Unexpected Food Gifts

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, Jacksoup said:

@Anna NI must have missed @blue_dolphinpost, I’ll have to go back and read it.  Thx

I thought I should at least find the post. 

[farcego]

On 7/9/2021 at 12:55 AM, liuzhou said:

Coincidentally, I was thinking about figs today after seeing these which an itinerant vendor was carrying.

 

That got me thinking about these, which I've seen many, many times over the last few years. Dried figs. 

 

I have no idea how they are used; must find out. I suspect they are involved in TCM (Chinese Traditional Medicine) but don't actually know, but then everything else is.

Interestingly (perhaps), the Chinese name for figs, 无花果 (wú huā guǒ) translates literally as 'no flower fruit'.

 

 

Dry figs are very common along the Mediterranean basin (where fig is mostly from, historically, and thus it is a way to keep the figs year round since the old days).  My dad always had a jar full of them and just pick them as a snack. It is good to see they are available too in China, because I have miss them a bit in other countries and I though it was a very localized product.

I am sure there may be multiple recipes to use them, but I would tell you give them a go in the easiest way, grab them from the peduncle (if any) and eat them, as they are, without the peduncle. Then, if you like them (I am sure you will), it will be easier to you to think about how to cook with them. From my personal experience, i use to put some together with other stuff like dried apricots etc inside a teal before roasting the game in the oven. Surely some more Chinese styled recipes, with pork, may go well too in a sour sweet style?.

cheers

 

PS-edited: There is "pan de higos" ("figbread"), which is made mostly of figs, not really a bread, rather, crunched dry figs in the form of a "tosta". Very good for using on a hike etc...

Edited July 20, 2021 by farcego
follow up with a missed paragraph (log)

[liuzhou]

2 hours ago, farcego said:

 

Dry figs are very common along the Mediterranean basin (where fig is mostly from, historically, and thus it is a way to keep the figs year round since the old days).  My dad always had a jar full of them and just pick them as a snack. It is good to see they are available too in China, because I have miss them a bit in other countries and I though it was a very localized product.

I am sure there may be multiple recipes to use them, but I would tell you give them a go in the easiest way, grab them from the peduncle (if any) and eat them, as they are, without the peduncle. Then, if you like them (I am sure you will), it will be easier to you to think about how to cook with them. From my personal experience, i use to put some together with other stuff like dried apricots etc inside a teal before roasting the game in the oven. Surely some more Chinese styled recipes, with pork, may go well too in a sour sweet style?.

cheers

 

PS-edited: There is "pan de higos" ("figbread"), which is made mostly of figs, not really a bread, rather, crunched dry figs in the form of a "tosta". Very good for using on a hike etc...

 

Yes, I know figs are native to the Mediterranean area, but very few foods are confined to their place of origin today.

You couldn't snack on these fried figs. They are rock hard. I have discovered, as I expected, they are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Sweet and sour pork is not really a common Chinese dish. More American-Chinese and I've never seen it with figs.

[liuzhou]

 I was sitting there contemplating my navel and trying to decide if another G+T was appropriate at 4:30 pm. (Stupid question). When my cell phone bleeped at me. I thought it would be some spam asking me to invest in rubber chopstick technology or something, but no. It was clearly addressed to me and informed me in no uncertain terms that my order had been deposited at the online shopping delivery point within yards of my home. Well I call yards, metres, but that is another story!

I was confused. I had already picked up the only deliveries I was expecting today, the T in my G+T and some bleach I felt the need for. I did check the tracking on the remaining few items I had ordered, but they hadn't registered with the orderees at all. What was it?

So, I strolled out with my old man shopping trolley. Hey! It could have been a mooncake! I have one friend who regularly sends me weird stuff like that. Or it could have been the beautiful 300 kg Chinese coffin on my wish list. I didn't know!

I joined the line at the collection point. The guy in charge isn't the brightest dish on the menu, but I whiled away the time by looking at the various parcels scattered around the floor of his premises. I spotted a box of mangoes and had a bit of a closer look. I saw where they came from.  百色 (bǎi sè), a small city in Guangxi near the borders with Vietnam as well as Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in China. It is considered to be China's mango heaven! I've eaten mangoes there straight from the tree, and totally agree.

"Lucky someone", I thought, then noticed something I recognised. My cellphone number! Right there on the delivery label!

I picked the box up, the guy noticed this in a rare moment of lucidity and nodded, so I grabbed it, balanced it on top of my trolley as it was too big to fit inside (although the coffin would have been worse), and trotted off home, mangoes in tow.

 

Then sat down with that other G+T to try to work out who the helicopter (one of my late father's euphemisms) had sent them. When I resolve the mystery, I'll let you know. Maybe!

Here is the package.The mangoes are now in the food fridge (not the drink fridge) as I have to go out tonight, but I'll update tomorrow with the full gory details I know you crave.
 

Edited August 8, 2021 by liuzhou (log)

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I was sitting there contemplating my navel and trying to decide if another G+T was appropriate at 4:30 pm.

I so love these stories of every day life in China. To collect a parcel here in Ontario would require the production of at least one piece of identification and incoming packets are in a room behind the counter. Parcel does not appear until you have met the identification requirement. 

[liuzhou]

31 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I so love these stories of every day life in China. To collect a parcel here in Ontario would require the production of at least one piece of identification and incoming packets are in a room behind the counter. Parcel does not appear until you have met the identification requirement. 

 

Some parcels here are delivered to the door or at least downstairs from your apartment. To be delivered, the delivery must have your cellphone number. They call you when your loot arrives. 

Or, more commonly, stuff is delivered to the collection pont and you get a text message to tell you it's there (as happened with my mangoes) so again a passing thief wouldn't know it was there. Also, the collection point is a very local service, exclusive to this small gated neighborhood, so the guy in charge, despite being on the slow side, knows everyone by sight, even if we aren't best mates. I've never heard of deliveries being misappropriated here. It is a highly efficient system.  I won't tempt fate by saying it's foolproof. No system is, but it's damn near.

[Anna N]

2 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

Some parcels here are delivered to the door or at least downstairs from your apartment.

I think perhaps I jumped to conclusions. Your description of queueing up brought to mind our post offices. There you must produce some ID to claim a parcel.

Other deliveries can be right to the door. Amazon will alert me to a delivery. Packages from other places often just show up without notification but I am usually on the lookout for them. Theft of parcels left at the door is an issue although I have never been affected by it. It is enough of a problem that these thieves have been given the name “porch Pirates”

[liuzhou]

17 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Your description of queueing

 

Perhaps I overegged that pudding. There were I think two people in front of me, but the guy is so sloooooow!

 

Yeah, I've heard of 'porch pirates. Non-existent here. If the delivery companies just left packages outside, they would be responsible for any losses. It just doesn't happen.

[rotuts]

 re: PPirates

 

I live w of BOS.

 

'burbs

 

Amazon  , or any other delivery company 

\

is responsible for loss.

 

loss has gotten to be a big deal

 

for UPS  // FedEx // and Amazon.

 

enough people claim to have not received 

 

their package  that the delivery folk take a pic 

 

of the item in your ' porch '

 

you get the pic w your email 

 

delivery notification.

[liuzhou]

Dumping your delivery parcel outside your home does not consitute delivery here, photo or no photo. In fact, the photo would be damning evidence of irrresponsibility and failure to fulfill the contract entered into; i.e to DELIVER the item(s) to the addressee. The delivery has to be made to me, as identified by me responding to my cell phone call or message, or to my designated agent, ole' slowhand in the collection point.

Edited February 25, 2022 by liuzhou (log)

[rotuts]

you have delivery options w every carrier :

 

signature only 

 

leave at door / in the back etc

 

for neighborhoods that are considered

 

safe enough .

 

Ive never lost a package 

 

\sometimes the packages is delivered to

 

another address by mistqke

 

I call UPS

 

the driver picks up the package and re-delivers.

 

there are not that many single family

 

homes these days where someone is home

 

if hand delivery nw signature

 

was a requirement

 

Amazon et.al.  would go out of buisiness

 

and your ' card-board futures '

 

would be worthless.

 

How things are done in The City

 

are no doubt quite different.

[heidih]

@rotuts the options you describe are what I experience. The picture is nice - you left it where!? Some harried delivery person left the parcel on the ground (dirt) at foot of my mailbox inches from the only busy street in my 3 square mile city where idiots are zooming downhill at breakneck speed, and maybe 8th mile from my house. 

 

Looking forward to @liuzhou's mango report.

[kayb]

11 hours ago, Anna N said:

Amazon will alert me to a delivery.

 

Theoretically. I opted in to the "alert me to delivery" option, or whatever it is. It worked for a while. Then it didn't. One day my son-in-law had called me for some reason. Before we hung up, he said, "Oh, by the way, you have an Amazon package on your porch." "Huh?" I replied. Seems Amazon has been sending him text messages regarding my deliveries, oh, since about the time they stopped sending them to me.

 

The only rationale I can find for this is that I have his address (but not his cell number) in my Amazon account list of shipping addresses, so if I order something for one of them, I can just have it sent straight to them. I'm not certain where they acquired his cell number. Or why the messages go to him and not my daughter.

 

Go figger.

 

[liuzhou]

Another fine morning in Mangostan! And the mango unveiling ceremony loomed. Cue fanfare!

 

 

 

The lady on top (stop sniggering in class!) without her pretty skirt weighs 362.5 g / 0.8 pounds. They are all around the same.

 

Still rock hard, so a day or two in the sun and they'll be ready to more fully display. They'll be back soon.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

43 minutes ago, kayb said:

 

Theoretically. I opted in to the "alert me to delivery" option, or whatever it is. It worked for a while. Then it didn't. One day my son-in-law had called me for some reason. Before we hung up, he said, "Oh, by the way, you have an Amazon package on your porch." "Huh?" I replied. Seems Amazon has been sending him text messages regarding my deliveries, oh, since about the time they stopped sending them to me.

 

The only rationale I can find for this is that I have his address (but not his cell number) in my Amazon account list of shipping addresses, so if I order something for one of them, I can just have it sent straight to them. I'm not certain where they acquired his cell number. Or why the messages go to him and not my daughter.

 

Go figger.

 

 

Similar happened here.  When I first logged into the amazon app on my iPad some while ago, my son got a notice that someone had logged into his amazon account.  He immediately told amazon it wasn't him.  They froze my account.

 

We once had used my son's cellphone number trying to set up my late lamented and sorely missed, now non-functional Echo Connect device.  How Jeff returned from space in less than two pieces I will never know.

 

[liuzhou]

On 8/7/2021 at 5:31 PM, liuzhou said:

When I resolve the mystery, I'll let you know. Maybe!

 

Solved. Back in May, an ex-student of mine who graduated in 2006 with her BA in English tucked under her belt, contacted me to ask for help. She is now a high school English teacher in Nanning, the provincial capital. She had been charged with getting her students to come up with a short play (more of a sketch) to explain something about Chinese culture to ignorant foreigners. Well, that wasn't how they put it, of course. They were running some kind of competition across Guangxi's high schools.

So, she asked if I would mind recording a short selfie-video (is there a word for that?), in English, on my experience of 螺蛳粉 (luó sī fěn), my city's iconic noodle dish. I consulted my lawyers, personal trainer, fortune teller, and life-style consultants and they couldn't come up with any justifiable objection. So, I complied.

Apparently, her class (and she) won the Nanning heat, then went on to get the bronze medal in the Guangxi-wide final. So, she called her family in Baise, her hometown, and asked them to send me the mangoes as a 'thank-you'.

She was able to see the delivery tracking information on-line and knew I had received them, so contacted me this morning to confess!

I let her off with a caution!

Her given name is 海燕 (hǎi yàn - pronounced like 'high yen' ), which means 'petrel', as in the seabird. Not a Chinese word I would have expected to learn, but she told me one day and it lodged in my brain. In fact, it's possibly the only non-edible bird name I know in Chinese. Of course, tomorrow, I'll find out that someone eats them!

Edited August 8, 2021 by liuzhou (log)

[heidih]

Sister came home with one today. She met with realtor about our place and he gave her some peach jam he made from their trees yesterday. I finally pried it open (very well sealed) and it is so nice, He told her it was low sugar but the fruit essence is wonderful.  We have spread it on toasted ciabatta with Swiss melted over. (only cheese in house). 

[BeeZee]

Our new-ish neighbor saw my husband cleaning the grill after dinner in the backyard and gave him a bunch of tomatoes from his garden. They are all in various stages of un-ripeness, so I've got them sitting in a dish. Fairly gnarly specimens, I won't be shocked if I find an insect or two when I cut them. But I was touched by the gesture, as the prior neighbor gave us nothing but grief.

[Anna N]

 

A nice selection of cheeses arrived at my house today cour. tesy of @Kerry Beal  also a good selection of desserts and ice cream‘s made using her new Ninja Creemi!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

"Random weight"?

 

[Kerry Beal]

11 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

"Random weight"?

 

This is cheese delivered from the Saputo company - over runs, off weights - I buy mozzarella mainly - but can’t resist the odds and ends they offer. It’s called the Saputo Fridge 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

51 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

This is cheese delivered from the Saputo company - over runs, off weights - I buy mozzarella mainly - but can’t resist the odds and ends they offer. It’s called the Saputo Fridge 

Brilliant!  

[Shelby]

Kerry is the coolest!

[KennethT]

3 hours ago, Anna N said:

 

A nice selection of cheeses arrived at my house today cour. tesy of @Kerry Beal  also a good selection of desserts and ice cream‘s made using her new Ninja Creemi!

If everyone had a friend like Kerry, the world would be a much better place.

[chromedome]

13 hours ago, KennethT said:

If everyone had a friend like Kerry, the world would be a much better place.

...and there'd be no doctor shortage, as a bonus.