Lockdown Day 46: Budae jjigae ("army stew"), and the end is in sight and we're... halfway there??
Today is supposed to be the day after our “silent period” expired, coinciding with the local government saying that things would start to open up today. So are we out of lockdown? I waited to hear some news in my building’s group, rather than go outside to check myself.
Last night I put in a quarter cup (Xiaomi measuring cup) of rice, and a quarter cup of lentils into the pressure cooker. I realized later that this was a lot! It ended up being quite a thick bowl of porridge, which I topped with a square of fermented tofu and salted olive vegetable. I accompanied this with coffee mixed into black tea from yesterday.
I ate breakfast around 8:30am, but even though it seemed like a lot, by 11:30am I was hungry for lunch.
I decided to make budae jjigae again, having made it on Saturday and had leftover broth. And besides, I had maybe a quarter of that red sausage 大红肠 that I really wanted to get rid of! I used basically the same ingredients: that sausage, cabbage, red onion, kimchi, luncheon meat, bok choy, gochujang, garlic sprouts, and enoki mushrooms.
I placed a square of black rice noodles on top, kind of to cook, kind of to steam. I really wanted to avoid soggy noodles! The key was to stop cooking even while the noodles were still rather firm, because they continued to soak up the broth after being taken off the heat.
Tada! Lunch! I ate most of this directly out of the pot.
And I took lunch today on my balcony.
Which allowed me access to view a distribution of government rations in action! I guess today we would get big bags of vegetables.
In my building, the bats seemed to be better organized and stored in styrofoam coolers with what I think used to be frozen bottles of water inside to keep things cool.
I really liked this delivery! We haven’t gotten broccoli before, or tomatoes or spinach (very mature spinach). And I’ve come to like this kind of smooth, round cabbage actually, despite having had so many heads already. The cucumbers were the thin-skinned, smooth kind this time, and we also got three potatoes. This delivery came just in time - I had been contemplating doing a group buy of vegetables, because my supply was running alarmingly low. It’s been two weeks since our last delivery of vegetables, and I’ve gone from storing vegetables on my floor for lack of space, to a quite empty fridge.
After storing my vegetables, I had some watermelon.
And Pu’er tea for the afternoon (no more coffee for me).
And then we were called back down to the first floor by the entryway leader. Another package! This time it was 2.5 kg of short grain white rice, and a tin of luncheon meat. I have so much rice now! I’ve been working my way through one 5 kg bag of rice, and have two more 5 kg bags of rice, and now this 2.5 kg bag.
I also didn’t need more luncheon meat. Especially because I kind of feel like the other can I have been eating has kind of a oddly strong taste, and I wonder if it’s there are many, many, ingredients in the ingredient list. Real Spam-brand spam only has six ingredients: pork, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite. This can of luncheon meat even uses red food coloring.
After work, I did my antigen test…
…in between bites of my after-work snack of sweet potato.
I did my workout of the day (upper body), and then had dinner: bowtie pasta in spicy marinara sauce, topped with parmesan, blackened cabbage, and five shrimp coated in the garlic parmesan powder. It was very good! I think cabbage kind of goes with everything…
I took a break from my watermelon to have a (rather dry) mandarin orange.
So were we free and out of lockdown now “解封“？No. A neighbor said that they went to the gate today, and it was still padlocked. So despite our “silent period” ending yesterday, and despite the Shanghai government saying that things would start opening up today, we still had a padlock on our front gate.
People in my WeChat group started to share memes. One asked if the National Fraud Center can look into the Shanghai news agency.
Another one shared that he asked the neighborhood committee if they could go out, because the vice mayor said so.
And the neighborhood committee replied, how can you believe the vice mayor who wears his mask upside down. And indeed it looks like he did!
So in the end, today the Shanghai government elaborated on their previous statement saying that things would start to open up today, by saying that there was a whole three-step process, and the third step would last until late June to “restore normal work and life.” Another month and a half! And we’ve already been through a month and a half of lockdown. We’re only halfway there??
