproduct of climate change is ever better viticulture in places it wasn’t traditionally expected.) The other wine was a genuine discovery: a Marselan from Domaine de Couron, in the Coteaux de l’Ardeche. The grape is a cross between Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon, producing a highly-drinkable, medium-full bodied Rhone red.

In addition to these wines, guests helped themselves to home-brewed beers and ales made by the groom’s family. There was an India Pale Ale called Classic Mag and Best Bitter, brewed by the groom’s father, Pat Lipps, and a pair of kegs with Best Man Brown and a Belgian Witbier, made by the best man, John Beystehner (there's a beermaking surname, if we've ever heard one).

After darkness fell, it was time for a Chautauqua County tradition, Light the Lakes in which fireworks are set off from one lakeside community to the next, and not just along Chautauqua Lake. The fireworks some twenty or so miles downlake in Lakewood and Jamestown could be seen, as well as those from Mayville, but we really liked how long it took the sounds to carry the length of the body of water. It was a fitting salute to the end of what has been a productive and busy summer, and a fitting way to send off the newlyweds on their life together. We wish Amy and Mat health and happiness together for years to come!