Adventures at the Pharmacy

If you're reading my blog in the next day or two, please send Muir some good vibes because he caught (another) cold or something after we returned from Taiwan.  He asked me to find some NyQuil for him, but no such luck.  Instead I busted out my awesomely broken Chinese and bought some cough syrup at the closest pharmacy.  The conversation I had with the pharmacist went something like this:

Pharmacist:  "What are you looking for?"
Me:  "My husband is sick."
Pharmacist:  "What's the matter?"
Me:  "He has coughing, cannot sleep."
Pharmacist:  "Aw, can't sleep, huh?  Does his throat hurt?"
Me:  "His throat...not hurt, just coughing, coughing, coughing.  And also his head hurt."
Pharmacist:  "Do you prefer syrup or tablets?"
Me:  "Uh, everything is acceptable."
[Pharmacist brings back a box of cough syrup manufactured by Boehringer Ingleheim with Chinese characters all over it, says a few things I don't understand.]
Me:  "...Has dry coughing."
Pharmacist:  "Dry cough, eh?  This is good for a dry cough." [brings another box of medicine with Chinese and English on it, says more stuff I don't understand.  I use my pocket dictionary to look up something she just said which meant 'hard to play a stringed instrument,' so presumably something about it being good for coughs, sore throats, and laryngitis.  I read the English labeling and decide I don't want lemon, honey, and chamomile.]
Me:  [pointing to the first bottle]  "Inside has what chemical?"
[Pharmacist says more stuff I don't understand.]
Me:  [pointing to biggest word on the first bottle]  "This is the chemical name?"
Pharmacist:  "No, [more stuff I don't understand]."
Me:  "Is it the product name?"
Pharmacist:  "Yes."  [points to and reads other words on the box]  "That's the drug name."
[Try to look it up, but not in my dictionary.  Obviously.]
Me:  "I buy this one." [pointing to first bottle]  "This is how much money?"
Pharmacist:  "30.40"
[I pay her and put the bottle in my bag.]
Me:  "Thank you for helping me."
Pharmacist:  "Don't mention it."

I'm glad that there are many tolerant people in Beijing willing to put up with my terrible Chinese.

Wine with Yiqi

The night before our flight to Taipei, Muir and I had dinner and drinks with one of my old (guy) friends from Cornell, Yiqi.  He was traveling around China with three friends, two whom he met in business school and one who was going to start next school year.  (Sorry, do not remember the name of the business school or where, but I believe it was in New York.)  We met at a wine bar near the Sanlitun shopping village that I had been wanting to try, and it was very good.  Expensive, but good.  Muir and I had a good time sharing tips and stories about living in Beijing, and I had fun catching up with Yiqi and hearing about what was new in the lives of our other classmates.

Authentic Beijing Dinner

I can't believe I forgot to post these photos!  So before leaving for Chinese New Year in Taiwan with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma, Muir and I went out for hot pot!  Hot pot is a traditional Chinese dinner that's kind of like fondue, except you cook your meat and vegetables in hot water/soup instead of dipping them in oil/cheese/chocolate.  Eating hot pot is especially popular in winter when the weather is cold outside.  Sadly, there is no equivalent dessert hot pot.  :(

Our hot pot (clockwise):  bamboo shoots, fish balls, cabbage,
seaweed, mutton, hot peppers, and cilantro.

But!  On our way to the hot pot restaurant, we found a little sidewalk shop selling the king of Beijing street cakes -- DATE CAKE!!  It's sold by the piece hot from the oven.  Like all Chinese cakes, it's not very sweet, but it is carbolicious!  It's sweet like cornbread and has pieces of chopped dates inside.

Two pieces please!

Ski Trip to Jindushan!

It's been more than ten years since the last time I went skiing, but on Saturday evening, Muir's co-worker invited us to Jindushan ski resort slightly north of Beijing to go skiing with him, his wife, and young son.  Evening ski tickets were 100 RMB per person (about $17 US per person) which included five hours of skiing time, ski rentals, and one meal.  What a great deal!  Anyway, we had a blast and no one broke any bones. :)  Muir and I stuck to the first two slope levels and had fun practicing turning, slowing, and stopping.  After the sun set, things really got cold and we only skiied an additional half hour after dinner.  Here are a few pictures of us at the resort.

Me and Mr. Qiu's wife

Slopes on the east side

The advanced slope is in the middle

Big Brother

Well I've now heard two reports that email sent to my Gmail address has been blocked, so to those folks, my apologies.  It's not my fault!  I promise!  Just another reason why I'm eager to return to the US.

Stovetop Brownies

Everyone said it couldn't be done.  Everyone on Yahoo! Answers, thekitchn.com, and chowhound.com said that it wasn't possible to bake brownies on the stove.  Searching for stovetop brownie recipes on Food.com, allrecipes.com, and epicurious.com did not yield any helpful advice.  The best anyone could suggest was thinning the batter to make brownie pancakes, which while potentially delicious, is just not the same.  So you can imagine the way my heart fluttered and then immediately sank when I opened the wrapped box of Ghiradelli brownie mix from Auntie Jean on Christmas day.  We lacked an oven.

I resigned myself to brownie-less disappointment for several days until the long New Year's weekend when I decided to just go for it.  I would probably end up with something edible in the end.  Hopefully.  The trick was going to be preventing the bottoms from burning while maintaining a high enough temperature to cook through the rest of the batter.  So after dinner, I bought some fresh eggs and assembled the ingredients.

Gathering the ingredients

I had a 9 or 10 inch skillet, cooking oil, and spoons already in the kitchen from our first weeks in Wudaokou, a large bowl from the Star Wars party which could be used for mixing, and boiled water in the kitchen carafe.  As I greased the skillet and started adding the ingredients to the mixing bowl, I felt like I was changing the game for the future of baking, like the chef who decided that foam was the next preparation method du jour or that sous vide somehow made a lot of sense.  I felt so avant garde, freed from the conventional ideas of what baking should be.  I felt like a badass.

Initially, I thought I would cook the brownie mix in two batches since a thinner layer would cook faster and be less likely to burn, but since the quantity of mix was normally only enough for a small 8x8 square pan (whatever happened to the 9x13" family size??), I decided on impulse to pour all of the batter in at once and cross my fingers.  I set the gas stove on low and put the lid on to try to hold in the heat.

Set to low heat

After several minutes, even I was surprised when the edges of the batter started to rise and bake and the center slowly bubbled.

Just crazy enough to work

Twenty-five minutes later, I decided that the batch looked about done, turned off the heat, and joined Muir to watch a movie and wait for the brownies to cool.  When the movie was over, we enjoyed a taste of our first batch of stovetop brownies.  And you know what?  The bottoms didn't burn, and while some parts were a little gooey (maybe 30 minutes would have been a little better), cooking brownies on the stove turns out to be entire possible.  Seriously, what do people on Yahoo! Answers know anyway?

Stovetop brownies WIN!