Day 8: shopping 🛍 and baking 🧁

We went to Causeway Bay today because I wanted to drop off some stuff at an orphanage / charity there, some teaching materials that I don’t use anymore that I thought might be useful for the kids. We couldn’t find the entrance, though, the place was huge! I don’t know how much help they need from the community if they have such a huge block of land in HK! I wonder if the government gave them the land, though, or sold it to the organisation at a heavily subsidised price. Regardless, I am helping the kids, that’s all that matters 👍

And then we stopped by Uniqlo and IKEA to pick up some necessities, since both are also in Causeway Bay. And then we decided to also walk to I ❤ Cake in Wan Chai, this shop that specialises in all things cakes / baking. I’ve been looking for a ton of ingredients to use during my 21-day sugar detox, which I want to start using now to start getting an idea of how to use them. And I pretty much found everything there! 😱👏 Total amazeballs, I was sooo happy 😁

So yes, I tried baking a few things when we got home. I tried baking some apple and cinnamon muffins and also some granola chunks, which was really just nuts 😂 But I think after the detox is over, I will add dried fruits to the granola to give them a bit more flavour. But even without the fruit, they were actually okay! I stuffed up the muffins, though, because I accidentally turned off the oven halfway through without realising it 😔 So I’ll have to try making them again. They didn’t taste very muffin-y either, so I’m not sure what happened to them. I’ll definitely be trying to make them again, though, because they were very promising! And definitely something that I will be making during the detox period 😊 And I think adding something sweet to the muffin mix after the detox period is over will make them a bit tastier too. Man, see how sugar sorta just creeps into everything!

I am really keen to try out a lot of these recipes for my 21-day detox now, after stopping by I ❤ Cake today. If I keep up all this cooking, I may have to go back there on a regular basis!

Not the smoothest

We had quite heavy rain all day today, so I think that didn’t help with my mood. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind today, and I was taking almost everything to heart. Things that wouldn’t normally bother me were bothering me today. The rain is forecast to stick around for the whole week, unfortunately, but I hope my mood doesn’t stick around with it 🙁

And I tried baking some bread today, my second time ever 🍞 That turned out pretty 💩 The damn thing wasn’t edible. My first attempt was so much better. Even though it didn’t rise, at least I could eat it. I couldn’t do that today. The outside was way too hard, and the inside was uncooked. That was rather disappointing. I was really looking forward to having my own homemade bread today, but that didn’t pan out 😔

My second attempt ever at baking bread. Attempt #1 was actually way better. Even though it didn’t rise much, at least it was edible, unlike today’s attempt! 😔

Oh and zits are sprouting all over my face. Mount Vesuvius’ baby has found its home on my face, and it has brought along some smaller babies with it. You’d think I was 15 again 🙄 Where are they coming from?? Is it the humidity? Am I not drinking enough water? Am I not cleaning my face properly each day??

Bread, technology and anime!

N baked some more bread again today, which was so nice 😋 After tasting freshly baked bread at home, it’s hard for me to buy bread from the supermarket now! 😆 He only made a small amount this time, and I want to have toast for breakfast tomorrow, so I decided to make some dough myself tonight so that it’s ready to be baked tomorrow. He’s way ahead of me in terms of the number of loaves that he’s baked (he’s probably baked six to my two) so I need to catch up! We’ve been having problems with the bread not rising, so let’s see how this second attempt of mine goes…! 🤞

I also spoke to my parents and my brother and his family. That was nice. We’re literally in different parts of the world now (parents are in Sydney; my brother in Ireland; and me in HK) so we don’t see one another very often. And it seems the rona will make that even harder now 😔 So yay for technology 👍

And then we just watched a few more episodes of One Punch Man. We’ve almost finished the series, I think we only have two or three episodes left and then we’re done. I’m thinking of watching Neon Genesis Evangelion next. It’s a really old anime from 1995, but apparently they’ve been remade into four movies, with the fourth movie due for release sometime later this year. But rather than just watching the movies, I’ve decided to watch the original series first. Although apparently they’ve deviated from the original storyline from the end of movie #3. Just FYI, if you’re interested in the series. So many things to watch! 😆

Day 4: trying new things

N has been baking so much bread lately that we are now running low on bread flour! 😂 So we went to Wan Chai again to that baker specialty store to restock. He made another batch today too, I think that’s three days in a row that he baked bread. Three out of the four days of the long weekend. I think we are totally carb’d out now! 😆 Maybe it’s time we switch to some low/no carb meals for the next few days…

But a friend has given me a recipe to make cinnamon rolls, and I’d like to try them out this week, if I can. But I might leave them for later on in the week after we’ve cut back on our carbs a little bit…! 🤪

N also introduced me to One Punch Man today, which is quite funny! I’ve heard of this manga before, but I always dismissed it for two reasons: it looks like it’s full of action, which doesn’t really interest me, and especially not in manga; and also because I heard that the language used in the manga is for advanced Japanese learners, which I’m definitely not. So I’ve just avoided it. But N has been watching the anime series this long weekend, and it looked intriguing, so I decided to start watching it today. And it’s really good! Yes, the language is quite advanced, but I’m watching it primarily for entertainment, so I’m not getting caught up studying the dialogue or getting upset that I barely understand any of it. Learning the odd word is perhaps a better way to put it 😆 And yes, there is action in it, but it’s presented in a totally different way, and I like it! So I’m really enjoying this anime, much to my surprise. And it’s spurring me on to study some more Japanese too, which is never a bad thing 😊

How the rona is impacting my daily life

I had another productive day! 👍 Despite getting home quite late last night, I still managed to get up at 8:30am again this morning – and kept going for the whole day. I’ve been rather impressed with my productivity lately 😊

We went to the Wan Chai Computer Centre this afternoon, and then went and had Maccas pretty much just downstairs at the Centre. Maccas, along with all the other restaurants that are still open in the city, has cut their seating basically in half, which is niiice! It’s a luxury to have all this personal space when you’re in a city as densely populated as HK! 😆

But then we went into this shop that’s specifically for people who like to bake, and they had NO social distancing measures whatsoever in their shop 🙄 It was basically pre-rona HK in there, only now, around 99% of the people are wearing masks 😷

I wanted to buy some bread flour because I want to try making bread. And apparently you need bread flour to make bread, you can’t just use any ol’ flour. There you go. I didn’t even know such a type of flour exists 🤷‍♀️ I had to go to this specialist store to buy bread flour and yeast because I couldn’t find these ingredients at our regular supermarkets! Wth, it’s toilet paper hoarding all over again! 😂 Or maybe it’s just the regular supply chains being a bit screwed up at the moment. A large chunk of the world is still in quite a fair bit of pain, after all 😔

We only had two new cases today, making it eight straight days of single-digit increases. But HK said that it will only start to ease restrictions once the city has zero local cases in 28 consecutive days – and one of those two cases today was local. And by ‘local’, they mean a person contracting COVID-19 in HK ie not because they travelled overseas. Sooo that basically means we’re back to day 0 of 28 😔 The current restrictions are due to expire on Thursday, so let’s see what announcements they make on or before then…

In the meantime, I’m going to try and bake this bread. After all this effort I had to go through just to find the damn bread flour and yeast, the final result better be good! 😂

🍞 🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞