The “party” wasn’t quite what I had expected in that the girls never cooked, instead they brought snacks with them, such as dried sweet potato chips, crisps, fruit etc. Incredibly they prepared a plate of apple wedges and poured Heinz salad cream all over it - and ate it!
They brought their own beer and lemonade and made shandies with it. They didn’t drink much but it did was enough to get a couple of them dancing around my bed. Very kindly when they left they took the trouble to clean the place up so it was a good evening all round.
Yesterday though, because of the on/off rain I wasn’t going to do much and so was sitting here late morning when Joan turned up. She was close to tears. Her left cheek was swollen and painful. My first thought was that perhaps she had dislocated her jaw (I used to do that with excriciating and annoying regularity) but it wasn’t that. One of her friends had suggested lymph nodes but I sided with an ear infection.
I said I would shower and take her to hospital but she asked to borrow the bike so she could take another friend who had scalded her foot. Unbeknown to me, there is a clinic in the business street so she didn’t have to go far. She spent the next two hours there because the clinic did their favourite thing and put her on a drip, most likely salt water and told her she had inflammation. You didn’t need to be a genius to see that. Surprisingly she was given no medicines or painkillers but she does have to go again today and tomorrow for more salt water just to pump the bill up to 165y.
Tonight we will hold Mongolian Monday and as I won’t post this until afterwards I can reveal the dishes. Hopefully if I don’t cock it up we will dine on chicken satay followed by beef and peppers in black bean sauce. The dessert you already know. In about twenty minutes with luck the chicken and beef will be half defrosted so I can go and slice them. When I am doing stir fried beef I like to make it thin and uniformly sized where possible and it’s much easier if it is just soft enough to cut.
Tuesday 21st 1330
The dinner party was held in Kevin’s place because otherwise it would have meant banishing Coco and Hadrian for the duration. It was a pain for me because he is up in the rarefied atmosphere of the 4th floor. I had invited Joan, Kevin had Vivi and Ollivier had a girl who only had a Chinese name, which of course I can’t remember. She turned out to be a bit of a trencherman too.
I made 12 large satay sticks and far too much sauce and poor Joan had to carry the food up because I didn’t trust myself not to drop it whilst limping. I had struggled to stand for more than a few minutes at a time in the kitchen - two and a half months of mostly sitting have taken their toll. Amazingly nobody recognised it for what it was until I told them but it disappeared pretty quickly, as did the beef and peppers. I was the only one disappointed in it because whilst the lump of beef I had bought looked perfect, I found it chewy. The black bean sauce didn’t taste like anything I ever bought in the UK either. Still, everyone was content to chat in three different languages for a while and then Ollivier’s second ever lemon meringue pie (or tarte au citron meringue as he puts it) was produced. And an excellent job he did as well - less sweet and more lemony. All in all a very nice evening and Kevin had provided some first class wine to wash it down.
Kevin turfed us all out at 2215 so he could call his father and so Ollivier and I went to mine to polish off an opened bottle of wine and Joan used my shower.
I was going to go to town today for breakfast but was too tired to get up. I also need a couple of bits for tonight’s dinner I will make for Joan - quesadillas. I have hot peppers and I think some ham so I might buy an onion or tomato locally and just have those with some cheddar. The question is, do I make the double tortilla round ones or the single tortilla omelette type? Decisions, decisions.
It’s a lovely day outside, in the 20s, so soon I will shower and go to the business street for an hour or two. I have thought of five games for this Friday’s class party (I am assured it is not a Lingdian Society thing) which is to be held by Rita’s class. They must think I am a bottomless pit of games ideas - if all five classes end up doing it that’s 25 different games. Good job I have a fair imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment