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SPECIAL OCCASIONS IN PORTUGAL

The predominant religion of Portugal is Roman Catholic.

Every town has its special legends. saints, and festivities concerning every aspect of the seasons, the land, family occasions, and religion. In fine weather almost anything becomes excuse enough for a family outing that probably includes relatives, neighbors, and ample provisions of fresh breads, cheeses, cured hams, cold roasted chickens, boned and stuffed suckling pigs, salted herrings, and of course huge wicker-covered jugs of fine homemade or local wines.

Everything wild in Portugal is usually called “brave” or “royal” so a gathering that later turns into a party hut is ostensibly for the purpose of branding young bulls may be called fcsta brava; while a dish of wild duck may be called paw real, recalling the days when all wild game was strictly for royalty to enjoy. It is well to remember that the Portuguese brava does not mean “brave” but “wild.” Sometimes Portuguese may refer in faltering English to a young girl as being “brave” when they really mean that her dress and manner indicate her to be “wild” – at least by Portuguese standards, which tend to be conservative.

Any part of outdoor work that requires several hands is also turned into a special occasion. Gathering olives or grapes, shucking fresh corn, treading grapes for wine, in fact most rural jobs that others may consider simply as work, the Portuguese turn into a pleasure by working and singing, enjoying a meal of perhaps broa and caldo verde, then finishing with extra wine, sweets, and much music and dance.

An example of this is the esfolhadc, the party for corn shucking. With everyone in best clothes, the work proceeds seriously enough until someone finds a cob of red corn and then the fun begins: the lucky holder of the red cob gets to kiss all the ladies present, or vice versa.

Incidentally corn is an important crop in Portugal, hut not just for reasons of fun or food. The thinnings are fed to the cattle, coarsest stalks are used to bed cattle while the emptied cobs are saved and dried to use as fuel.

In the summer months, especially in the North, there is an almost continuous round of fairs and special pilgrimages called ronwrios. Church services and processions are interspersed with feasting, singing and dancing, ornate decorations and often fireworks.

One of the more interesting festivals, the Feast of Tabitleiros, is held every three to five years in the town of Tomar. Girls march in processions with huge layered headdresses made of loaves of bread decorated with wheat sheaves, flowers, and ribbons. The clergy follow bearing richly decorated silver crowns on small black pillows and several young bullocks bring up the end. Liter the cattle are slaughtered and portions of meat and breads from the headdresses are distributed to the poor of the area.

Country fairs sell everything from pottery and ribbons to boots and donkeys, hut the most celebrated of all is the Feast of St. Martin held in mid-November in Golega. It is a horse fair and a national occasion, a spectacle of Lisbon sociedade, visiting dignitaries and royalty, army horsemen, cal,- alheiros who fight the hulls on horseback, and the great horse breeders of Ribatejo and Alentejo, dressed in their special attire of trim gray jacket and trousers and the wide gray flat-brimmed hats. Each group dresses in its finest, with the horses prancing in their best manner and everyone there to see everyone else. Nearby dining rooms are ready with fine foods and wine always on tap.

All Saints’ Day, November 1, always brings with it memories of that same day in 1755 when almost three-quarters of Lisbon crumbled in a brief but violent earthquake. Then as now it is a solemn day set aside for quiet church services and memorials for all who died. After services, street vendors sell broas dos santos, saints’ cakes and other sweets, a brief reminder of the sweeter side of life.

PORTUGUESE DOMESTIC LIFE

Portuguese domestic life follows traditional patterns and in many rural areas regional costumes are much in evidence. Discipline of children and courtship follow strict patterns. These factors may result in adjustment problems when Portuguese emigrate to Canada and the United States. The father is the household head, but Portuguese women frequently work side by side with their husbands in agriculture, fishing, or factories. In fact, many work activities are considered family affairs. After the work of shucking corn, heating trees for olives, or picking grapes is completed, a family picnic ending with singing and dancing is more the rule than the exception.

It is typical of Portugal that modern methods are only implemented where traditional ones are no longer feasible. If the old method works, why toss it out? In the fields, ancient agricultural techniques are practiced alongside modern mechanization.

This is true too of the Portuguese kitchen. Since three-quarters of Portugal’s people are engaged in agricultural pursuits, the country home and kitchens dominate the country’s way of life. Self-sufficiency is a matter of great pride. Many types of homemade pork sausages, sausage-like strings of lard, barrels of salted bacon flavored with hay leaf and garlic, and of course a good supply of homemade wines, stores of fruits, vegetables and grains stock the pantries and cool storage areas of the Portuguese home. This is still a source of pride today.

Many communities share a huge cement and stone oven where breads and confections may be baked. Kitchens glow with tiled floors and walls and often tiled cooking areas. Few electrical appliances are used as traditional mortar and pestle, hand coffee-grinders and strong arms do the blending, crushing, chopping, mixing, and beating of kitchen chores.

Southern Portugal reflects many dishes of the Spanish cuisine such as gaspacho, the cold vegetable soup; pudim flan, the sweet caramel custard; and many dishes that are cooked all in one pot by steaming. The cataplana is used especially in the Algarve, the southernmost province of Portugal. Two rounded lids are clamped tightly together, cooking food on the stove top like a type of pressure cooker and giving any food combinations a moist freshness.

COMMONLY USED PORTUGUESE FOODS

Cooking in Portugal is hearty, simple, and distinctively regional. The penchant for fresh ingredients simply prepared is as important in Portugal as it is in Spain. But the Portuguese delight in unusual combinations such as seafood and pork in the same dish, and take pleasure in a stronger use of garlic and the frequent surprise of a stinging hot sauce made with the Brazilian fiery peppers called piripiri.

Dishes of pork, seafoods of all kinds – especially the beloved dried salt cod called bacalao – form the main dishes together with any variety of available vegetables and greens. Every meal is accompanied with bread, whether it is the cornmeal bread called broa in northern Portugal, or the many types of wheat breads in the south. Rice, widely used as a base for other foods, appears well sugared in many dessert dishes. Rich sweets in the forms of puddings, baked custards, imaginative confections and pastries are the specialties of many monasteries and special pastry shops. Each region is proud of its own sweet delights.

Portuguese red wine is abundant and considered so superior to the white that it is consumed with every dish, even fish. In fact, drinking red wine with fish dishes is considered to be a tradition in the Algarve. But the drinking of red wine in no way diminishes the Portuguese love for good coffee which appears after meals and frequently accompanies the many tempting sweets.

FOODS IN PORTUGAL

PORTUGUESE DAIRY PRODUCTS

Cows and ewes supply milk which is used more to produce the many varieties of local cheeses than to take as a beverage. Five- and six-course meals are not uncommon in Portugal, especially in the North where hearty eaters abound in the cooler, moister weather. Some form of white soft or mild local cheese appears either before or with the fruit course. Queijo do Alentejo and Serra are two popular soft cheeses made from ewe’s milk. They are especially good with apples and walnuts and washed down with a velvety red wine like Dao. Other good cheeses include Queijo da Serpa and Queijo da Azeitao. Flamengo is a cheese often proffered to tourists; it is similar to a Gouda hut considered not as good as other local cheeses.

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES IN PORTUGAL

Most of the fruits of Portugal come from area orchards and vineyards and are enjoyed in season: oranges, apples, figs, melons, limes, peaches. Imported fruits such as pineapples and bananas also form an important part of the fruit intake. Monks in the 1300s are credited with teaching the peasants the arts of fruit growing. Fruits, enjoyed in their fresh ripe state, are often eaten with cheese as a meal course before the sweet desserts. The famed plums of Elvas are eaten liquored and iced or fresh.

Portuguese vegetables are enjoyed garden-fresh frequently as soup or casserole ingredients but seldom overcooked. Turnip greens are a great favorite as is the strongly flavored kale, the principal ingredient in the northern specialty caldo verde. This is a very popular soup, made from potatoes and finely shredded kale or other greens, well seasoned with pork sausages (linguica or chourico) and garlic. Fresh coriander with its clean lemon-like taste is used in so many dishes that it can almost he regarded more as a food than as a seasoning.

Potatoes belong at the top of the list of vegetables. They are used in soups and stew-type dishes with either meat, fish, or seafood and they are a part of almost every dinner or supper. So fond are the Portuguese of their potatoes that these vegetables often appear beside rice as the second starchy food of the meal.

The Portuguese enjoy a wide variety of vegetables but prefer them in cooked form rather than fresh in salads. Many soups are made predominantly with vegetables and highlighted with garlic browned in olive oil and the pungent garlic sausages of which there are so many types.

Garlic and onions, scallions and leeks are a large part of Portuguese cuisine. And the ancient olive trees deserve special mention. Olives are used in cooking, adding their color and taste to many dishes. They are enjoyed brined, pickled, black or green.

PORTUGUESE MEATS AND ALTERNATES

Porco (pork) is the staple meat of the Portuguese table. Nothing is wasted; trimmings and odd pieces as well as fat and offal are used in the many varieties of sausages, some spicy and some mild but almost all pungent with garlic. Presunto is the name given to smoked hams, while pato is salted, smoked, and spiced pork tenderloin. The spicy casserole called porco con ameijoas is only one of many combining stewed or braised pork with some form of seafood, in this case cockles.

Some beef is used but it is leaner and tougher than beef found in North America, for the most part requiring slow moist cooking or else held in marinades to tenderize before grilling. Chicken, duck, and game are also used when available. Meat of young animals is favored; veal, lamb, kid, suckling pig.

So important is fish in the Portuguese diet that at least one meal a day will be based on a fish dish, and even if meat happens to be the main dish of the meal, it will be preceded by both soup and a fish course. In June, the sardine season, almost everyone grills sardines outdoors on small charcoal-heated braziers. Lampreys have the height of their season in March and these are used mainly in stews. It should be noted that grilled fish is the one dish that is often accompanied with a salad of freshly sliced tomatoes and onion rings. Herring, cod, salmon, and trout are plentiful as are every variety of shellfish and seafood.

Beans are served frequently, especially in stews and casserole-type dishes. Dobrada is a hearty peasant dish of tripe and beans. Incidentally, the natives of Oporto are so noted for their love of tripe and the many ways of preparing it, they are often called Tripeiros or “tripe-eaters.”

While chicken meat may not be so important, chicken eggs certainly are. Where would all the lusciously sweet yolk-rich desserts, the airy-light sponge cakes and delicate meringue confections with exotic names like “nun’s nipples” and “nun’s breasts” be without eggs? Hardly a sweet rice pudding or the ubiquitous pudim flan (caramel custard) could possibly exist without eggs. Aside from the multitude of sweetmeats and confections that are based on eggs, eggs are also served hard-cooked or poached as colorful garnishes to other dishes like fish casseroles or codfish cakes. Tortilha is the name for omelet, and the omelet, aside from eggs, may also contain a satisfying portion of onions, potatoes, other vegetables, and a garnish of spicy sausage.

The trees in Portugal offer many things: fruits for eating, pine boughs to add aroma to the bake ovens, cork for wine bottles, olives for eating and making oil, and, last but not least, almonds, walnuts, and chestnuts: nuts for roasting, munching, salting, sugaring, and making into cakes and pastries. Almonds are especially plentiful in the southern Algarve district.

BREADS AND GRAINS IN PORTUGAL

The basket of fresh bread is probably the first thing that is put on any Portuguese table for any meal. If the meal is breakfast, then the local bread – whether made from cornmeal or corn flour, rye flour or coarse, nutty wholewheat flour — will be accompanied by fresh butter, sweet preserves and, depending on the area, either hot tea or coffee.

The slightly sweet heavy bread made from the flour of maize is the bread of northern Portugal and is called broa. Crusty and warm, it is particularly good served with caldo verde, the national soup of greens and potatoes.

Crusty breads of rye or wholewheat flour are more popular in the mid and southern regions where they are commonly used in the Moroccan way to mop up gravies, juices, and sauces from meat or seafood dishes. Breads are only taken from the table when the desserts are brought out.

The Moors brought rice cultivation to Portugal, and rice is much used in many savory and sweet dishes. It seems that the Portuguese cannot decide if they prefer rice or potatoes, so commonly are both served on the same plate.

FATS

Fats are consumed in many forms: fatty sausages made mainly from pork and lard; the fat contained in egg yolks and used so widely in desserts and confections; hut most of all, olive oil. Portuguese olive oil, called azeite, is produced for domestic consumption and is rarely exported. Azeite is the principal cooking fat and is also used by the canners of anchovies and sardines. The characteristically strong color and flavor of the Portuguese olive oil is clue to the processing. Olives are allowed to remain in the field from two to ten days before pressings and are deliberately run through hot water to bring out the strength of taste and depth of color. In other countries pains are taken to rush the fresh olives for pressing and to pass them through cold water to give a product light in both taste and color.

PORTUGUESE SWEETS AND SNACKS

Only the sweets of Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Morocco can vie with the confections, pastries, puddings, cakes, and other desserts of Portugal for honey-rich syrupy sweetness. It is not difficult to see that Portuguese sweets must have originated with the Moorish occupation, but the Portuguese have gone further with the addition of egg yolks and feathery-light meringues to create a confectioner’s heaven of desserts. Each small village proudly displays at least one fancy pastry shop and most villages even have their own specialties for the sweet tooth.

From olden times, the nuns in monasteries were famed for their exquisitely wrought sweets rich in sugar, eggs, vanilla, chocolate, and almonds. Tinted sugar and almond paste molded sweets are called macapao or marzipan. Similar sweets may be shaped like tiny sausages, fish, shellfish, fruits or vegetables and some are more suggestive with shapes and names like “nun’s kisses,” “nun’s nipples,” and “nun’s breasts.” At least one place, Amarante, is famed for its phallic-shaped brioches, probably survivors of ancient fertility rites common in many European areas and now melded into religious festivals.

PORTUGUESE SEASONINGS

Staple seasonings include garlic, coarse sea salt, lemon juice and wedges, and the generous use of fresh or freshly dried herbs such as mint, coriander, and parsley. Azeite, the Portuguese olive oil, must also he considered a national seasoning for the special flavor it imparts to many dishes. Fresh eggs, fresh butter, and vanilla together with grated lemon or orange rinds scent bakery and desserts but almonds must take an important place too. Curry blends also find a place, hearkening to Portugal’s ties with India.

BEVERAGES IN PORTUGAL

With wine appearing at every meal except breakfast, there can be little doubt as to what constitutes Portugal’s favorite beverage. Yet, many writers speak of Portugal’s passion for coffee too. And some areas prefer tea over coffee as the beverage both for breakfast, after meals, and with the many sweets taken as snacks or between-meal treats.

More than 240,000 people in Portugal are permanently engaged in some aspect of wine-growing or processing, while more than 1.25 million depend directly on the wine trade for their income. These are startling figures considering Portugal’s size. The variety of her wines usually startles outsiders as well. The world is familiar with port and Madeira but many should familiarize themselves with the varieties of port: vintage port, crusted port, wood port, vintage tawny and the lesser-known white port made from white grapes to produce a fine dry aperitif which is excellent when chilled.

Similarly Madeira wine is infrequently known in all its varieties from the dry aperitif seltial Madeira to the light dry verdellw, good also as an aperitif or with a first course. The bual Madeira is considered to be in the middle range, rich hut versatile, while the well-known richly full Malmsey Madeira is best served as a sipping wine or with dessert.

The Vinho Verdes of the northern Minho province (named from the grape) are zesty wines that come in either red or white. Aromatic whites are produced in Obidos while the whites of Alcohaca and Bucelas are richly golden, reminiscent of fine Rhine wines. The grapes of the Duoro are used mainly for the production of a popular red table wine called consumo. About one-quarter of the grape production is used for port wine. The muscatel grapes of Azeitao produce a sweet dessert wine whose flavor is heightened with the addition of fresh muscat skins giving It the perfume of fresh fruit.

Lisboans enjoy the many wines as well as tea and coffee. However in Lisbon, more than anywhere else in Portugal, foamy beer is also enjoyed, especially in the cervejarias (beer parlors) where the beer is accompanied by steaming plates of fresh fish or seafood specialties.

FOODS AND CULTURE OF PORTUGAL

Why are the Portuguese so similar to the Spanish and yet so distinctly different? Portugal and Spain share the Iberian Peninsula, and the Portuguese themselves are an ethnic mix of Iberian and Moorish (Moroccan) elements, as are the Spanish. Yet a range of jagged mountains isolates Portugal and causes her to turn inward on herself.

The Portuguese express their difference in many ways. There is the exuberant burst of song and dance that seems to be a part of any group of working Portuguese. Many writers describe the favorite Portuguese foods and drinks not merely as “favorites” but as “obsessions,” “passions,” or even “manias.” This innate intensity of feeling is a pan of every Portuguese. A cup of coffee or a glass of wine can become that obsession. Any one of the several hundred dishes made with salt cod (bacalao) may well be described as a passion. And the Portuguese delight in rich sweets does indeed border on a mania.

The same intensity of feelings appears again and again. The Portuguese ability to lose oneself temporarily in melancholia is called saudade and periodically surfaces, especially when in the atmosphere of a candlelit cafe and the soulful fado songs. The national love for artifice, ornament, and color satisfies itself in the Portuguese bullfight, religious parades, and festivities and even in architecture, especially that of the Manueline period.

On only two subjects does a Portuguese ever show the slightest signs of nonchalance or vagueness. These are the subjects of time and distance. After all, what does time matter, or even distance, so long as one is enjoying oneself?

Until the Middle Ages, Portugal and Spain did indeed share their destiny as part of the Iberian Peninsula. So it is not surprising that the Portuguese language hears many similarities to the Spanish and this is especially noted in the Spanish dialect in the provinces of Galicia and Asturias. Portuguese foods bear a distinct resemblance to many Spanish ones but veer off in combinations that the Spaniards would never dare.

The Portuguese are still influenced daily by Spanish customs such as the formalities observed in addressing strangers, the tendency to flamboyancy in the use of adjectives, and the rigid codes involving the dating and chaperoning of daughters. In Portugal as in Spain the main festivities of the year center around family and church, with each locale devoting special festivities and rites to local legends and saints.

Probably the earliest traders to touch and influence Portugal were the Phoenicians who brought with them the roots and twigs that stand to this day as craggy olive trees and rows upon rows of sprawling vineyards over the entire Iberian Peninsula. In the eighth century C.E. the Moorish Muslims swept northward from Morocco introducing rice culture, sugar plantations, and groves of lemon, almond, and fig trees as well as the persistent “mania” for rich sweet desserts. For the next several hundred years the land of Portugal was so often a part of Spain in many seesaw battles, that Spanish tastes, traditions, and customs melted into Portuguese.

Portugal’s Golden Age of the 1400s and 1500s was preceded by a period of calamities. In 1346 a massive earthquake occurred in Lisbon. Two years later plague ravaged the country and it was said that “six bodies were buried in every grave.” A heat wave in 1354 scorched crops and killed cattle. About the same time, Spain was gripped with the evils of the Inquisition while tales of monsters in the seas and the flatness of the world were told and retold.

Yet from the calamities, evils, and superstitions of the times, one man dared to set a different pace and launched Portugal as one of the great world powers. With the intensity so typical of his people, Prince Henry son of King Joao I, and later known simply as Henry the Navigator, set up a planned system of navigation, dispelled the fantasies of the times with scientific facts, and launched a sailing craft called the caravel.

The caravel won such a reputation for reliability that for several hundred years it was believed only a Portuguese-built ship could navigate African waters successfully. Inspired and encouraged by Henry the Navigator, Portuguese adventurers and explorers relentlessly searched for new routes and discovered the Madeiras and the Azores, acquired parts of Morocco and Africa, and under Bartholomew Dias opened a sea route to the Orient in 1487.

Portuguese daring and expertise of the seas shine in names that are legends today: Vasco da Gama, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, Ferdinand Magellan. The Portuguese were among the first to visit Labrador (which they mistook for a part of Greenland) and named it alter a captain who was called “Lavrador,” meaning “farmer.” It was they who brought back tales of seas so laden with fish that the ships could scarcely move. To this day the “beef of the sea” are the great catches of fresh cod later to be salted and dried in Portugal and cooked in hundreds of dishes. The bacalao, one of Portugal’s passions, is still found, but in diminishing quantities, in the North Atlantic seas.

Portuguese explorers revolutionized the taste buds and markets of Europe. They brought back gold and diamonds from Brazil as well as pineapples, corn, potatoes, squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, tiny fiery chilies, and beans of many types. From African ports they loaded their ships with yams, cocoa, and vanilla pods. Vasco da Gama’s crews – at least those who survived the scourge of scurvy – became rich beyond dreams. The black pepper they brought back from India is said to have alone financed churches, monasteries, and street widening, and made Manuel I one of Portugal’s richest kings. With the pepper selling at more than sixty times its cost, Lisbon became a commercial center, one that could well afford the flamboyant ornate architecture that came to be called “Manueline.”

The audacity of Portugal’s seafaring adventurers and the merchandising skills of the Jews who had fled to Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition were factors that quickly led Lisbon to the title of the world’s leading commercial capital. But the Inquisition spilled over Portugal’s borders and Manuel was forced to threaten expulsion of the Jews unless they were willing to change their faith and become conversos.

Portugal lost much of its vital merchandising middle class when many Jews left Lisbon. Portugal was further weakened in the 1500s with the growth of French, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and English fleets, who “cut their slices of East India cake and New World pie,” effectively breaking the Portuguese monopoly of the seas.

Only the areas of Africa and Brazil were left open to Portuguese traders who once again revolutionized European tastes and social life with the gradual introduction of a new beverage called coffee and a new institution called the coffeehouse.

Despite Portugal’s decline as a world power in the late 1500s, her successful diplomatic trade with China cannot be overlooked. Of all the world sea powers, the Portuguese were the first to reach China, to settle in Macao, and to set up a viable volume of trade that lasted unchallenged for more than 300 years. Elegant Chinese goods of porcelain, lacquer, and silks were traded for silver and furs from North America and sandalwood from the Hawaiian Islands. From China came oranges, limes, peaches, walnuts, and coriander. And, while the Portuguese passion for wine and coffee continues unabated to this day, there is still a place for tea on the Portuguese menu. Originating from her trade with China, the Portuguese call tea cha, a name hauntingly reminiscent of its origin, for the Chinese call their tea ch’a.

Portugal may have declined as a world power in the annals of history but the products she brought back and the instigation of sea adventure that she nurtured still deeply affect the tables of the world and are still reflected in the agriculture and cuisine of her own land. Today Portugal is almost self-sufficient in grains, fruits, and vegetables.

But despite a rich harvest of fresh fish and seafood, the Portuguese still passionately manage to consume salted and dried cod at the rate of 100 pounds per person per year. Northern Portugal’s cuisine and language still reflect the tastes and ties of Brazil, from crusty white bread and fine coffee, to piri-piri, that fiery little hot pepper that becomes a favored seasoning for fowl or seafood when ground and blended with oil. And southern Portugal’s Algarve district still leans heavily on Moorish cuisine: almonds in so many dishes and as a sweetmeat, and crusty whole wheat bread to mop up sauces in the Moroccan style.

Said to be prepared in at least 365 different ways (one for each day of the year), bacalao was introduced into Portugal in the early 1400s as a result of barter with the English.

English fishermen gathered huge catches of cod off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, salting and drying the fish for preservation. With little market for the cod in Great Britain, the English tried elsewhere and so began to barter with the Portuguese – a coarse red Portuguese wine for dried salted cod. The English called the wine “Red Portugal.” This early trade formed the basis for strong English-Portuguese ties and is known to this day, some 500 years later, as the Port Wine trade.

There is a story of the sons of a Liverpool wine merchant who journeyed to Portugal to select wines firsthand and decided to add a “dollop of brandy” to the kegs to fortify the wine for its journey to England. The fortified wine is said to be the origin of port wine. There may be some debate about the story but there is no debating the English taste for port wine. The Methuen government in 1703 agreed to allow Portuguese wine to enter England at a lower tariff than French wines in exchange for Portuguese importation of English wools.

In 1756, Prime Minister Pombal laid down strict rules in regard to the growth and production policies of port wine. These policies form the basis of the rules today. During the next 200 years, Portugal was to suffer through the Napoleonic Wars, which left the Portuguese with a taste for French furniture and French silver; through Brazil’s formation of an autonomous republic in 1889, but with no diminution of the Portuguese passion for coffee; and through the grim years between 1910 and 1926 when it is said that the Portuguese “averaged one revolution and three governments a year.” The Portuguese port wine trade was still so important after 200 years that it was considered Portugal’s sole stable institution when Dr. Antonio de Oliviera Salazar took the job of prime minister in 1932 and ruled for 36 years.

Beneath the rumblings and political upheavals, the Portuguese people have remained steadfastly absorbed in the intensity of life itself and with their passions, obsessions, and manias for food and drink, and for work and play.