If she wants to make it from scratch, I’d probably go to Fresh Thyme. They always have a good selection of veggies. If she is ok with a pre-made veggie tray, most of the grocery stores around here are fine. Just look for veggie trays since almost no one calls it crudités unless they are at a fancy restaurant.

I guess they are trying to claim it was a large print that looked like a shoe but no treads. That really isn’t the best argument. Shit like moccasins exist.

It’s a very difficult market right now. A lot of places are closing. Some of it is supply chain issue, another contribution is people trying to save money. A third contribution no one really talks about is a change in consumer habits. A lot of places reopened last year expecting customers to behave as they did in 2019, but most people’s habits have changed. A lot of people are more leery of eating out, which hurts restaurants that expected customers to come swarming back.

Try Con Alma. It’s more of a restaurant and jazz venue.

Lake Erie + Appalachian mountains. The jet stream picks up a lot of moisture over the Great Lakes and dumps some of it when it rises over the Appalachian mountains. Pittsburgh is in the western foothills of the Appalachian mountains so we are on the windward side of the mountains. That’s why we have so many cloudy and wet days.

That’s way too much. A three bedroom before utilities around here tends to top out at $2500 on the high end and those are considered exorbitant. I had a 3 bedroom apartment, yes older build, that was $1500 a month.

Winter here does just suck, with lots of grey skies and snow/ice/cold rain. The weather does try to make up for it during the brief tease of spring, summer, and early fall, but anyone who tells you the winters here are great is a bald-faced liar. This is an exceptionally mild winter. It sucks that it was too cold to enjoy the first sticking snow of the season. This one is ok, but I wish there was more. We usually get at least one sticking snowstorm a month through April and sometimes at least one snow event in May. Usually there would be a lot more snow by now but it has been unusually mild since that deep freeze around Christmas.

One of my weird favorites is five county cheddar. I’m also a sucker for a good herbed brie or aged Gouda

The pipes should have thawed by now. If you are just getting a trickle, it means they have sprung a leak somewhere, probably inside the walls. Sadly, you need to call a plumber and be prepared to shell out if walls need to come down to access the pipes. Taking care of it now will be cheaper than taking care of it down the road though, after the water has had time to damage the walls.

I didn't hear it even though I live close to Dormont. It's probably a fire whistle summoning the volunteer fire fighters.

People aren't leaving. It's more due to deaths outpacing births. A lot of portions of PA got hit bad during the economic collapses of the 70s-80s, so there are a lot of places where you have a lot of elderly, some baby boomers, and young people leaving. Pittsburgh reversed the trend, but there is a noticeable absence of Gen X and younger boomers in the region, due to that generation getting pushed out due to the lack of jobs. Steelers nation became a nationwide thing because of how many people left when the steel industry collapsed. Covid nailed the elderly severely and they are just old and dieing naturally.

A lot of schools are trying to go essentially Labor Day - Memorial Day, but PA requires a lot of school days for a year to count, so it typically becomes school starting a week or two before Labor Day and ending a week or two after Memorial Day and still not getting a lot of holiday time due to all the days that need to be squeezed in. Even remote instruction days tend to be rationed now, with schools only allowed 5 before they have to treat it as a school cancellation.

I’m watching with baited breath for what my kids’ school district, Mt. Lebanon, will do. Tomorrow is supposed to be only a half-day with the kids holding their Christmas parties then coming home. It’s a walking district which means impassible roads isn’t as much of a problem but a wind chill warning is.

/just after I posted, I got a message from the district. Mt Lebo is doing a remote instruction day with Christmas parties rescheduled to January 6th, aka epiphany.

I wish the article had more information about the sauce. Has the sauce been fermenting for 360 years or has the mother (the bit that you add to each batch to ferment it, akin to a bread starter) been around for 360 years? Comparing soy sauce to balsamic vinegar, there are some positively ancient vinegar mothers out there and the best vinegars are aged for 25+ years, so it’s very important to make a distinction if the soy sauce has been aged for 360 years or if the mother is 360 years old.

How are yinz doing?

Chicago. Came here for grad school then met and married a Yinzer.

I think it is down to how sensitive you are. I have allergies and asthma, so I do tend to have issues during the alerts. However, it’s only recently that there have been a lot of alerts at a frustrating level.

There’s a bunch in the south hills. I think right off Bower Hill Road is a tunnel from a rail line that used to service them.

I thought we do sometimes get them. I think they tend to burrow and hibernate during the winter if they live in the area. With a warming climate, they are probably spreading north.

Actually, Mercy Brown's father didn't believe it. He had to be convinced by his neighbors to exhume her and let them do the ritual.

So Bansky is like Chihuly then or the old studio system with a senior artist lending his name and supervising the younger artists.

Close. It's something about the spooky Bermuda Triangle.

Kings has sucked since the news owners bought the chain. Eliminating Frownies was the start of the end and showed how they didn’t understand the market.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If they sold food, it’d be specialty pantry items, not anything requiring refrigeration. Cookies, candy, etc.

Imagine a store like Walmart or Target but multi-storied and considered fancy, sometimes with extremely nice restaurants in them. That’s what the old department stores were, like Gimbel’s. It’s what Macy’s was like until relatively recently.