Although I don't bake that often, many recipes that I do make require zest, often orange zest. Zesting without a zester is a pain: I have to use a peeler and then attempt to chop the peels as finely as I can until they're practically grated. Sometimes I get impatient and don't chop finely enough, resulting in baked goods that don't have the subtle orange flavor throughout but rather have it in patches. (Happily, others don't notice. I only notice because I'm the cook, I know I was lazy, and I eat the same item repeatedly and so have a basis for comparison.)
Thus, I wanted something that makes zesting consume less time and result in a more consistent product.
There are a number of choices: hand-held zesters a la miniature peelers, box graters with a side with fine blades, and so called rasp graters, of which the microplane grater is the best known.
After a bit of research on the web, I decided that a rasp grater like microplane is better than a box grater simply because the resulting zest is finer.
After more research, I decided I wanted a rasp grater, not a zester. The only advantage of traditional zesters is that one can make long artistic swirls of zest with them. As my need -simply zest oranges for cooking- is simple, the rasp grater wins. I found this chowhound thread on microplane rasp grater versus zester quite persuasive.
Once I decided I wanted a rasp grater, I needed to decide which brand. Microplane is obviously the most popular, but that simply could be because it was first. Yet, after reading this Cook's Illustrated evaluation of rasp graters, I realized microplanes were popular for good reason. They were first to market and constantly improved their product and no other grater has caught up in quality.
Additional keywords: choose, choosing, select, selecting, review, reviews, buying tips, advice
Need A Device That Zests?
Montreal & Quebec Day 9: Flying Home
As I was flying out on this Sunday, I hadn't scheduled any sightseeing for the day. The previous night I'd briefly contemplated waking up early to see a tall falls east of town and a huge basilique and adjacent canyon farther east. But, I decided I'd seen enough religious buildings. Also, the forecast said rain; hence, the falls were likely to be not very pleasant and not easily seen.
I had trouble deciding what type of food to eat and when (such as one meal or two) before my plane's scheduled departure around 1:00pm. In the end, my parents and I ended up walking this route in a drizzle from our hotel, through old town and many tempting fancier restaurants, to the bakery outside the walls that had smelled so good on Saturday. Along the way, I took these pictures. The pictures also include some photographs I took while flying home.
It was further than any of us thought. We soon realized we were close when the smells of fresh bread wafted down the block. And thus we had breakfast at Panetier Baluchon. Here's my review.
After breakfast, as mom and I packed, dad researched and bid on hotels to determine where my parents would sleep that night. (Me, I thought they'd have planned ahead and figured this out before the trip began or at least a few days before it became needed. This last minute behavior seemed uncharacteristic.)
Anyway, this meant I got the fun opportunity to pick up the car from the garage and drive it through many narrow, windy one-way streets back to the hotel. Really, I'm not being sarcastic: it was fun. The previously linked route also includes the trail from the hotel to the parking garage and my best estimate of the roads I took to return to the hotel.
Given this hotel research, we checked out at the last minute and headed to the airport nearly an hour after I'd originally thought would be a good time to leave for the airport for my flight. I was extremely nervous, nearly panicky, during the drive to the airport. Our lateness turned out not to be a problem at all. Traffic was fine. The airport was closer than I thought. And there was no line for security.
(Incidentally, my parents didn't actually manage to book a hotel that morning; they needed more time later in the day to finish the job.)
Further saving me from any worry of missing my flight was my flight's delay due mechanical problems that "needed further investigation." We took off a bit more than an hour late.
That meant I had time to think about lunch. Quebec airport was so small, there were practically no food purveyors and certainly none behind security. Instead, I ate the remains of olive-garlic bread (still quite good) and wished I had an apple to complete my lunch. (Only one person will get the reference from the latter part of that sentence.)
To get back to San Francisco, I had to transfer twice, once in Toronto and once in Denver. Through these three flights, the planes got larger and larger. The first sat less than fifty people -two on each side of the aisle-; the second, with a similar layout though longer, sat around one hundred and twenty-five; the third was a two-five-two layout and probably sat three hundred and fifty people.
Transferring in Toronto was stressful. I had to take a shuttle to the international terminal, pick up my bags, go through customs, check my bags, and go through security. Even with bypassing all the lines -the privilege accorded to people running late-, I just barely made my flight. Two more minutes and I wouldn't have. Good thing the baggage claim wasn't marginally slower!
Since I arrived in Denver on time, I had over two hours in which to get dinner. I spent most of it walking up and down the terminal getting exercise while deciding where to eat. First, I got a satisfying cheese steak at Steak Escape. (Why can't we have fast food joints that serve such respectable cheese steaks in California?) Then, still hungry, I decided to go vaguely healthy (or at least to delude myself into thinking that anything without meat must be healthy) and ordered a veggie sub at Quizno's. It turned out to be huge, mostly filled with lettuce and black olives. It was fairly good though difficult to eat because it was drenched in so much sweet vinaigrette dressing that the dressing soaked through the bread and made the sandwich begin to fall apart.
From San Francisco Airport, I took a shuttle home. It was surprisingly fast, as out of the dozen people, they dropped me off first! A nice end to a day of traveling.
Montreal & Quebec Day 8: The Rest of Quebec
This day, Saturday, was stunningly nice: a striking contrast to Friday. I like not having to peer through a zip-lock bag to read a guide book.
As I had to hit most of Quebec today (because Friday's rain slowed down my explorations), I had big plans. These started with getting energized with breakfast, this case at Chez Temporel, a short walk from our hotel. Here's my review.
We walked and saw a lot today. Consider my photographs and this route map primary references. This entry, like most others for this trip, only includes odd remarks that don't have an accompanying picture. You'll see once again through the pictures how great it is to visit this time of year: many flowers were in bloom.
Sometime in the morning, we stopped by a bookstore in search of pictures of Quebec. (I'm not sure why.) We flipped through some nice picto-travel-guides.
The Park de l'Artillerie (Artillery Park) by the old walls has interesting plaques about Quebec's history. I can say this because the plaques were nicely translated into English, not a common feature in Quebec.
Lunchtime found us outside the walls of Vieux Quebec (Old Quebec) and we rather haphazardly found ourselves getting food from a deli/market, Epicerie Europeenne. Here's my review.
We sat by an impressive church nearby and ate our lunch. The church wasn't in either of the two guide books we had. I believe one can judge the cultural and historical depth of a place by the number of cool unlisted places one finds during the normal course of exploring.
We noticed many traffic lights in Quebec display red in every direction for twenty seconds, thus allowing pedestrians to cross in any direction. It's either a testament to the number of people who walk or a courtesy to the tourists. In either case, I appreciate it.
Eventually, we made our way to the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec (Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec). I wasn't sure if we'd actually go in. It turned out to be free due to some special exhibit so we did. (I don't quite understand it... I think there was a conference because of a particular exhibit and the museum was free as a courtesy to the conference.) Although I have photographs of and from the museum, it didn't allow me to take pictures of the individual pieces of art. Hence, I have many comments about what I saw:
- The museum has a really nice collection of Quebecois artwork, conventional and abstract.
- Fernand Leduc, an abstract Quebecois painter, had an exhibit with very colorful geometric art that I liked. However, he also did some weak pieces that were simply monochromatic swatches.
- One exhibit of portraits mentions how, for some of the subjects who were painted after death, the artists didn't have any older paintings or sketches or sometimes even descriptions on which to rely, instead painting the portrait from their imagination.
- A different exhibit of portraits in an impressively ornate room had paintings densely packed, literally to the top of the elevated ceiling. It's comparable with the Met's most crowded rooms.
- A special exhibit on the Intuit had cute dancing polar bear statues. Some were done by Qiatsuq Shaa. Sadly, I can't find a picture online.
- I liked the exhibit on Jean-Paul Riopelle, another Quebecois artist, especially his Pollock-esq painting Spain, which used so much paint as to be three dimensional. I also enjoyed his impressive Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, a series of thirty paintings made from spray paint and a stencil. Oh, and in a move uncommon for museum, the museum also displayed his easel.
- Also in the vein of colorful modern art, I liked Marcelle Ferron's Return from Italy no 2.
- Jean Dallaire made an abstract art mobile titled Julie that reminded me of Chinese calligraphy.
- According to my notes, a piece Spirale 1 by Martin Pan was amazingly balanced. Sadly, I can't find anything online about the artist or the particular piece.
After the ferry, we had a difficult hunt for a dinner destination, eventually finding L'Ardoise. Here's a description of the hunt and my review of the restaurant.
I only have one observation to add: although it appears most tourists confine themselves to Old Town, the diversity of restaurants and stores outside the walls, especially along Grand Allee and Rue St-Jean, makes these neighborhoods great.
As I played with my computer in the evening to record the day's route, I realized I hadn't touched my ipod during the entire trip. It's quite a contrast compared to the tens of hours I spent listening to it as I walked around on my trip to Vancouver.
Montreal & Quebec Day 7: Old Town in the Rain
We began our first full day in Quebec with the breakfast provided by the hotel. It was sad. The croissants looked so bad I didn't bother taking one, instead taking a decent, moist blueberry muffin, cereal, and some watermelon.
Then, bundled in raincoats and equipped with umbrellas, we ventured out. It rained on and off the entire day and was generally overcast. I was smart and kept my guide book in a ziplock bag. Hence, I could keep referring to it in spite of the weather. However, the rain prevented me from taking many notes. Instead, I took many pictures from which you can tell how overcast and wet the day was.
Here is the route we followed. We explored much of Upper Old Town before lunch and Lower Old Town after lunch. We walked in a stop-and-start fashion, attempting to be in churches and under overhangs during the heavier downpours.
I'm not sure if it was the weather or simply the pervasiveness of old, solid stone buildings, but the whole town feels very European. (I'm thinking back to my trips to England as a kid during which it rained most of the time.) It certainly felt more European than Old Montreal, possibly because Old Quebec felt more consistent than Old Montreal. Old Montreal has buildings of a variety of ages, some fairly modern like the World Trade Center, whereas Old Quebec has pretty uniformly old buildings. Meanwhile, Upper Old Town hides its modernity: an ancient-looking seminary near our hotel, we realized, actually houses an indoor basketball court.
One unphotographed site we found on our walk was Rue du Tresor (Treasury Road), a short street where, despite the rain, many densely-packed artists exhibited their wares. (The overhangs were wide enough that they nearly covered the whole street.) The street is an attraction; the artists there have their own association promoting it.
Due to the rain, we didn't get to climb the Promenade des Gouverneurs to the Citadelle. However, explored the Citadelle the following day.
As planned, we headed to Aux Anciens Canadiens, a distinctly Quebecois restaurant, for a late lunch. Before going there, we changed into dry clothes in the hotel so we'd be more comfortable while eating. Here's my review of the restaurant.
After our long late lunch ended between four and five p.m., we explored Lower Older Town, still in the rain, before returning to our hotel.
In Lower Town, we looked around the Old Port. Although like everything else in Quebec it has a history dating back centuries, it didn't seem old at all. It was a pretty standard port. In fact, we found most of Lower Town pretty ordinary, lacking the history and coherent feel that Upper Town has.
Rue St-Paul has many restaurants. It's a bit surprising they could all survive -- the streets were empty; none of the tourists massed in Rue du Petit-Champlain seemed to make it to St-Paul. The following day I realized St-Paul gets, at times, a lot of foot traffic, as it is on the natural path from the cruise ship terminal in the Old Port to the steps that lead to Upper Old Town.
We found the walk back to our hotel in Upper Town easy. I wonder who bothers to use the funiculaire.
From this day's damp adventures, the pair of shoes I wore hadn't dried by the time I flew home two days later.
Montreal & Quebec Day 6: First Quebec Evening
Although I didn't see much of Quebec on my first evening there, over the next couple of days I got to know the city. And yes, it is a city, but not a metropolis like Montreal. Notably, its old town -the main attraction- is one of the oldest cities in North America. The cobblestone, haphazardly angled, and narrow streets, the preponderance of centuries old stone buildings, and the castle-like city fortifications give it a truly European feel. The old town is pretty small and walkable. Old town and a few streets extruding from it have the density of people, restaurants, and shops that a city requires. However, the total land area these occupy before the roads peter out into a less dense, more vehicle-transportation dominated portion of the city makes the city rather limited in scope
I feel like I ought to compliment Lord Dufferin, the man who governed Canada for much of the 1870s, for his foresight. He stopped the destruction of the old walls, the replacement of the roads, and the widening of gates, thereby preserving Quebec's old world charm.
Quebec's history revolves around the single major event in its history: the battle in which Britain defeated France for control of Quebec. It felt like most parks, fortifications, statues, plaques, etc. all commemorated or memorialized some aspect of the event. The temporary occupation of Quebec by the Americans during the revolutionary war received a little attention too, but not much.
A few other features differentiate Quebec from Montreal. There are fewer bistros and cafes. And although everyone is still bilingual, it was much easier to find people in Quebec with poor English skills, unsure about the English words for a variety of things (in our case, food ingredients).
Evening Activities:
We didn't do much on our first evening in town. We checked into our hotel, Manoir des Remparts, and headed to Chez Victor, a burger joint outside of Old Town. Here's my review. After dinner, we drove through the really tangled roads of Old Quebec to the parking garage where we'd leave our car during our time in Quebec, parked our car, and walked to the hotel. If you view the route we took, you'll see all the short, one-way streets. (Google maps makes the layout seem much less convoluted than it actually is.)
Montreal & Quebec Day 6: Montreal library, public market, and the drive to Quebec
Driving to Quebec was the main goal for this Thursday. Since we decided to do the drive in the afternoon, we had time to see a few more sights in Montreal during the morning and lunch hours.
These pictures document this day's adventures.
Morning:
We started the day with a short stroll from our hotel to Rue St-Denis, a nice street we've visited multiple times. This route shows our path.
Once there, we had a simple breakfast at our destination, La Brioche Lyonnaise, sitting outdoors at a table by the street. Here's my review.
After breakfast, we visited the Quebec National Library on our way back to the hotel. It's a great library: large (as it should it be since it's the province's flagship one), pleasant, and welcoming, and with a good mix of French and English books. Smartly located, it's built above the city's largest metro station, a place where multiple lines cross. Making library access easy is commendable.
Since we were there and hadn't yet seen the inside of a Metro station (because we found it easy to walk everywhere), we went underground to explore. The station was big, stocked with magazine shops and fast food joints, and generally unremarkable, reminding me of Penn Station in Manhattan.
Walking back to the hotel, we passed some sort of gathering or protest in a square. It wasn't clear what was happening. It may simply have been a fire alarm in the building across the street.
We checked out of the hotel and drove a short distance to Parc Lafontaine, where we circumambulated for about an hour. (We saw pretty much everything.) It's a pleasant park surrounded by a generally residential neighborhood. I don't have much to add that's not in the pictures except a comment on what my Fodor's guide book said:
Montreal's two main cultures are reflected in the layout of this popular park: the eastern half is French, with paths, gardens, and lawns laid out in geometric shapes; the western half is English, with meandering paths and irregularly shaped ponds that follow the natural contours of the land.The description makes this distinction sound clear / obvious. It's not. We generally found it hard to distinguish the two halves.
After another short drive to stop by Square St-Louis, we began to head out of town. Our main detour before leaving town was the Jean-Talon market.
Jean Talon Market:
Jean-Talon Market was the star of the day. It puts San Francisco's Ferry Building to shame. The Jean-Talon Market is a huge farmers market, open every day, surrounded by many bakeries and specialty food shops (e.g., cheese). And it even has a food-books-only bookstore, much like the one I spotted in Vancouver. The market is in the style of the ferry building and its market, but it's just much larger, like one took many of the bay area farmers markets and put them all in one location and kept them open constantly. Furthermore, some of the vendors are more impressive than those at the ferry building: one vendor had more types of potatoes than I've seen in one place; another had the same with apples.
Apparently someone set up a scavenger hunt at the market, forcing people to find particular booths or shops and get a sheet stamped. I love activities that encourage people to explore cool places.
We made lunch from items we picked up at the market:
- an olive, garlic, herb loaf of bread. Quite good. We had some left over and snacked on it at times over the next few days.
- fruit: peaches, nectarines, raspberries, and an Asian pear (which disappeared quickly).
- sausages: one duck (tasty, very soft); one bison (chewy, gamy).
- a slice of double chocolate cake.
Driving to Quebec:
For the first half of our drive to Quebec, we passed through forests awesomely colored by autumn leaves. En route, we took a fine excursion through the quaint, small downtown of Three Rivers. Its waterfront has nice bridges, views of rivers, and walking paths.
One church we found, Notre-Dame du Cap-de-la-Madeleine, is remarkable. Sure, it's a big, impressive church. But it's notable in that it has a great view of the water, a nearby pleasant leafy park with statues, an attached restaurant (!), a gift shop, and more.
We took highway 138 from Three Rivers to Quebec, passing many single-family houses with good views of the river. We didn't stop to photograph any. I imagine they're inexpensive given their location in the middle of nowhere in an area that gets serious winters.
It was dusk when we arrived in Quebec.
Montreal & Quebec Day 5: Museum of Fine Arts and Botanical Garden
Wednesday began with breakfast at our second hotel of the trip, Hotel Manoir des Alpes. The breakfast was definitely worse than the one served at our first hotel. The croissants and pain au chocolat were clearly the type one gets in a package from a supermarket. I ended up eating cereal, so things worked out okay.
These pictures capture the day's adventures.
The day's main goal was to see the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Musee des Beaux-Arts de Montreal). The museum's pieces cover a wide range: from African art, Intuit art, and ancient art, to scale models of churches, to old religious art, which in turn gives way to romanticism, and then to eighteenth and nineteenth century portraits, European masters like Picasso and Miro -they have a nice collection-, Canadian art, and finally to modern art such as Jean-Paul Riopelle. Somewhere, the museum found space to fit in Mediterranean artifacts, including many old coins, a model of the Temple of Apollo, some really old glass (I mean, some of the earliest glass ever made), and several tiny lamps. And next to that, it had an exhibit on furniture and other functional art, both old and modern, including pianos, pots, vases, teapots, and oddly shaped vessels.
Many of my observations are documented by pictures. Here are a few comments that are not. Sadly, I couldn't find a picture online for most of the pieces of art these comments reference.
- I liked Albert Lebourg's The Point Marie at Sunset -- it reminded me of some of Monet's work. It was also displayed near a Monet.
- I liked the museum's paintings by Renoir, in particular Entrance to General Holy d'Oissel (or so my notes appear to read).
- I liked Jan Hackaert's Departure for Hunt with Falcons.
- I liked Jan Both's Southern Landscape with Travelers.
- Emmanuel de Witte's Interior with a Woman Playing a Virginal has a good sense of depth.
- Christian Luyckx's piece Pronk Still Life with Silver and Gift Vessels has lots of detail. The museum also had paintings by others in a similar style.
- Something about Victor Vasarely's piece Toil or Toll or Tou -I can't read my handwriting- made me write down the name.
- The gift shop sells tiny night lights painted like paintings in the museum. I've seen items like this before but I still find them cute.
After the museum, since we were on the correct side of the city, we decided to compensate for seeing so many churches by seeing a few synagogues. So we drove to the few my guide book mentioned. Apparently Montreal has a large Jewish population. I didn't take pictures of the synagogues because they were pretty ugly, especially compared to the churches. In the process of visiting them, we decided Westmont, the neighborhood that contained them, was nice. And even here, outside Montreal proper, we found notable buildings (i.e., worth seeing) not in my guide book. And we found murals everywhere we went. Pretty cool.
Then off to the Botanical Garden we went. After fighting rush hour traffic, we made it and parked not far from the Olympic Stadium (Stade Olympique). It didn't tempt me but I was amused by the description in my guide book:
"The stadium, built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, is beautiful but not very practical. It's hard to heat, and the retractable fabric roof, supported by the tower, has never worked properly. Abandoned by the baseball and football teams it was supposed to house, the stadium is now used for trade shows, motorcycle races, and monster-truck competitions."-Fodors
As for the Botanical Garden itself (Jardin Botanique de Montreal), we sadly didn't have much time there before dusk. While I'd planned to be there at dusk for one special exhibit, I'd hoped for more time to explore before the sun set. But the Botanical Garden was huge! We walked through quickly, attempting to see as much as we could while light remained, not even pausing long enough to take pictures. We made it through the Japanese Garden, the First Nations Garden, the Rose Garden, the Garden of Innovations, the Shade Garden, the Alpine Garden, ... Though decent, I imagine many would be much better when in bloom. Some, like the Alpine Garden, are probably always good. Some of these gardens are subdivided: the First Nations into hardwood, softwood, and nordic; the Japanese into a tea garden, a bonsai courtyard, a stone garden, and a pavilion. I'm actually really happy we found the bonsai exhibit -- it was purely by accident as we were leaving for the night. We missed a number of gardens and all of the exhibition greenhouses. The Botanical Garden's web site has virtual tours of many of the gardens.
We also stuck our head in the Insectarium. I'd hoped to see the butterfly room, but found it closed due to the season. Instead, we saw many mounted bugs, butterflies, bees, etc. A great place for entomophiles.
By the time dusk arrived, I'd navigated us to The Magic of Lanterns exhibit in the Chinese Garden, the true purpose of our visit to the Botanical Garden. Every fall, the Chinese Garden is decorated with lanterns, paper boats, and more. It's pretty stunning. Since I took many pictures (and one movie), I won't bother describing it in detail. I wrote in my notes that I hope the pictures express the glowing nature of the displays. I'm happy to observe many do.
As we left, the Chinese Garden got much more crowded. I'm glad we arrived at dusk to see it slightly less packed. While walking to the car, my mom remarked, "What a wonderful way to end Montreal at night."
Once in the car, we headed to dinner at Au Petit Extra. I'd decided to end our Montreal trip with another French bistro. Here's my review.
Montreal & Quebec Day 4: Old Montreal
I took many pictures this day; the captions to those pictures describe much of the day's adventures. In this post, I'll elide a lot -e.g., skipping almost immediately from lunch to an evening show- because everything in between is represented by photographs.
For breakfast, we headed to Byblos Le Petit Cafe. Unlike the previous day, it was open. And so we ate. Here's my review. I noticed Byblos had a rack of books and realized that I'd seen similar racks of books at the bagel cafe from Monday and in general at many cafes into which we peeked. I like a cultural climate that expects such features everywhere, as Montreal's apparently does.
After breakfast, we returned our car to the hotel. On the way back, we serendipitously turned onto a street (Duluth) and spotted some restaurants with unusual cuisines, like Afghani.
Once at our hotel, we walked to Old Montreal. The plan for the day was to see everything there that we could. Here's the route we walked.
Old Montreal felt historic, cobblestone streets and all.
From the waterfront, we spotted the Biodome.
We walked by the Musee Marc-Aurele Fortin. My guidebook's description of the museum sounded tempting, but we simply didn't have time. I kind of like the few paintings of his that I can find on the web. Next time, perhaps.
I already had lunch planned: a cafe called Olive & Gourmando. And, because we got there later than I expected -there's a lot to see in Old Montreal!-, we were famished. Here's my review.
After lunch we continued exploring. I'm a bit sad we didn't have time to visit the Archeology and History Museum, though I always knew we wouldn't get the chance this day. It has some underground exhibits relating to what the site was previously used for (a cemetery, a river tunnel, etc.).
To recharge my parents from all this walking, we stopped by a Cafe Depot in the Montreal World Trade Center. I've never seen adding cream to coffee look so hard.
In the early evening, we went to the Our Lady of Montreal Basilica (Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Montreal) to see the sound-and-light show And Then There Was Light. I'm glad I didn't see the inside of the basilica before the show -- the show was a great introduction. Initially, white sheets covered the sides of the chapel. A movie about the history of Montreal and the basilica is projected onto the sheets. During one scene involving a ship, a fan makes the sheets shimmy in the wind like sails. When the movie introduces an architectural facet of the basilica, the sheets drop artistically to the floor, and lights turn on to reveal the grand artifact previously hidden. By the end of the half hour show, the church is revealed in all its grandiosity. (See the pictures.) Without a doubt, it's the most impressive, opulent church in Montreal. It's not that surprising that the architect converted from protestantism to catholicism as it was being built.
After the show, we walked back to our hotel while seeing Old Montreal at night. En route, we noticed Rue St. Paul and Place Jacques-Cartier (especially the latter, which was very festive) had many restaurants. How did we not notice them before?
At our hotel, we picked up our car to go on a hunt for poutine for dinner. Finding poutine was quite an adventure. Read all about it and La Banquise, the place where we ended up. While poutine hunting, we observed two neat things about driving and parking in downtown Montreal. One, it has nice bike lanes. Two, parking meters are recessed, placed adjacent to building walls. This makes the street look nicer -- we never noticed the meters while walking. But it also makes it harder to tell if a spot where you want to park is metered.
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