WHAT WAS THAT CHICKEN?

Hard to tell whether it was in fact chicken at all. Maybe one of Gonzo's friends from the Muppet Show. A bit fibrous. Pearl Chicken (珍珠雞 'jan jyu kai') is normally not like that. Pearl chicken ("petite chicken") is a smaller version of glutinous rice chicken (糯米雞 'lo mai kai'), being bird flesh, a slice of lap cheung and maybe a black mushroom, packed in glutinous rice and wrapped in a lotus leaf for steaming.


Perhaps I should have had it a cup of with Pu Erh Tea.
Still wouldn't have made the meat recognizable.
Chicken isn't normally "beefy".

Somewhere in between lunchtime and dinner. My eating schedule has always been somewhat off-kilter, but during lockdown now on my days at home it's much more so. First cup of coffee at around seven. Second between nine and twelve. Third after that, then an interval during which I may walk around the neighborhood avoiding people with my pipe. Then lunch, often at tea-time. A cup of hot tea, then another pipe full. Sometimes it's already twilight by that time.

Regular meal times make sense when one is a social diner. When I was still doing credit & Collections that wasn't the case, and at my current job that ain't the case either. Dinner itself is an imaginary construct. Food does taste better in company, if one has chosen that company and likes them in the first place. A shared meal. If they're just in the vicinity, then by all means snarl at them and make flesh-ripping sounds. If possible, foam at the mouth. That's MY glutinous rice and chicken, get away you skeevy person! My plate! My fork!
Stab you with the sharp item! Back! Back!


Pipe smoking is, nowadays, considered a non-social activity, probably even anti-social. So no need to share the fine brown flake tobacco, richly flavourful from long fermentation, with its faint whiff of freshly mown hay, the fields in summer, and over-ripe stone fruits fallen to the ground and slightly rotting in a distant orchard.


It feels like my entire life has been training for a pandemic.
Everybody out there is a disease carrying organism.


Especially if they dislike pipe smokers.

TOBACCO INDEX


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