Welcome to Thursday, September 17, 2026 and National Monte Cristo Day. No, it’s not honoring the small Italian island or its fictional count, but rather the bizarre Monte Cristo sandwich, a ham-and-cheese sandwich dipped in egg and fried—sometimes topped with jam and powdered sugar. I’ve never had one, though I’d try it. Here’s a specimen from Wikipedia; look at all the sugar!:
It’s also Constitution Day, marking the signing of this document on September 17, 1787, Free Queso Day (at all Moe’s Southwest Grill restaurants), and National Apple Dumpling Day.
Here’s the first page of the Constitution, which you can see at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The caption is, “Page one of Jacob Shallus‘ officially engrossed copy of the Constitution signed in Philadelphia by delegates of the Constitutional Convention in 1787″
Posting will be light as I prepare for my cataract surgery (one eye next week, the next two weeks after). Wish me luck!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*In the face of Trump’s dumb tariff war on Canada, the EU has offered Canada the first “associate membership” in its organization (article archived here).
“We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible,” she said in her annual State of the Union address.
The declaration at the Parliament in Strasbourg, France, received a standing ovation from European lawmakers and from Carney.
The offer, which would see two longtime U.S. partners expand their alliance from trade to security, highlights the extent to which Trump is redefining alliances.
The president’s foreign policy gyrations, including threats to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, have triggered a reckoning among Washington’s traditional friends about their relationship with the United States.
Amid the standoff with Trump on tariffs, Canada has pursued a thaw in ties with China including new trade deals. Beijing has praised Ottawa for walking away from talks rather than caving to Trump’s demands, and this month, China and Canada revived a dialogue on military issues after an eight-year break.
Ahead of his trip to Europe this week, Carney said he wanted a “unique alliance” with the E.U., including on energy and critical minerals, to help safeguard Canada against economic coercion. “The world’s more dangerous and divided, and friends need to stick together in these times,” he said.
Trump’s stupidity not only alienates our friends directly, but also weakens the U.S. as a superpower by forcing our erstwhile friends to ally with others, and even strengthen ties with America’s biggest nemesis: China. It will take a long time, if ever, to repair the damage Trump has done.
*The NYT reports that Trump has approved the sale of $2.8 billion in armaments to Israel, which includes 40,000 one-ton bombs. As you might expect, the progressives are up in arms (forgive the pun) about this.
The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, according to a U.S. official, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions there even as American public support for the country declines.
The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.
Human rights groups and some foreign governments have condemned Israel for dropping the giant munitions in densely populated areas, sometimes killing dozens of civilians in strikes targeting just one individual.
The package would include 20,000 each of America’s 2,000-pound MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs. It would also provide Israel with 20,000 bunker-busting I-2000 penetrator warheads, which explode on delay after smashing through an outer surface like soil, rock or concrete. The plan was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
The blast from a 2,000-pound bomb can be lethal at more than 1,000 feet and leave a crater as deep as 50 feet. Israel provoked a fierce outcry after it dropped hundreds of the heavy bombs on Gaza.
The State Department recently sent the proposed deal to two congressional committees to get informal approval, the U.S. official said.
Production and delivery of the munitions usually takes months or years, but there are ways to expedite the process.
In mid-2024, the Biden administration paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because of concern about their use in crowded civilian areas. President Trump allowed the shipment to proceed days after taking office last January.
Then in February, the Trump administration agreed to sell roughly $2.7 billion in munitions to Israel, a package that included 35,000 of the one-ton MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs.
While congressional leaders can tell the Trump administration that they oppose the deal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio can exercise emergency powers to proceed with the sale regardless, as he has done repeatedly, or just say he is moving forward with it. The administration would then bypass getting informal approval from Congress and formally announce the sale is happening.
I can’t say that I oppose this sale, especially because the bombs are more likely to be used in Iran, where they can be used against large military facilities, nuclear sites, and so on. I largely trust the IDF’s decision, but not entirely, nor am I party to how the IDF makes its decisions weighing military advantange against civilian casualties. Given this, I will not say this is a deal that shouldn’t be done, though you can be sure that most Democrats will say no, and every “progressive” will say no.
*I have always opposed capital punishment, and, in a Free Press article, Douglas Murray generally agrees/. But he finds an exception in a piece called “The death penalty is cruel. Hamas terrorists deserve it.” And just the other day I hit on the same reason he did for changing his mind, a reason based on the Israeli psyche.
Israelis must soon make serious decisions about the issue. Though Israel prohibits the death penalty for most offenses, the Knesset voted unanimously in May to allow it for terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023, attacks. Now the Israeli justice system must determine whether capital punishment will go forward, and exactly who it will be allowed to ensnare.
Since this is a question of conscience, perhaps it is worth outlining my own moral views from the outset. I have always been deeply opposed to the death penalty. Rather than explain every reason I have for opposing it, I’ll just say that I agree with the argument Albert Camus makes in his 1957 essay “Reflections on the Guillotine.” The problem is not only the possibility of wrongful convictions, and not just the taking of a life, but something perhaps even more cruel: putting a human mind in the position of knowing the place and time of its ending. A change comes upon a society when it permits this ultimate sanction.
. . .Yet despite my deep, instinctive opposition to the practice, I still believe that there are times when it may be legitimate. Few people would deny that the Allies had the right after World War II not just to try and convict but also to hang the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. The world needed to demonstrate this ultimate expression of revulsion for the crimes of the Nazi high command. And the new world that was to follow, which was being built by Allied victors and Holocaust survivors, could not afford to remain haunted by living Nazi leaders, who would have sustained a glimmer of faith in their movement despite living in captivity.
The same justification may rightly stand in the case of the only hanging to have taken place in the State of Israel since its reestablishment. That is the hanging in 1962—after capture, trial, and judgment—of the architect of the Shoah, Adolf Eichmann.
The same principle may well be applied to the several hundred terrorists belonging to Hamas’s most gruesome fighting unit, the Nukhba Force, who were captured alive after breaking into Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023. Each of these men invaded Israel in order to murder, rape, torture, and kidnap. They represent a special type of evil.
To me these aren’t valid reasons for the state engaging in killing. Better life without the possibility of parole (I’ve discussed my reasons before). The problem is that the way Israel deals with terrorist prisoners means that “life without parole” may not be an irrevocable sentence, and there’s the rub:
But there is an additional justification for the execution of these terrorists which too few people outside of Israel appreciate. It is the fact that Israel will someday face the temptation to use the several hundred terrorists currently held in its maximum-security prisons as bargaining chips.
The architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar, was himself a terrorist detained in Israeli prisons. He was released early from his sentence and returned to Gaza in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other terrorists, in exchange for a single Israeli soldier who had been captured by Hamas and held in Gaza. Sinwar himself once said that the best news that a Palestinian prisoner could receive in jail was the news that an Israeli had been kidnapped. That is because the prisoners then knew that a thousand-to-one prisoner swap might be in the offing, and they had a good chance of being spared even from a life sentence.
Despite my deep, instinctive opposition to the practice, I still believe that there are times when it may be legitimate.
In recent decades, including the years since October 7, thousands of terrorists who should have spent the rest of their lives in prison have been released in exchange for Israeli hostages. It is the best leverage that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups have. This has led to some of the most painful scenes imaginable in which, for instance, people convicted of murdering Israelis have been released from prison after serving just a few years and receive a hero’s welcome from enraptured crowds in Gaza. It is a wretched, appalling system, which Hamas and others exploit well.
It is because Israel values life so highly, particularly the life of a kidnapped soldier or POW, that this problem comes up. Despite that, Murray says that the incentive to kidnap Israelis has to be broken. The problem is that even prisoners scheduled for execution, or get life without parole, could still get money for their families via the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” program, so there’s still an incentive to take Israelis hostage. And Murray mentions the criticism that would come down on Israel were it to engage in mass executions. That would be unfair he says, but he’s still in favor of mass executions of some terrorists. As for me, I am undecided, but am still leaning towards the banning of capital punishment.
*I always thought that airline pilots made decent salaries, but not as much as the Wall Street Journal describes in a new article, “The volatile finances of airline pilots, America’s unpredictable millionaires” (subtitle, “They can earn fortunes in a single month, but are often dependent on one airline for their entire careers.”
Jeff Barath never had a need for a financial adviser. Then he retired last year at 65, and it threatened to unleash a tidal wave of taxable income.
Like many of his fellow airline pilots, Barath spent much of his career bound by a rigid seniority structure that came with similarly rigid compensation and retirement benefits. When he left United Airlines after 35 years, he was inundated by more financial decisions than he ever expected upon entering the profession.
He has a partial pension, a brokerage account and a $3.5 million 401(k). Once he starts taking his required minimum distributions, his income will be well over $300,000 a year, including Social Security, which is more than he earned most years while working. He needed to know how much to take out, where to pull from first and how the decision would affect his taxes and his Medicare premium.
“It’s a high-class problem,” Barath said.
. . . Many pilots leave the workforce as millionaires thanks to generous pay and 401(k) contributions from their employers. But they face lots of pitfalls, too. They typically work for the same carrier their entire careers, and in a volatile industry, working for the wrong airline at the wrong time can take a major toll on earnings.
Pilots with seniority can make as much as $100,000 in a month if they live near a hub, fly the biggest planes and can pick up a lot of flights that pay overtime rates due to weather-related events, according to Timothy Pope of wealth manager 360 Aviation Advisors.
. . .Barath, who is still single and now lives in Bronxville, N.Y., has remained conservative with his investments. On the advice of a financial-services executive, he avoided high-cost mutual funds with a spotty performance history. Instead, he put about 75% of his plan into an S&P 500 index fund. The remainder he spread across a value fund, a small-cap fund and a money-market account.
He left it there until a couple years before retirement, when he moved more into the money-market account. A Charles Schwab adviser who took over managing his money a few months after his retirement helped Barath create a budget to determine how much he would need each month. The upside is that he has plenty to live on. The downside is that almost all of it will be taxable.
Barath’s adviser recommended he put 60% in stocks and 40% in fixed-income investments.
This is pretty much what I did, and relied entirely on Vanguard funds. My allocation is still 60% equities andf 40% stocks, but I’m set for life, and will give the vast majority of my savings to charity when I did. As for the pilots, they have a very important job, flying hundreds of people at least once a day, and they can’t afford to make a mistake. I don’t begrudge them their high salaries at all.
*A Kiwi named Jamie Beaton may be on the way to becoming world’s most educated person, already having 12 advanced degrees from top-ranked universities, and more on the way. (Article archived here.)
Early in the fall semester of the 2025-26 academic year, Lisa Belkin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s journalism school, realized that one of her students, Jamie Beaton, had yet to show up for class.
Belkin, who avoids combing the internet for information about her students, knew nothing about Beaton. She was curious about his absence, though, so she reached out to a dean, who sent an email.
Beaton was apologetic in his reply, saying he had mixed up his schedule. He was in New Zealand, teaching a course in entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland, but would be back in New York the next week.
That was when Belkin decided to break her rule. Who was this guy?
Beaton, she learned, had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2016, picking up a master’s degree in applied mathematics along the way. He had gone on to collect an M.B.A. from Stanford. Then a law degree from Yale. That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar — all before age 28.
Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master’s degrees from — deep breath — the University of Pennsylvania (education entrepreneurship), Stanford (education technology), Princeton (finance), Cornell (health care policy and economics), Dartmouth (implementation science), King’s College London (war studies) and Tsinghua University in Beijing (global affairs).
Still, there was more: Beaton, who was born and raised in New Zealand, was a founder and the chief executive of Crimson Education, a college admissions counseling service that has been valued at more than $600 million.
. . . If he continues collecting advanced degrees at such a swift pace, he will surpass Benjamin B. Bolger, who has racked up 16 at age 50. He might even beat Michael Nicholson, an octogenarian forever scholar with more than 30 degrees to his name.
Away from his studies, Beaton, 31, has become a player in the field of college admissions counseling. His clients pay between $30,000 and $200,000 for a multiyear program designed to enhance their children’s chances of getting into top universities.
Why is Belkin doing it? Well, he clearly likes to both learn and to work hard—to the extent that he abjures vacations. Will he get more degrees? His friends say he might go into politics, though they’re just guessing. But one thing’s clear: this guy is wickedly diligent and also extremely rich.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron wants out:
Szaron: Could I go out too?
Hili: What for?
In Polish:
Szaron: Czy ja też mógłbym wyjść z domu?
Hili: A po co?
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From Meow Incorporated:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From Masih; translation from the Farsi:
Reza Rashedpour, do you remember that teenage girl you humiliated just because she wasn’t wearing a hijab? Now your own daughter produces content without a hijab! That means she’s enjoying a freedom that Iranian women were beaten for, arrested for, and humiliated for—so, keep your hands off Iranian women and girls. The morality police inside you is still running rampant!
رضا رشیدپور، این دختر نوجوانی را که فقط بهخاطر نداشتن حجاب تحقیرش کردی یادت هست؟
حالا دختر خودت بدون حجاب تولید محتوا میکند! یعنی از آزادیای بهره میبرد که زنان ایران برایش کتک خوردند، بازداشت شدند و تحقیر شدند، پس، دست از سر زنان و دختران ایران بردار. گشت ارشاد درونت هنوز… pic.twitter.com/fdOaHCSfeI— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 15, 2026
From Luana; more mishigas about sex:
The 179 mins of HR training I’m forcing myself thru in 5 min increments casually denigrates physicians thus:
“Sex Assigned at Birth: Typically, health professionals label infants as male or female after a cursory examination of their external physical characteristics.”
I love…
— Jake 🇺🇸 (@omni_american) September 14, 2026
From Malcolm; six minutes of information from the BBC about an unusual job: a steeplejack. This guy is taking down the entire chimney singlehanded! Why not wear safety gear?
“I’ve never fell off a big chimney. You only fall off one of them once.”#OnThisDay 1979: Extraordinary steeplejack Fred Dibnah was introduced to the nation. pic.twitter.com/07PPc6um4D
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) September 6, 2023
From Jeff Maurer:
“I find the idea of a national conversation on AI regulation inherently funny. A national conversation? With this nation, whose current conversations include: 1) Whether the Jews snuck letters into math, and 2) Whether Sydney Sweeney’s side-boob means we’re living in The… pic.twitter.com/wHwxoWIz6w
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) September 16, 2026
One from my feed. Remember this? (You can see an alternate version here.)
I know this is real. I know this is part of the world in which we all live. And yet I remain in a state of cognitive dissonance in which I can’t integrate this fact that I know to be true into my picture of the world. I know that 1.) this was a video that had to be made to… pic.twitter.com/Lp9Ell3YLx
— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) September 16, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T09:59:26.575Z
And two from Doc Cobb. This first one is plenty weird, and I’ve printed it out to read:
The soul is real and can be tied with a rope according to this graphical abstract. The paper is even weirder!"Quantum evidence of nonlocal consciousness during clinical death" http://www.cell.com/the-innovati… This is a Cell Press journal…via @pubpeer.com @forbetterscience.bsky.social
— Neuroskeptic (@neuroskeptic.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T09:11:12.060Z
Two wonderful people rescue a stuck bald eagle. Would you do this?
@adam_franks shares 2 good Samaritans rescuing a stuck eagle: #AGoodPlace
— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T11:22:10.906Z
There’s an op-ed in the NYT that says:
“What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence.”
Followed by: “Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.” (e.g. link)
Then there’s a video with a woke black lady (New York Regents member Felicia Thomas-Williams) saying that removing a requirement to pass an exam is not “dumbing down” since expecting black kids to pass exams is akin to asking fish to climb trees. (Note everyone, she is the one who is “anti-racist”.)
Douglas Murray’s argument about the differing incentives and the death penalty in Israel shows how they’re dealing not just with criminality but with a very special type of evil.
I like the Kiwi guy with all the degrees but I’d argue in our current era you don’t actually need the degrees if you just want to learn. I spend my pretty much retired life doing just that online. In the old days you had to go to uni to access the smartest ideas.
PCC(E)s finances. Now all he needs to do is change his will to take out Docs w/o Borders, ACLU, Amnesty etc – which I imagine he bequeaths to (I did) and other Jew killing orgs via codicil. I helped two wealthy friends do just that.
D.A.
NYC
None of those organizations are in my will; you could have asked! I have vetted every group that gets money, and none have a history of antisemitism. They all have a high rating for using money to help people (or animals, or conserve land), and not wasting money on other stuff.
I think that it is a very good idea for people to choose their charities carefully. Having once been ripped off, I do careful research on every charity to which I donate, to make sure that they align with my values, and to make sure that they are honest and that the money goes for it’s intended purpose, as opposed to administrative salaries or fraud.
Like many of us, I have also had successful eye surgery. I wish you the same success, get a pair of those cool really dark visor glasses, and post a pic!
I’m genuinely surprised by the fact that a foodie such as yourself has yet to experience the joy of a Monte Cristo. The blend of salty ham and sweet jam mediated by creamy melted cheese makes this worth whatever it takes to eat one. Highly recommend.
If somebody offered me one I would surely eat it!
I would definitely try it. My better half has an oft-used recipe for ham basted in a Coca Cola and brown sugar sauce. Yum!
A popular condiment here in Israel is onion jam, spread on cheese or meat sandwiches. I like it combined with hot mustard.
I’ve eaten a Monte Cristo on at least a few occasions. I suppose it’s worth trying. But it’s heavy – definitely not the type of thing I’d want to eat on a regular basis. Even if I’m going for a bloated, overloaded sandwich, there are a lot of alternatives I’d pick before a Monte Cristo – club, Reuben, cheesesteak, hoagie, Primanti’s, etc.
Go into your eye surgery with high expectations. I went into it a little bit apprehensive, especially since I am very squeamish about anything touching my eyes. The surgery succeeded far beyond my best expectations, and my recovery was quick and without complications. I believe that is very typical. Bonus: I no longer need glasses for distance, only for reading. I was going to say good luck here, but luck isn’t needed. Skill and competence is what you get.
All the best.
Same experience with cataract surgery. It takes only a few minutes. And I’m no longer near sighted!
I’ve had both mine done a little over a year ago, about 6 weeks apart. It all went well although each eye had several weeks of post-op eyedrops to promote healing.
I too don’t need glasses for distance, only for reading. However I’ve chosen to wear glasses all the time as that is what I am used to – the distance portion of my varifocals does not correct for focus, only astigmatism etc.
Highly recommended.
Regarding Israel’s use of heavy bombs: There are obvious uses for such munitions should Israel need to attack missile launchers in Iran, often stored underground until the missiles are immediately going to be used. The only military uses for such weapons in Gaza are for those munitions and command centers used by Hamas, which are often deliberately built under schools, hospitals etc. Note that in such cases, the IDF usually drops leaflets warning the residents as well as broadcasting in Arabic the intentions of bombing the area, under the assumption that civilians can evacuate far more rapidly than moving missiles or equipment in control centers.
I am unaware of any other army that provides the enemy with advance warning of bombing or artillery strikes. Of course, we will be accused of genocide no matter what we do, and no matter how many proofs that we bring that no genocide has taken place. The social media sloganeering is resistant to truth and logic, like antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The ignorance of the followers of the Hasan Pikers, combined with antisemitism in many cases, is a potent weapon in the hands of the enemies of the enlightened West. And make no mistake; the “River to the Sea” chanters correlate highly with the people who support the destruction of North American and Western European institutions.
Agreed. Israel can certainly use the bombs. And they would use them for good, and only if necessary. That said, Israel needs to develop its own source of large munitions. U.S. assistance is no longer reliable.
Have you decided which lens implants to get? Unlike Ray Little (above) I opted to have both eyes set for near vision. I don’t mind wearing glasses when out and about, but I prefer not to wear them when reading (especially in bed). Either way, good luck. You’ll be amazed at how bright things look after the surgeries.
I went in recently to update my eyeglass prescriptions, one Rx for out and about, and the other for “computer glasses” since I do most reading on the laptop. Funny thing is that I almost always take off those glasses when at the computer since they restrict the working distance to a narrow range. The Optometrist talked me out of getting computer glasses (!), explaining that my experience is common and so they just aren’t that useful.
Regarding Douglas Murray’s argument: “But there is an additional justification for the execution of these terrorists which too few people outside of Israel appreciate. It is the fact that Israel will someday face the temptation to use the several hundred terrorists currently held in its maximum-security prisons as bargaining chips.”
While it may be true that executing these terrorists would make them unavailable as bargaining chips, it seems to me that executing terrorists preemptively would end up executing too many; the list might include some who could be rehabilitated or some who committed crimes that were not worthy of execution. So, I can’t agree with Douglas Murray on this one. Executing people preemptively to foreclose using them as bargaining chips—even known terrorists—would be going too far.
Airline pilots and others with large 401(k)’s: Required Minimum Distributions can be a problem but it’s a predictable one and there are measures one can take to limit the impact. This is especially true for airline pilots, where salaries and 401(k) contributions are stable. To limit taxes in RMD, the pilots can convert some of their 401(k) investments to ROTH IRA’s in order to reduce the RMD when they turn 73 and have to start taking RMD. Yes, one has to pay taxes on the ROTH conversions—you never avoid taxes entirely—but you can decide when you pay them. By converting to ROTH IRA’s vigorously between ages 65 and 72, after retirement and when taxable income is (typically) low, one can pay the least amount of tax (for the conversions) and limit RMD at age 73 and beyind. Also, ROTH IRA’s grow entirely tax free. Even when the democrats come back into power and raise our income taxes, ROTH IRA’s will be exempt. The ROTH IRA is the best thing the government has ever done for the salaried employee. Use it!
Australia, too, is reconsidering its foreign relations. The following article may be gated.
“Australia’s trade minister says his country will take great interest in what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pursues with Brussels”
Trump is furious about Canada approaching the EU and is threatening even more draconian retaliation plus new tariffs on EU countries. I think he’s losing it.
What on earth did he think Canada was going to do? If your formerly friendly neighbor starts acting strangely, you don’t abase yourself in front of him (as Trump seemed to think Carney would do), you leave him alone and cultivate friends down the street. And, worse for the strange neighbor, you don’t abandon those new friends when the neighbor behaves more sensibly, because you cannot trust that sensible behavior to last.
Trump’s crazy behavior, and I don’t think he’s losing it, I think he’s long since lost it, will hurt the US deep into the future.
I think you misinterpreted my comment. I am a Canadian. I was commenting to the Australian to expect fallout from defiance.
I approve of what Canada’s doing but even I didn’t think Trump would be so petty. Yes, kind of stupid of me not to expect it.
The upcoming deals for the EU and China from Canada will enrich all 3. When sanity returns to the US, those established trading deals will mean less incentive for Canada to build deals with us. Or so I fear.
Tr*mp ruins everything he touches!
Sure, Jamie Beaton may be intelligent, highly educated, hard-working and rich–but, the real question is, will Cambridge make him their youngest-ever full professor?
Best wishes for your eye surgery!
I’m not quite sure why, but the steeplejack video was utterly fascinating.
Best of luck with your upcoming cataract surgery! It really makes a world of difference once healing is complete. Also, definitely give the Monte Cristo a try sometime—the sweet and savory combination is surprisingly delicious.