The milk I bought the other day, rather than being in a carton, came in packets (or bags). When cooking lasagne last night I needed some milk for the cheese sauce. I prefer that to béchamel as I like mine cheesy.
Having put the cheese powder in a small pan, I went to get a bag of milk from the dining table. It was getting dark outside and I had yet to turn the lights on. Bringing the bag into the kitchen I never noticed it wasn’t as malleable as could be expected and so picked up scissors and snipped off a corner.
When I tipped it to pour the milk into the pan I suddenly realised the liquid wasn’t pouring. Suddenly wasn’t soon enough, for the next I knew there was a small mountain of salt in with the cheese powder! As it was my last sachet of sauce (and has to be bought online), I painstakingly spooned as much salt out as I could before adding what was intended in the first place, milk. God, that was the saltiest ever lasagne! Don’t try this at home!
The fireworks started at 2330, why people don’t hold back until the stroke of midnight baffles me. At 2350 I decided to go to the square with my camera. There were fireworks going off in the distance downtown and isolated pockets locally but a few souls were in the square letting off their bangers and rockets. It was not on the same scale as in Chizhou and certainly nowhere near the cacophony I experienced that time in Tongling when I got back to my hotel room covered in debris but a passable effort given that fireworks are banned here and I had seen no evidence of any for sale. Maybe people bought them from Taobao. Rabbit is in Shanghai and told me today it didn’t seem as if it was new year because there is a strictly enforced ban there and there were no pyrotechnics at all.
I would say the bangs and pops stopped by 0030 so my fears of a completely sleepless night were unfounded, although someone did let off particularly loud and long-lasting fireworks outside my bedroom window at 0800. Not good, considering I had retired at about two.
Incredibly not only was my beer shop open today (as anticipated) but also the three stalls were open too. I avoided them like the plague in case they had more pigeons on sale. I did my bit for three of them yesterday and that cost me enough.
So it’s been a quiet celebration for me this year. I sent about forty texts late last night wherein I referred to the horse being supplanted by the rooster. Now, being a monkey myself I knew perfectly well that we were saying goodbye to the chimp but I wanted to see if anyone was actually paying attention. Only one person corrected me. He wasn’t Chinese either - it was my friend and fellow Marlaman who runs the Hilton in Shenyang! Of all the places I would expect to be castigated for my “error”, China is the one! But no.
As I consumed a month’s worth of my recommended salt intake last night, I am treating myself to a much less salty roast pork dinner. I would have liked to have made apple sauce but as aforesaid, I was avoiding the pigeon cage.
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