A Short Letter Home: How many have bread enough to spare?

Monday, October 03, 2005

How many have bread enough to spare?

Sometimes my timing's good but the other people's are off. Today I returned to the mill--this time taking Yau Neih with me--in search of whole wheat flour. The weather wasn't quite as pleasant as there wasn't the nice breeze we had yesterday, but it was still a nice walk. And a successful one, too! That for which I had hoped yesterday happened today. I walked in, they confirmed that I wanted the brown flour, and then they loaded me up. To top it off, when I tried to pay, the mill guy refused to name a price. Of course, I would have none of that and thrust a 20 upon him. Then he thrust 10 kuai change back at me. We then parted company with big smiles and well wishes. (Well, I assumed he was wishing us well...)

We took a quick cab ride home (after walking back to the highway) and proceeded to divvy up our flour. We didn't want to shlep the whole amount to the baker, as we couldn't store that much bread. Last time we had 11 bags of loaves and that was too much for two households. Since that last adventure, we had accumulated a couple of airtight plastic jars, which we now used for flour storage. That only made a dent in the flour supply, so I scooped a like amount into a plastic bag. It was a stopgap measure until we could go out and buy some sort of sealable container. It was after 11:00 already, so we hurried out to the bakery. Wouldn't you know it, the bakery was closed up tight. We turned ourselves about and headed home, stopping only to buy a lidded pail (which I hope is airtight enough) and a few groceries.

Later in the afternoon, after rest time, I ventured back to the bakery. As I suspected, it was still closed. Yau Neih started to wonder if the place might not have gone out of business. I held out that they were simply on holiday. Either way, we had no choice but to return home and put our new flour bucket to use. I'll try again tomorrow, and if they're still closed, I'll have to put the bread scheme on hold until next week. (Even I'm not foolish enough to try and communicate this bread idea with a brand new bakery.) Stay tuned...