Pittsburgh the grey.

So. We decided to stop in Pittsburgh and see Dave and Becky and Violet - and experiment with group camping on a lawn, instead of the middle of Indiana. No problems … except that our mattress has a small leak … and needs to be re-firmed halfway through the night … because you are touching the ground. We have a patch kit - so next stop that we have a little time, that will be attempted.

Since every time that we see D&B I tend to go my usual overboard on the food. Well … whenever I have a kitchen I seem to do that … and pans … and decent ingredients. Hmm … well, that aside. First night we wanted a quick dinner, so after a quick shopping spree, we mounded the table with produce aplenty and began the demolition. And within one hour, including plating, we had the requisite several course meal.

-four cheeses and crackers plate, including a remarkably spicy monterey jack.
-Caballero and red peppers filled with sausage stuffing and mozzarella
-cool lemonade with designer elongated ice cubes, and neon straws.
-Eggplant parmesan with Italian breading and a four cheese meat sauce, over spaghetti with a light drizzle of olive oil and fresh parmesan cheese.
-two bottles of sauvignon blanc from new Zealand, and a magnum of Little Penguin cab/merlot blend. Which I said … hmmm … this tastes really like a cab, with a lot of blackberry fruit. And then read the label. Which says 70% cab - and strong blackberry notes. Too bad I didn’t smell that it was grown in a lush California valley by a family with a long lie of quality and taste - but if I could smell the vintners, I think that would be a problem.
-Side of three breads - fresh garlic bread with mozzarella and Italian seasonings, garlic bread with sausage stuffing topping, and sausage stuffing bread with mozzarella.
….can you tell that I made WAY too much sausage stuffing mix?
-Lemon cakes with a butter cream frosting for desert … but we had to wait nearly 2 hours after eating to manage those.

The eggplant came out awesome though. Thick, meaty, full of flavor. Organic just seems to be a little better for some produce. Not all, by any means … but the last eggplant that I got from the chain store turned to mush in the middle instead of staying pleasantly soggy yet structured.
Then, after a rousing few rounds of blackjack - wherein Erin won almost every hand - and got a perfect 21 easily 75% of the time, we retired.

Around 4 a.m. the thunder and lightening began. Around 5 the rain started. And by started, I mean spat at us a little - just to test the resilience of our waterproofing - and then rained continuously through till noon. We were going to tear down and make for Columbus, OH first thing in the morning … well … let’s be honest. The only person who was even motivated enough to wake up was Meg. And after deciding that packing the tent in the rain would be about at as exciting as smelling spoilt milk to make sure it really is bad, we lazed.

… and went shopping again.