The Covid Diaries 3

I finally tested positive, and the line couldn’t be any clearer or finely drawn as if it was screaming, ‘is this what you wanted?? Well here it is then..”

I’ve realised two things about this: 1) you really have no choice in the matter no matter how careful you are. This is the age (and future) we’re living in; 2) You need to be always prepared- ALWAYS.

But the symptoms have been mild; I can remember colds that were so much worse.

The only thing I wasn’t absolutely prepared for is food- I’m ravenous. Even Sam is ravenous. I want to eat steaks with fries; slow-cooked pork belly; pancakes with bacon and banana dripping with caramel syrup; vermicelli noodles loaded with chicken and prawns; steamed mussels eaten with french-bread slathered with garlic butter…

The Covid Diaries 1

So Sam tested positive last night.

I was all agog over picking up the bamboo plants over at Doyet’s the next day and it was to his credit that he thought of testing first, ‘just in case’. The red line came up swift and clear in a couple of seconds. It meant that sometime between Monday and Wednesday, in those beautiful, expensively maintained grounds in Queenstown, some dirty, stupid bitch had Covid and didn’t even know it and was passing it around like party favours. Or perhaps they did, but didn’t care as is often the case it would seem with a lot of people these days who shrug it off as if it was inconsequential.

Ugh. He rings Mary down at the flat, and I could hear her trying to keep her agitation down. So we’re all stuck at home and minutes later like in a terrifying dystopian movie, SMS alerts came up on our mobiles advising us of what we already knew.

Almost immediately after, I log into New World’s website and round up a couple of ‘essentials’- lemons (terrible supply these last couple of months), a jar of honey, cup noodles, potato chips, Lily’s favourite shaved deli chicken. In my mind, I go over the meals for the next couple of days; nothing complicated to prepare and easy on the stomach. Thank God for Filipino food like adobo which keeps forever (just make a big batch of it) and comforting arroz caldo.

I had been having allergic fits (pollen and dust mostly) the last couple of weeks with a warmer autumn season, but now suddenly, every sniffle, every itchy feeling in my nose felt like a portent.

But what could you do right?

Well, I cleaned the bathroom; did a weeks worth of laundry; finished all pending work deadlines; dusted off some books I had been meaning to read. The worst you could do really, is nothing.

And I comforted myself with the thought that next week, there were exciting courier deliveries to look forward to- a new Nespresso machine, a new pair of Yeezys and a bunch of morning Sunday Riley goodies.

What did you eat on your birthday?

For me at least, I would have forgotten the heartaches, the regrets, the joy..but I would always remember what I had eaten…

Easter dinner

Ticked off six of my Holy Week tasks, and the Nespresso machine broke. It’s over 6 years old so I guess it’s time to get a new one (which excites me).

But cooked rack of lamb for the first time and I surprised even myself as to how nearly perfect it turned out to be. My only nitpick was that I could’ve pared away more of the fat, but I didn’t really know I had to until we were eating it.

But for supermarket meat (yeah, FUCK YOU FARRO FRESH FOR FUCKING UP MY ORDER), it was superb. You just need to season it aggressively (I used salt, Moroccan spice rub and za’tar) and of course, cooking and resting times are crucial. I had thrown away the packet which indicated how much it weighed, so I just made an educated guess by eyeing the meat. I was guided by the universal advice, that the rarer the lamb the better. And it’s true- the texture is vastly different from beef.

The method is straightforward: sear; put into oven for 10 minutes at 180; take out, ‘paint’ with mustard before covering the surface with the duke; put back into the oven for 20 minutes; take and rest for 5.

Holy Week 2022

I have to admit, I miss the old traditions of Holy Week.

But that was a million years ago and even when I was last in the Philippines, much of how we celebrated it had already changed so much.

My homage to those days was practically doing nothing on Good Friday which I spent at Doyet’s. I started re-reading ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King; I took a long nap; I didn’t check my phone, muted all notifications; I didn’t even open my MacBook to watch anything. We had a nice Filipino dinner of sisig that I had made, boneless bangus and vegetables cooked in coconut milk. I went back to bed to continue reading.

By the time I decided to call it a night (just before midnight) I was more than half-way through the book, and fell into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

Breakfast was longganisa and scrambled eggs and Black Saturday was a perfect, crisply-cold but sunny autumn day.

I’m over trying to plan exhausting holidays that are anything but relaxing. Tradition tells you to relax and to genuflect, but then there’s also the Christian motto, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.

So I’m sure that God wouldn’t mind if I chose action over reflection; items on my list are..

  1. De-scaling the Nespresso machine

  2. Sorting out my clothes now that I would be spending more time at the office

  3. Sorting the garden patch and transplanting some of the cacti

  4. Finding a gym

  5. Updating my cameras and my drones

  6. Sorting out work-stuff for the next two-months

  7. Sorting out the kitchen and my drawers

  8. Finding stuff to put into the inorganic bin

Wednesday's salmon head sinigang

Doesn’t look appetising does it?

But it’s getting colder, slowly but surely, and soupy/brothy things both comfort and make you full really quickly.

Got the salmon heads at the Asian store. I was supposed to only get the (salmon) collars, but someone ahead of me on the queue was ordering literally kilos of it and I thought they would run out. The heads bin was just beside me so I got two just in case the greedy motherfucker in front of the line bought everything out (he didn’t).

I just use sinigang mix (with miso) and throw in several strips of ginger. Seasoning is just salt and pepper. Realised that the spinach in the crisper was too far gone to use but I still had a head of broccoli and it actually works with sinigang.

I grow weary

Fortunately, IOS is now considerate to your needs. When you have your bed-time set, it mutes things such as messages and notifications. Essentially, you go to sleep without knowing the world burned while you did, but then, WHO CARES??

Covid, Ukraine, Trump, Marcos, inflation, dying kids in Africa, melting glaciers, and disappearing Hawksbill turtles…mmmm. I need to vacuum the upstairs.

So how was your week?

  • Legs are the hardest to exercise. Ironically, they’re the easiest to develop. I’ve been persevering for a couple of weeks and I could feel a very noticeable tightness in my pants and shorts in the thigh area. This should compensate for not having substantial glutes.

  • Season 2 of Bridgerton celebrates love, and this is the thing. You’d be a fool if you believe in all of it, and you’re also a fool if you don’t.

  • Don’t underestimate the usefulness of the ‘walis tingting’.

  • There are people who love themselves by simply having a glass of wine at the end of the day, or who play sports to get that human connection. Leila and I create- it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad (nobody is judging as it is for ourselves). Creativity keeps our soul nourished.

  • I wish I could have lechon for my birthday

Weekend's Leche Flan

I’ve been craving for leche flan for literally years.

I’ve been mentioning making it for the last three Christmases, for my birthday and for someone else’s birthday. I think my trepidation was my belief that it was challenging to make.

In my mind having grown up with memories of getting other people to make it for any special occasion you can think of, preparing it had taken mythical proportions.

But at the end of the day, it’s basically eggs and milk baked in a bain marie. I separated a dozen yolks, dumped in a can of condensed milk and a cup of normal milk, a tablespoon of vanilla and used a whisk. To make the caramel, simply adjust the temperature of your pan as the sugar melts and its colour changes. Keeping the temperature high all through out will burn it. Keep stirring until there are no visible granules left and you have a silky, golden brown syrup.

I didn't even use those familiar small oval pans because I think they’re not commercially available.

I followed some random recipe online which got one detail wrong- it doesn’t cook in 30 minutes. It takes a little bit over an hour. Other than that, it was one of the easiest sweets I’ve ever made.

And it’s delicious as I’ve always remembered it..

Eating alone is a journey

Sam and Mary have started on the no-eating-anything-except-vegetables-or-air diet so I’ve been on my own as far as meals are concerned.

It was difficult doing my own thing at first which is funny because the whole process of preparing our meals was actually hard work:
1. you had to work with a fortnightly food budget of only $300
2. you need to make sure fresh ingredients are used before they go off
3. you need to use leftovers (which I loathe)
4. you need variety (important to me!)
5. you needed a healthy balance (even if given a choice, I’d have pork 6x a week)

It was easier during lockdown because I worked from home and I could start cooking at 4pm, but if I did go to the office on some days, I had about an hour to cook when I got home at 4:30, not that it mattered really if we ate late. But I wanted to get it done so I could exercise, or read or watch something.

But getting rid of the whole thing altogether (for now at least), was strangely freeing and unfamiliar. It makes you realize how much of meal preparation and meal-times are such rigid set-routines.

It goes all the way back to your childhood when you were called upon to eat and there were no buts around that. And that you couldn’t eat in bed (which I now do), or that if you were eating something expensive such as prawns or lobster, it had to be portioned. Or that you need to eat on time, or have three meals a day.

But ‘eating alone’ has thrown all the rules out the window, and now you can do anything:

1. …but not eat anything you want, like pork belly Tuesdays, fried chicken Wednesdays and Thursday night ribs. You just can’t. And I’m fine with that now.

2. I had pork ribs the other week though (St. Louis brand imported from the US) and the whole rack (about 1.5kgs) lasted me through two meals.

3. There’s such a thing as too many shrimps- especially when they’re frozen. Not as good as fresh.

4. I can’t have just toast for dinner. I tried and it’s stupid because I just get hungry after an hour. I’m working out constantly now that I can feel my energy ebbing when I don’t eat anything substantial.

5. There is something spare but beautiful in a plate of grilled salmon over ramen noodles.

6. Suddenly you have heaps of time to do stuff.

7. You save money