Quarantine Diary Day 11: Back to paleness
After yesterday’s breakfast of novelties, we were back to a pale, starch-heavy breakfast
Meat bun, where the meat to dough ratio is always tilted towards the dough in an unsatisfying way. Especially when a plain mantou is right next to it.
The big tuber was like a taro/mountain yam root vegetable. Very bland and heavy. I actually couldn’t finish it - the first time I haven’t finished anything at breakfast.
Thankfully, we again had 豆漿 today, rather than 豆奶. Both would translate as soy milk in English, but the former is made with just soybeans, water, and sugar, while the latter also adds dairy cream.
Lunch came with an apple today. I’m glad I swiped a knife from the plane, in order to peel the apple.
The broccoli was quite overcooked (you can see how some pieces got smushed in the packaging).
There were some ribs, that were okay. Decently tender.
We had some fried popcorn fish, to which I added red pepper flakes AND tabasco. These might have been good if they weren’t steamed inside of the container.
Finally, there was this dish, which I had thought was tofu but I think might actually be gluten (烤麩 kaofu）, with pork and edamame. The big holes allow it to absorb the flavor of the sauce.
It was actually sunny today! (As seen through my dirty window.)
Dinner had some familiar dishes. And I’m glad we got yogurt for dessert again.
There were these duck legs, which while still firm, where much more tender than last time.
This was the diced tofu, and pork(?), and potato in gloopy sauce.
The familiar vegetables which were kind of overcooked like normal.
And then there was this new dish, pork belly with quail egg.
Very little of the pork belly wasn’t fat.
Today I think I actually figured out the trash system. Basically, we put our trash outside our door in black plastic bags. (They supplied a whole roll at check-in.) Then the hazmat-suited trash collector, who always comes very promptly at 7pm and calls out to those people who haven’t put out their trash yet to put their bags out, sprays each bag with disinfectant with one of those big plastic containers with a hand pump, and puts a yellow biohazard bag next to each door. Then after a while, I guess after the disinfectant sits for its required residence time (thanks to working in the home cleaning products business, I know about “residence time!”), the trash collector comes back around and puts each person’s black bag into the yellow biohazard bag.
This is what I figured out after looking through the peephole and listening to the sounds!
