Lockdown Day 2: Eating outside, and seeing the neighbors...
Saturday! And the first day of a four-day weekend.
I made pancake with my Keto pancake mix, and added goji berries and chocolate. My roommate in Spain always scored the tops of the pancakes so the syrup could enter more easily. Now I do the same, because it’s a great idea!
Our neighborhood is criss-crossed with electrical or telephone wires, and people hang clothes from them. I see some people have hung their laundry already - but aren’t we supposed to stay inside? The phrase is, “足不出户,” zhubuchuhu, which means one doesn’t step foot outside of home…
This morning, I set out to do my weekend baking project: the Maple Milk Bread from NY Times. It involves making tangzhong 汤种, cooking milk and flour together before kneading the dough, to make it softer.
The recipe calls for a ton of maple syrup (one whole cup), so the dough is quite brown.
While waiting for the first rise, I did a workout from home. Here’s my setup. The red kettlebell is actually from the previous tenants; they left it behind. The black dumbbell is from my gym. When the lockdown was announced, the gym owner allowed us to check out equipment in order to continue workouts from home. She put the workout of the day on a website, and we followed along.
The yoga mat is one my mom gave me, to use in hotel quarantine. She gave it to me all the way back in March 2020, when I thought I’d be going back to China soon. I eventually used it in San Diego, doing workouts in my bedroom, and now here in Shanghai. I never used it in hotel quarantine, neither in 2020 nor in 2022, because I thought the floors were too dirty!
The cushion behind is a folding mattress which I bought when my family came over to stay. I slept on this mattress, while my parents took my bed, and my sister and her husband took the sofa bed in the living room. So all five of us fit inside my 50 square meter apartment! I now use it a lot to get into a zero-gravity position on the sofa, and it comes in handy doing workouts to cushion my knees (when kneeling) or lower back area (when doing ab work).
After the first rise, I rolled the dough into two logs to put sideways, like how Double Soft does it!
For lunch, I prepared shrimp (from Aldi) with this parmesan garlic powder from Shanghai Costco, and pasta with the amaranth 苋菜, and fried bread crumbs.
Once again, I noticed neighbors outside, walking their dog. And more clothes being hung. I do feel sorry for dog owners; for the people who really stay indoors, how do they manage their dogs pooping and peeing? Someone from my gym said she bought two squares of sod for her dog. But another said that her dog refuses to use that to go to the bathroom.
I even saw an old guy walking around without his mask on!
After the second rise, I baked the loaf. For a long time. I think over an hour? Unfortunately, the dough was under-proofed before going into the oven. So the top crust set, but then it kept rising and so the sides burst out.
While waiting for the bread to cool, I prepared dinner. It’s kind of like a mayishangshu 蚂蚁上树 ant’s climbing the tree, which is usually made with mung bean vermicelli and ground pork. But I used TVP and lots of vegetables.
It was really yummy!
After dinner, I sliced open the loaf. It was very dense! Kind of chewy like a Liege waffle texture. Nothing at all like the soft fluffy milk bread I was expecting, but very tasty nonetheless.
At about 10pm, the entryway leader said that we should be prepared to receive groceries at our doorstep that evening. Then at 10:15pm, she said that we wouldn’t get the groceries after all, that they would come tomorrow. And tomorrow we wouldn’t have PCR tests.
