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We still use the app "Too Good to Go" now and again to get heavily discounted food that supermarkets would otherwise throw away.  Morrisons recently joined the growing number of stores taking part in the scheme and we gave them a try last week. To our shock, the £2 we spent on their bakery goods left us with over 35 donuts and cakes! We donated some, and then found on the internet that freezing donuts was quite OK. So we have been drip-feeding ourselves sugary treats ever since!
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A friend gifted JD all the ingredients to make some iced cookies the other day and JD thoroughly enjoyed making the dough, baking the biscuits and decorating them. They tasted pretty good, too! 
With our good friend Krista away in India we thought it would be nice to invite her husband Stuart over for a meal last week. Jiajia excelled herself with a delicious chicken and veg meal for us all.  JJ asked me how honey can be used to polish things. Fair point...!  One of the new school subjects that JD is enjoying is Design Technology which, this term, takes the form of cookery classes. And we are enjoying it too, for example these tasty low-sugar muffins which appeared the other day. Yum!   I was diagnosed as borderline diabetic six weeks ago. However, the doctor said it is usually reversible if patients can lose about 10% of their body weight.
Spurred on by that, I've been dieting and exercising, and have so far managed to lose about 1kg a week. If I can keep that progress up, I will have reached the 10% reduction in a further month.  There are many things that are different about life in the UK from what we were used to in China. One is water.
Tap water can't be drunk in China, but it's safe enough in the UK. However, Chippenham's water is very hard, with a strong taste. So, before we bought ourselves a Brita filter, we were buying bottled water. In China, we would buy 5 litre bottles for our water heater/cooler machine for 80p. Here, half a litre can cost over a pound! But then we discovered "own-brand diet lemonade" - 39p for 1.5 litres. Cheaper than water! At the suggestion of my brother Andy, we downloaded the "Too Good to Go" app yesterday. They arrange for supermarket/bakery food which is about to go out of date to be picked up at specific times at rock bottom prices. We booked three pick ups yesterday to give it a go!  The first supermarket cancelled (in good time) but JD and I drove to the next two and found it very easy to pick up our heavily discounted goodies. We got about £23 of random food for £7.30. Not bad at all. The greengrocers is already booked for this afternoon!
Although we're not on the breadline, as such, we are enjoying our almost daily hunts for reduced price food in the many supermarkets in Chippenham. We haven't got used to British prices as yet but, if you see something reduced by 50% or more, you can be pretty sure you are getting your money's worth! And it prompts you to try different foods that you may not ordinarily risk your money on.  This was my best find so far. Tandoori bread, reduced from £2.99 to 19p! I bought four of them. Now that's a bargain!
When we walked to our nearest chippie earlier in the week, we were a bit surprised to find that they shut Sunday to Tuesday each week. But we were patient and returned on Wednesday, ordering waaaaay too much, but enjoying our first fish 'n chips in six years!  We are amidst a string of goodbye meals, with friends, ex-students and well-wishers. This type of pot [below] is a regular sight at such banquets. It's a traditional Yunnan hotpot dish. There is a fire (or glowing embers) below and up in the central hole, which helps to keep all the surrounding food - various meat and veg - evenly hot.  I first met LaiLai when I was a VSO volunteer 25 years ago - she worked in the Beijing Office for a year. We last met 15 years ago when she invited me to help on a Red Cross trip to assess the needs of a remote village near Kunming (LaiLai was working for the Red Cross by then). We've kept in touch now and again through the years but it was still a bit of a surprise to get a message from her saying that her family were on holiday travels from their home in South Korea, and would be passing through Kunming on Boxing Day if we were free to meet....  So we shared a nice meal together a couple of days ago, chatting about old times! Her husband is from Devon and was also a VSO volunteer during my time with the charity (though we couldn't recall each other!). JD quickly broke down their kids' shyness and took them downstairs in the restaurant to barbecue "smelly tofu" together!
Despite a last-minute panic when we couldn't find a shop that sold chickens(!), JiaJia managed to rustle up another fantastic Christmas dinner. She even made a lemon cake for dessert. Yum yum!
An all-you-can-eat buffet at a 5* hotel to mark my final year in the 50s! 
The five-star hotel even laid on some Chinglish for me...
JD is having a sleepover at Ma's tonight, so Jiajia and I grabbed the opportunity for a meal out - just the two of us. We had some nice food at a lovely restaurant owned by a customer of Jiajia's. Cue free dessert with our meal!
 We've all had various bouts of illness over the recent 5-day May Day holiday, and we weren't able to do quite as much as we'd hoped. So we decided to finish with an expensive, but delicious, meal out.  One of Jiajia's customers had recommended a restaurant in the south of Kunming which boasts authentic German food cooked by an actual German chef. So we took a taxi there to have a May Day blowout! Unfortunately, the chef was on holiday (JD wanted to try out his German) but they were still able to serve up various sausages, seafood pie, roasted pork knuckle, fries, mustard and sauerkraut which all went down very well. Yes, we paid 2-3 times what we normally pay for a family meal, but it was some of the best foreign food I've had in Kunming and a really nice treat.
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 AuthorPaul Hider started this blog to share his rather odd life living in China for over 20 years. Since returning to the UK in 2024, the blog now records his more "normal" lifestyle! Past blog entries
December 2024
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