that last thursday in november

Thanksgiving is a smell. It’s a turkey warmth that creeps out from the kitchen, wanders through the dining room and then drifts up the stairs. It transforms a Thursday afternoon into something more and in our experience it works everywhere. Even in China. Although in China the “American Turkey” that's key to the whole transformation is going to cost you. Something in the neighborhood of $50 for a 14 pounder.

We may have been the only ones on our block watching a turkey transform into a celebration, and our Stovetop stuffing may have come with us in our suitcases back in July, but the day still felt special. It’s also hard to value your family more than when you are so far away that wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving means calling the next day. When I called Chicago the festivities were just beginning, whereas our toasts made in Chengdu to happiness and health, to our adventures and our comforts, and to our families and our friends, were long gone.

So much focus on luck and good fortune ran head-long into my Chinese teacher’s descriptions of growing up in 1960’s China. The country had nothing to eat. Food became anything a body could tolerate so she’d bulked out a haphazard diet with the grasses and leaves her mother had taught her were safe. Today’s most basic foodstuffs were so scarce that kids had raced each other for a single wild strawberry – tiny as a fingernail and cheery red – that popped to life in the schoolyard.

She says today’s young people don’t understand what it was like here before. And we both know that I don’t either. It’s been a while since gaunt figures walking along the side of the road coming to a stop, collapsing, and never getting up was considered run-of-the-mill. Thankfully.

I'm accustomed to focusing on the goodnesses I have collected along my way… the small lucks and big loves that define good fortune. But a glimpse into the list of unfairnesses that have thrashed other people’s lives makes me doubly appreciate my own normal.

I know that’s what everyone says. But we say it because it’s true.

Oh, the irony – Nanjing

Nanjing’s airport knows how to make a lady feel special. When you land there, rather than being dumped unceremoniously from your plane onto the tarmac – where you’d then have to catch a bus to your gate – you actually step directly into an airport. After making it through a domestic flight in China (where fellow passengers begin rummaging around in the overhead bins at about the same time the wheels touch ground) this is no small luxury.

Going straight from the plane into the airport also gave us a few extra minutes of clean air, which is nice because Nanjing seems to live in a glowing fog. And the higher you go, the brighter and more numbing the fog gets. From our 58^th floor hotel room, the ground below looked out of focus and diffused. If you didn’t look out the window you might be able to pretend that you were at some anonymous coast, enveloped by a rolling, misty fog. But a single glance outside and you knew there was no sea and there was no shore. There were just the invisible factories pumping out their industrial clouds.

But Nanjing (南京) is an important place and well worth visiting regardless of air quality issues. Nanjing literally means “Southern Capital” and it was first named the capital for all of China in 1368 by the Ming Dynasty. And after the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911, Nanjing was the provisional capital for the new Republic of China with Sun Yatsen as its first President. Chiang Kai-shek also governed from Nanjing before the city's 1949 “liberation” by the Communists, who then moved the capital to Bejing, while Chiang’s Guomindang fled to Taiwan. It was fascinating to visit the sites where these men led China towards a modern history they couldn’t have envisioned. And it was equally fascinating to see Chinese tourists walking through these spaces.

We appreciated the irony of flying north to reach the “Southern Capital” but we were a little less enthusiastic about the irony in eating Japanese ramen our first night there. We were tired and bleary eyed and only midway through our late evening meal did we make the connection between the cuisine and the memorial hall we would visit the next day. Nanjing was the site of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (also known as The Rape of Nanjing) when Japanese troops killed over 300,000 residents and raped more than 20,000 women after invading the city. The memorial hall is extremely moving and its English language signage is measured in its presentation of a horrific series of events. The only unsuccessful aspect of the visit was our being culled from the crowd based on our looks and made to log our citizenship in a small notebook off to the side of the main entrance. There was no introduction and no invitation – a guard pointed at us and then pointed towards a notebook. Some might find irony in this as well.

We crammed a lot of sightseeing into one day and after walking through the Presidential Palace and grounds, exploring the 14^th century Ming Palace ruins, cresting 600 year old city walls, eating a lunch of random pastries from the Commune Café, and experiencing the emotionally heavy memorial hall, we were exhausted and ready to sit down to a good meal. Our only other break in the day had come via a brief and surreal visit to Starbucks. They had the red holiday cups and the Christmas music, but they also had a sign in the bathroom saying: “For your safety please do not squat on the toilet seat.”

Nanjing is near Shanghai and like that city is known for its soup dumplings. These, in turn, are notorious for being all about the molten broth inside – making them both terribly difficult to eat and yet something that must be eaten immediately to be properly enjoyed. So for our dinner we bumbled our way through two kinds of lava-filled dumplings, one bursting with a salty and savory crab stew and another that was little more than a quivering soup holder. Both varieties suffered moderate to severe losses as we used our chopsticks to prod, position, and pivot the fragile orbs in the general direction of our mouths. Delivering all of the broth to its intended destination may not have happened (dumpling skin is more delicate than it looks) but the fact that we emerged from the meal burn-free made it an unqualified success.

Another success was finding a street that the concierge’s directions had clearly meant for us to avoid. It was slender and vivid and filled with the narratives of real life. Friends played pool in the street and children slept in the cramped spaces behind storefronts. Curtains fluttered through open doors revealing skimpily-clad women waiting behind, and the noise of mah zhong clattered from tables set out in smoky rooms.

Visiting Nanjing was also a reminder that this country is one big time zone. We’re so used to waking up in the dark of southwestern Chengdu, that opening the curtains to a bright (yet still early) Nanjing morning was an unexpected pleasure.

These simple differences have a way of showcasing how much your world has changed more than any national landmark or presidential palace ever could. It’s because these are the markers you grow used to over time… the way the world looks from your bedroom window, the sense you gain for telling time based on where the sun hits the wall…  these are the rhythms of days and weeks and months, and with enough time they accrue into a life. Or at least a few years in China.  

吃辣的吗？(Do you eat spicy food?) – Hangzhou

It took traveling across China for me to realize that without any effort on my part I have acquired a Chinese geographic pedigree. My life here may be temporary, and my Chinese spotty, but when I tell people that I live in Chengdu their eyes light up. I have given them something that needs no explanation. It’s a recognizable background they can wrap around me and all of my foreignness. Being “from” Sichuan (the province of which Chengdu is the capitol) gives us all something to talk about.

So during my week-long stay in Hangzhou, a city far, far away from Chengdu on China’s eastern coast, when I would tell people that I live in Chengdu they would immediately focus on the quality that distinguishes the Sichuanese apart from their compatriots: the food. Each would ask: 吃辣的吗? Do you eat spicy food?

And it wasn’t just idle chitchat. They really wanted to know how my western palette was weathering Sichuan’s famous chili storm. I told them I love it and that I’m used to it now. And then I stopped myself from asking them where Hangzhou’s flavor went.

Not to say that Hangzhou isn’t a great city. It is. Being less than an hour from Shanghai it shares that city’s modernity and flair. Hangzhou’s streets are teeming with fashionable folks and there are options for killing time in fashionable ways – shopping, snacking, drinking. Chengdu has these things too. It’s just that Hangzhou has way more of them. (And they’re better dressed.)

And I hope I’m not betraying my Chengdu home when I also add that Hangzhou has fewer people spitting, fewer folks out on the town in fleece pajamas and/or fuzzy slippers, and fewer children using the sidewalk as a commode. That being said, I also had a hard time finding anyone playing mah jong. Spend a minute in Chengdu and you’ll discover that the clicking of mah jong tiles is the background music for daily life -- a life that unrolls in a more traditional, and relaxed, atmosphere.

However, even with its western style modernity, Hangzhou still teems with one of modern China’s most intriguing calling cards – the art of juxtaposition. Alleys still have those “hot peppers hanging next to a bra and socks” kind of moments that I love about this country.

Hangzhou’s most famous site is Xi Hu, or West Lake, and it’s the kind of place that punches China’s reputation for rampant pollution and ugly sprawl smack in the face. Its beauty is on par with Lake Como – with layers of hills cracking the background behind sprawling and gentle waters. Along the lake’s edges are small pagodas, and bridges, and a bustling park full of attention hounds demonstrating their singing, dancing and strumming. I’ve also heard that there are more than a few Starbucks in walking distance – as sure a sign as any of a hopping metropolis.

I stopped to talk with a few people in the park and most were visitors from other parts of China. Their main observation was that the air in Hangzhou was cleaner and clearer than where they live. I don’t know if this is a credit to Hangzhou’s excellent air quality, or a nod to the fact that most of China lives under unrelenting smog.

Regardless, everyone seemed to be enjoying a beautiful day at the lake except, perhaps, for a man who seemed to be the only local who couldn’t carry a tune. He was singing along with a group of musicians under a weeping willow and he was forcing the group to repeat a part of the song where the rhythm was escaping him. I hadn’t realized anything was wrong until one of the musicians took it upon himself to sing the part. The musician’s voice, and his rhythm, and the beauty of the song… that was the way it was meant to be sung. You could feel it.

The only problem is that after the musician was done perfectly singing the part, the other guy gave it another try. And another. And then another. After each unsuccessful go, the musician would patiently re-sing the refrain with the correct rhythm and the correct notes. And each time the man would charge ahead and blunder it up all over again. At first it was a charming and quirky interchange, but after five minutes I think we were all ready to switch to an instrumental.

I’m not sure that I’ve identified what makes Hangzhou’s cuisine special but we certainly ate well while we were there. There was a chicken that had been cooked in mud and tasted of anise. Hunks of meat with fatty robes. Seafoods in soups and sauces and shells. And a dessert coated in syrup that tasted of caramel and molasses.

And the funny thing is, a Sichuan dish was included at almost every meal I had in Hangzhou. Each dish was an honest approximation of Sichuan food but lacked the real heat and thrum that I have come to expect from my food. Seeing Sichuan food from the outside – seeing it from a dinner table far away from the actual place – really hammered home the realization that this food is special. And that it is even more special in Sichuan.

So thank you Hangzhou. Thank you for being a city I would love to live in, and thank you for being a city that has deepened my appreciation for where I live now.

grey summer

dim sum and then some

From left to right: Marinated black fungus with chili and black vinegar sauce, Steamed shrimp dumpling with leek and mushroom, Barbecued pork with honey sauce. (Click on image for larger view.)

The things people say about China aren't entirely untrue. The madness of it... the rushing, the running, the yelling and the spitting... It's all there and it clutches you in a crushing bear-hug from day one. In the beginning it's exhilarating. Everything you've never seen before keeps rushing past, and your senses prickle and come alive in response.

But when the crush doesn't stop, when the stranglehold of excitement and stimulation just doesn't let go, you start to understand the value of it all falling away. You look for those few moments when the spitting stops, when pausing to catch your breath doesn't set you in the sights of the next distracted driver.

From left to right: Steamed glutinous rice roll with shrimp and yellow chives, Marinated mini cucumber with garlic and sweetened black vinegar, Baked shredded white radish puff pastry, Deep-fried shrimp and peach roll wrapped with rice paper. (Click on image for larger view.)

These gentle spaces are rare but they can be found. And when they involve food, they are the best kind of moments. Because serenity makes food taste different. It makes meals lighter, brighter, almost delicate. It is a different kind of eating -- not at all reminiscent of the messy passion that comes with street food, or the fire and joy that burns in small kitchens tucked into great neighborhoods. But it is still it's own kind of wonderful.

Chengdu's Shangri-la Hotel (which in Chinese sounds a lot like Shang Guh Li La) has a bright, open space, the Shang Palace Restaurant, where I have yet to see -- or hear -- anyone start to hack up a lung, let alone spit it out. And in addition to the smooth quiet it also promises fantastic dim sum.

From left to right: Braised diced chicken and bean curd with salted fish in clay pot, Glutinous rice with chicken, BBQ pork and mushroom wrapped in lotus leaf, Poached chicken with scallion and fresh green Sichuan pepper in shallot oil and soya sauce. (Click on image for larger view.)

Order whatever you want. And do it over and over because this is what brunch is about. Mixing the savory and the sweet. Looking for that mix that says "it's almost too late for breakfast but still too early for an afternoon nap." Three bites of custard tart for every two bites of shrimp dumpling.

From left to right: Baked egg tartlet with milk, Chilled sago cream with pomelo and mango, Steamed egg custard bun, Fresh fruit. (Click on image for larger view.)

Last weekend we sat at a table by the window and ate our way to a perfect start of a Saturday. And the best dish? The steamed egg custard buns. Each white puff at its center hid a bright yellow magic that tasted like cake batter. Sweet and sticky and a little bit salty. 

These are the foods that can make a weekend even better... and the feeling lingers even after you return to the cacophony of the real world. (At least for a few minutes.)

wayward dog, returned

chengdu morning

At a certain point in Chengdu's early hours, the street sweepers and sidewalk cleaners put on their slippers and come out to clean. They use brooms fashioned from rigid sticks or dried straw, and in the pre-dawn darkness their rhythmic swish-scratch corrals the leaves and trash into piles, and drags midnight puddles to faraway drains.

The sweeping, like so much city static, fails to raise the night watchmen from their slumbers. They slump at building entrances in rumpled uniforms, often in two’s, their heads cushioned in crooked elbows, or chins resting on chests. Each of them sleeps the sound sleep of those who cannot be fired.

And under long stretches of overpass, men and women crouch before short towers of newspapers, using the yellow haze of street lamps to guide their folding and prepping. Soon they will stand up, stretch their legs, and pile the newspapers at the foot of their electric scooters, quietly sliding away to wherever it is that awaits their delivery.

In this spartan traffic, early commuters will hold conversations across moving scooters, keeping an even pace and staying close enough that their voices can be heard across the space. Street vendors will set up their weighty dumplings and their warm soymilk and the woks of fry oil they’ve suspended on bicycle frames, waiting for the school kids and the taxi drivers to roll past for breakfast.

And as the city wakes I will be running through, wondering if the dark humid skies will again open up with rain.

rabbit scooter, plastic-wrapped

dust and mala (麻辣)

Some of the best places are the ones you will never find on your own. They evade happenstance and lucky turns. They are places that need an introduction, that require someone who knows the way.

In Chengdu, these places can be warehouses clogged with old Chinese furniture. And getting there requires a friend who already knows where to turn off the highway and when to start driving the wrong way down a side road. 

We arrived to sprawling landscapes of old wooden stuff. Row upon row of furniture, with the clunky pieces pooled at the bottom and the wispy stuff all piled on top. We passed armoires and chairs and intricate wooden screens; shuffled through dirt and dodged raindrops sneaking through the ceiling. 

We did our best to see past the dust, and when it was so thick that it smothered all imagination we licked a finger and dredged it through the powder to see what was hiding beneath. And the thing to know before you fall in love with any of it is that the dust moves aside but the prices don’t budge.

After you pay too much for that thing you found, you should eat because all of that exploring can leave one famished. So our friend took us to a small place that serves spicy wonton soup. It’s the mala (麻辣) kind of spice which means that it makes your lips thrum, drenching your mouth in a numbing buzz that all the orange soda in the world can’t take away. And damn, it’s good, but if you’re being honest you might say it could use just a touch of salt.

At one point in our meal, a man set up a hill of ground pork and wonton skins on the table next to ours and started crafting fresh wonton. Ignoring the half-moons of dirt under his nails it felt like the right way to eat. Real food put together with real hands. Wonton folded with just the right crook.

There’s a rhythm to it and the man was two times as fast as the woman who occasionally joined in. For every two he made, she'd make one. But at one point he answered his cellphone and his pace slowed. It could have been her chance to catch up, but she didn't. She had to serve the customers and someone had ordered two more bowls of numb.

good girl

real dog, confirmed

mooncakes: by any other name...

If you focused on the name alone, mooncakes would be fairytale sweets. They sound ephemeral and delicate and something like happily ever after. They sound petite or perhaps enormous. Maybe lighter than air. It’s the kind of name that makes you wonder what pastry miracle this cake might be. But for all of the wondering, and extravagant imaginings, mooncakes are something else.

This year China celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival（中秋节）on September 12. This holiday is related to the autumn equinox and the rhythms of agrarian life, and it occurs when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. Because of the intricacies of the Lunar Calendar the date of the holiday changes annually, but what never changes is that this is the day of the mooncake. They are meant to be eaten with family as you appreciate the beauty of the moon, and they are an integral part of the celebration.

The first thing to know about mooncakes is that they are not cakes in the western sense. They are something small and singular and special, and for newcomers like myself they elude a clear and concise description. This is because they can be many things. They can be sweet and they can be savory. They can be soft and they can be firm. And most confusing, they can be all of these things at once.

We had a small collection of mooncakes in our house so we thought it only fitting to celebrate our first Mid-Autumn Festival with a decidedly amateur, and hopefully educational, mooncake tasting. 

(Mooncakes reviewed left to right)

Our favorite

It’s a rabbit! In honor of the Year of the Rabbit, Starbucks produced this cuter than average variety. The Starbucks folks told me it’s hazelnut flavor but we think it’s more like chocolate, coffee and caramel. The texture is like biting into a hunk of marzipan or really solid mashed potatoes. 

Split personality

There’s an egg yolk at the center of this mooncake. It tastes salty and meaty but is coated with a sweet gel. It’s sort of like eating toast and jelly, and a hard-boiled egg all at the same time. I just wish it would choose a side.

Easiest to eat

The daintiness of this mooncake means that it’s not as intense, or as much like a hockey puck, as some others. It has a delicate figgy sweetness.

Best for beginners

This lotus mooncake is sweet and a little mysterious, with hidden notes of honeydew. Nothing chewy. Nothing salty. Just a whole mess of sweet.

Least surprising

Starbucks says it's blueberry macadamia flavor. We think it tastes like blueberry and coffee and caramelized sugar, and it has the same texture from surface to center. It’s basically a soft chewable hockey puck. The flavors are sweet and identifiable to the western palette but still not as sweet as candy or birthday cake.

Still speechless

This mooncake has the consistency of Play-Doh and is bursting with chewy dried meat. It smells like anice and is reminiscent of the aroma in Taiwanese convenience stores. Bottom line: It’s pretty disconcerting to run into salty meat strings when chewing through an otherwise sweet mass.

Let’s call it “just ok”

Could be lotus. Could be something else. It’s sweet with an odd tendril of an even sweeter musky flavor. If I didn’t know better I'd say there was a touch of circus peanut in there somewhere.

Leave it to the experts 

There’s a really meaty egg yolk at the center that's been dried out and intensified. The texture is off-putting, at times hard and dry, at other times flaky and chewy. It’s encased by that generically sweet gel all mooncakes seem to have, but it continues to be meaty tasting at the same time. Pretty intense.

Most flavor fighting

The inside is crunchy with grains, but the sweet gel and the grains are duking it out. The grains want to taste like fields and farms, but the gel stills wants to be cake and sweet. Lacking harmony.

Birthday worthy

My Chinese teacher spent a lot of time telling me how much she loves ice cream mooncakes so we hunted down a place where they hadn't sold out yet. This led us to Haagen Dazs and their exorbitantly expensive versions. The verdict: They're not mooncakes, they’re ice cream coated in chocolate. And they’re awesome – especially when your other options involve dried meat and egg yolks. 

same old new

Adjusting to a new place is always a dance between the good and the bad. It’s about discovering how much you really like this, only to get slapped in the face by how much you hate that. Back and forth. Happy and hating. The main issue being that everything is different. All of it.

Take language. In a new place you can lose the ability to represent who you are via the spoken word. You find your voice lacks nuance and rhythm, and the things that come out of your mouth will never be confused with the perfect songs of sentences you used to love to say. You are well aware that saying, “This food is good” makes you sound like a second grader, except that unlike your standard Chinese second grader, you can’t even name the vegetables on the table.

And shoes? Even though you live with 1.3 billion other people who all need shoes – and who also produce the rest of the world’s shoes – there are no shoes in your size. (Or at least no women with feet as big as yours.)

The water? Don’t drink it. If you use it to wash your vegetables – along with soap because you really don't want to know how they fertilize crops in China – then after washing your vegetables with tap water, you have to wash them again with distilled water to wash off the tap water. Yes, I said wash off the water.

As for crossing the street? The walk sign says it’s your turn but don't be fooled. China's drivers have unanimously agreed to disagree on the rules of the road. So don't put a foot past the gutter until you've done an Exorcist-esque head spin to assess the likelihood of being run down. Look for trucks, bicycles, buses. And thousands upon thousands of deathly silent electric scooters.

Make sure there isn't a delivery truck barreling down the sidewalk or a taxi short-cutting its way up the wrong side of the road. And you wouldn't naturally worry about this, but you should also look out for drivers ignoring their own red light in order to turn left and force their way through oncoming traffic –  from the far right lane.

Amidst all of the new there is one thing that survives on the idea of staying the same: Starbucks. If you buy enough coffee (or if your awkward Chinese draws enough attention while you're there) there will come a day when the folks who make your mocha will see you coming and already know your order. And when they ask if you want your usual – that drink you could find in Seoul, and then went on to order in Washington, D.C., and now drink right here in Chengdu – it makes things feel a little bit normal. The no shoes and the don’t drink the water and the sounding like a second grader all take a back seat to the fact that this place is becoming your home. And you like it.

At least until you have to cross the street.

glow, market stall

spectator sport

火锅 is hot pot

Hot pot is exactly what it sounds like, but it's also much better than it sounds. Hot is the spice and the food and the oil and the air. Hot is your skin and your throat and the eel after it cooks. Pot is the container sitting in the middle of your table, with its contents boiling and rolling and making everything better. And it is beloved here in Chengdu.

Maybe it’s eating oil-boiled food straight out of the pot in August, and maybe it’s the spice, but eating hot pot makes you sweat. It's also all about the thrill of the chase, spelunking around in spicy broth using chopsticks and ladles and serrated spoons to find all of the things you’d dropped in earlier.

The hardest part is keeping yourself from eating the items that need more time to cook – the lotus root that given time will become soft and chewy, the quail eggs whose insides melt into orbs of molten yolk if you can wait. But at the same time you should hurry up and get at the pieces that are ready much more quickly, the thin slices of meat and the sheets of tofu skin. It’s both hard to wait and hard to know. And it’s hard to catch every bit of Sichuan pepper before it sneaks onto your tongue and the numbness sets in.

What you drop in the pot to soak up the spice is up to you. There were pork & coriander meatballs presented on cucumber slices. And there was eel… it came to the table fresh and horror-show-bloody but when it came out of the pot it had been transformed into something so good and rich and right. It was instantly something we’d order every time.

But one of the things we’d ordered, a sort of thick rice noodles, just never turned up – except on the bill. We pointed this out to the server and then like clockwork another server came over and produced the missing dish from thin air. (Actually she found it on the lowest rung of a small stand next to our table.) It was strange to discover the missing dish hiding like that when all of the others had been so dramatically delivered to our table or even dumped into our pot by a server. So in a sort of ultimate Chinese test, where a passing grade would mean a whopping $2 off of our bill, we told the server what we thought.

And we passed the test. Not only did they take the rice noodles off of our bill, but we received a very educational explanation about why the noodles had never made it onto our table in the first place. Something about how Server 1 had put the noodles on the shelf but had neglected to tell Servers 2, 3 or 4 that they were there. Naturally this would be a problem in a restaurant where one person is assigned to bring an item near the table, another puts it onto the table, still another dumps it into the pot, yet another swoops in to remove the empty plate, and 16 others circle at all times just to keep the air moving. Not that we begrudge the breeze. Like I said, hot pot makes you sweat.

neon, with pup

welcome to our home

In Chengdu there's a magical apartment full of chili oil and fresh vegetables, tofu chunks and fire. It's easy to walk past and not know that you have a standing invitation to visit. That you're welcome to come in and eat at their table.

This is a place that people tell friends about in near whispers. As in, don't tell a bunch of other people because then the retired couple that runs this little restaurant - and lives here - might be overwhelmed and then our favorite lunch place won't be the same.

This husband and wife have a flow in the kitchen. And with the kitchen being a small stretch of a place there's not much room to stray from the plan, which seems to be to take the fresh things that line the shelves and turn them into wonders.

I want to spend more time watching them in the kitchen. Watching the way the wife preps the ingredients and lines them along the windowsill. The way the husband takes them in a certain correct order and uses two woks and fire to make them delicious.

At one point, as I watched the husband cook, the chili had so overcome our shared cloud of breath that I choked back a cough, afraid to insult the finished product by seeming weak. Truly, each and every dish they turned out was worthy of appreciation.

We ate in an outside patio, under a loose tent. Accompanying our group were vats of chili pickle baking in the August sun and an oscillating fan. Each time the breeze from that fan made its way back to me, my heart nearly skipped a beat. Each time I ate a bite of the food, it skipped two.

foundation

miracle in chinese

I called the restaurant with my cell phone. I told the person who answered that I wanted these three things. I said I would pick them up. Then I went to the restaurant and picked up my order. It had these three things.

before the bread fell on the ground