Lessons in yeast

Just another normal day on Claire's kitchen counter.  Got my rice cooker over there, my O.J., my ginger tea, my favourite cat coaster, and - oh, that?  THAT'S what happens when you put bread dough in the fridge overnight with naive plans to roll it out into cinnamon buns the next day.

Apparently even the highest-quality Tupperware - and I make no compromises when it comes to container quality - is no match for dough determined to make its second rise.  Well.  I've learned.

I was GOING to save the debut of my newest domestic skill - bread-making! - for when I'd made my first perfectly-formed loaf.  But you know what?  The Internet is full of intimidatingly flawless DIY baking/crafting projects, and I'm pretty sure the road to those gorgeous cupcakes and yak-yarn iPod snugglies was paved with... well, things that looked like my first loaf of bread: 

But you know what?  It might be crooked with a gaping air hole in the middle, and the crust might be marred by two burn lines from my toaster oven's top elements, but that bread is freaking DELICIOUS.  And it was practically free.  Ugly wins!

Recipe here - but reduce sugar, boost salt, IMHO.

Update on sad-sack sickness: thanks in no small part to all the Get-Well lovin' I received electronically, my gross cold is now only a cough!  Hooray!  I sound like a baby seal with SARS, but I can retire the hankies.  Thank you for all your kind emails.

Chris visited!

What better way to settle back in to Shanghai life than by showing a friend around town?  Chris and I struggled through beginner Mandarin together at the U of A, and he's been working in Beijing (sidenote: I. Love. Beijing.  The wide open skies, the cute cafés.  I strive to move there for awhile sometime, no matter what it would do to my blog title).  Now he lives in Wuhan, a mere six-hour train ride from Shanghai.  Well, not that mere.  Thanks, Chris.

So, we slammed down the fifteen-twos with a few games of crib; bought glasses and Feiyue shoes; stopped by the Hongqiao driving range; spent an uncharacteristic-for-me-but-actually-super-fun evening at a nearby hipster bar; and, you know, made sock puppets.  Iiiiiit was awesome.

Dinner at Wagas with Eric, Allison, and Chris' student Panda.  Yes, Panda.

1. We're both trash-talking cribbage players, but only one of us got skunked.  It wasn't me.

Chris (left) watches his ball sail into the far fence.

Chris' new glasses match Colonel Sanders'.

Mom taught me how to make these, and now I'm kind of obsessed.  Chris' excitement almost eclipsed my own.  He made the one on the right, and is going is going to pressure his high school students to craft them too.

Shanghai from under the umbrella: Part 1

With only five days left in Shanghai before Laura had to board her Vancouver-bound plane, we’ve had a lot to take in and not a lot of time to take it in in. (Grammar experimentation is exciting.) We got right to it and hit the pearl market, the fabric market, and the glasses market; we’ve been balancing the shopping with, of course, eating: dumplings, hotpot, and home-cooked stirfries and soup have been on the very full menu.

Yesterday, we went with Claire’s friends Eric and Allison to the fabric market, stopping along the way to admire the oodles of buttons for sale in hole-in-the-wall shops (see below for Button on buttons); at the market, Claire ordered a tailor-made hat while Laura agonized over a suitable cotton print for new kitchen curtains – and just happened to find the perfect wool skirt for those cold Clarenville winters. Everyone left happy, especially those of us who got to come home to make soup and watch episodes of Monk before indulging in copious amounts of Laura-imported chocolate.

Somebody in charge knew today was our last day in Shanghai, because it was raining all day – the clouds followed us all the way to the Bund, the city’s must-see destination. We took in the lower half of China’s tallest buildings, and amused ourselves with umbrella sightseeing: seriously, check that one out below. A spur-of-the-moment elevator ride in the Ritz-Carlton rounded out the afternoon. A note to prospective hotel lobby crashers: be confident when you ask directions to the washroom and act like you’re definitely visiting the penthouse when you step into the elevator. Even if you’re wearing MEC and your shopping bag comes from Carrefour.

So: Claire will be on her own tomorrow night and Laura will be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean with 400 other people, who are hopefully keeping their microbes to themselves. (One more bout of strep throat is needed not.) Another great holiday!


1. Laura testing the padded sidewalk near Claire’s apartment. Rating: 7/10 for bounce, 10/10 for capturing the moment
2. Rainy reflections along Nanjing Donglu, Shanghai’s most famous shopping street
3. Universities look the same all over the world; Claire in front of her classroom building at Donghua University
4. In the textiles neighbourhood: don’t mess with PMS security
5. Laura N. Button… or is it Laura and Buttons? (Ha, ha, ha.) Thousands of buttons nestle into shelves and drawers in button shops near the Shanghai fabric market

Weekend update: subtitles are the best

Katie came over last night to hang out and watch a movie. We wanted to see Zack & Miri Make a Porno, which is supposed to be sweet, despite what the title might suggest. Unfortunately, there was no sound, but the subtitles alone were almost worth watching - the one below wasn't even the best one.

(We settled on Pineapple Express. It had sound, but was sucky. Don't bother.)

Today, I had a crafty evening as my near-bare Christmas tree was starting to depress me; I made more snowflakes (ventured into green this time, having abandoned my palette of pink and red - the pink looks too red when the light is low) and little bows. I miss hanging the ornaments from home and wish mine had a little more history and variety to them, but I'll work on it... still twelve days to go!

Family and cuddly sweaters

Last night I went for dinner with not only my usual companions, cousin Kelvin and his wife AnLan, but, for the first time, my entire family here: my two aunts Na Na and Neu Neu, my two uncles by marriage, and AnLan's father, Jimmy. I've been feeling homesick lately, and it was the best reminder I could have had that Shanghai isn't full of strangers. I didn't speak any Chinese the last time I saw my aunts and uncles, so it was really neat to be able to communicate with each other - they told me about their trip to Canada and the States (they were in Edmonton for ten days last month, and I never knew!), and I told them about my hopes for living and working in Shanghai next year. We had a fabulous Shanghainese dinner at a restaurant called 021; pig snout and eel were among the many dishes sampled - pig snout is a little chewy.

Na Na invited AnLan, Kelvin, and I up to her apartment after dinner to try on her endless supply of hand-knit sweaters, which she knits in her spare time and then stores in her closet, unworn. Apparently Na Na is quite famous for her knitting - she published a book about twenty years ago that was made into a calendar, she says, and I do remember her knitting up incredibly complicated sweaters for me when we were visiting Grandma Sue in Nanaimo at the same time. Anyway, I was deposited at home with a full tummy and a soft, fat, red-and-grey cardigan under my jacket.


Photos:

1. The fam in front of a rather dazzling "ice" castle, positioned imposingly in front of 021. From left to right - AnLan, me, Na Na & husband (name to be determined - I didn't want to ask), Jimmy, husband (also ntbd) & Neu Neu.

2. Sweater party! AnLan and Na Na wrestle approximately one-third of the collection back into its duffle bag, to be stored in the closet again; the closet door to the right is concealing three shelves of mohair cardigans and pullovers.

3. My SUPER-COMFY new sweater. Kelvin says it took Na Na about three days to knit. (In three days, I knit a dishcloth.)

Shanghai crafternoons

I've really been missing last winter's Wednesday crafternoons at Steeps, where I and other introverted girls worked on needlecrafts and other projects while chatting about life. It's great that crafts have become trendy, because I really think making stuff with your hands is extra-gratifying when your fingers have become most comfortable on a keyboard or punching text messages into tiny phones. So, I was super-happy to have Poppy and Julia over this Wednesday afternoon for Christmas-related craftiness - I needed to start decorating my wee tree, Julia needed to wrap presents, and Poppy was determined to make enough teeny paper stars to make a chain. I felt bad that the herbal tea I brought from home tasted more like paper cup than blackberry, but we had a good time anyway. Love you, Martha!

And then, on Friday, our Reading teacher let us spend a whole class learning how to make friendship bracelets. Huge treat: we all pushed our desks together (reminded me of elementary school when we had "work tables" instead of desks) and knotted together string to the jingling of the tiny bells we added on. Jenny and I chose the same colour and pattern; her creation and water-bottle innovation below.