Thank God!

I can chew. Full masticatory ability right here. You have no idea how good it felt to wake up this morning and realise that enough of the swelling's eased up to let me work my jaw. Oh the simple things.

I'm so grateful, I've decided to rename my space. 'As good as it gets' is a little too negative, and change is always good. Deep fried everything, here I come!

My mother asked my sister and I to clean out the fridge today. Which brings me to Chinese fridges.

Chinese cooking's not like English or French cooking where you can do anything with some meat, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and those neat little bottles of herbs. Nope.

Chinese cooking demands bottles and bottles of preserved meats, vegetables, and seafood, processed sauces from meats, vegetables, and seafood, bundles, sealed bags, and boxes of herbs, and various soy derivatives. Mg, it is a chore to clean.

There were oily, starchy fingerprints all over the place because not only is Chinese cooking extensive, it's also fast (generally), and my mum's a good, but messy, cook.

Then there was the crusty stuff. Crusty stuff in all shades of brown were adhered to the shelves, and, against all laws of physics, on the underside of the shelves too. What you couldn't wipe off, you had to scrape with your nails, which was a lot.

We found a petrified lychee, a shrivelled up lotus-wrapped rice dumpling (also fondly known as 'zhang'), and a couple more misshapen lumps that were unidentifiable, not to mention lots of murky looking jars that were way past the printed expiry dates.

Ew. I guess what Mum hasn't realised yet is that when she asked us to clean the fridge, we only cleaned the fridge. The freezer half +shudder+ is another story for another day.

But I'm hungry, not to be deterred by what I found in the fridge, five days of agony and nothing but soup and water has put a real edge on my hunger. So I'll be back later.