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Una receta de cocochas de Martin Berasategui presentada junto a Carlos Arguiñano, increiblehttps://www.antena3.com/progr...
28/03/2020

Una receta de cocochas de Martin Berasategui presentada junto a Carlos Arguiñano, increible

https://www.antena3.com/programas/karlos-arguinano/recetas/pescado/kokotxas-de-merluza-al-pil-pil-con-almejas-al-txakoli-hojas-y-pencas-de-berza_201912205dfcc7930cf2b8234659a01d.html

'Cocina abierta de Karlos Arguiñano' recibe a Martín Berasategui para elaborar unas kokotxas de merluza al pil-pil con almejas al txakoli, hojas y pencas de berza. Un plato perfecto para sorprender a los comensales esta Navidad.

It's been over 30 days since we've returned. I've gone on a few walks, despite all that is happening, for a few moments,...
15/03/2020

It's been over 30 days since we've returned. I've gone on a few walks, despite all that is happening, for a few moments, I relish in the beauty of the city.

Shanghai offers luscious gardens, park after park is filled with flowers and ponds. There is plenty of space for social distancing while breathing in the fresh air.

A few notes:
Many parks have been closed, gated and locked until this weekend. Including my favorite sculpture park, Jing'an, but we were able to sneak in for a couple pictures before being sent away.

Air quality has improved significantly as the industry has been idle and slow to return. My hope is we as consumers can experience these changes, learning what we need and putting down what we don't in hope that the earth will also have a chance to heal.

G and I have been cooking up a storm in Shanghai. Seriously, 5 star gourmet meals only in this house.  Yesterday I poste...
15/03/2020

G and I have been cooking up a storm in Shanghai. Seriously, 5 star gourmet meals only in this house.

Yesterday I posted our essential stock up list so you too can have amazing meals on a budget with pantry and freezer staples.

This week I'll share recipes for some of the meals we've been cooking.

If you have recipes to share, please post them here.

They say a pot of chicken soup can offset the stress of politics and pandemics. But...really?

People get delivered all kinds of products from necessities to anything you can imagine.Express delivery, a unique chara...
14/03/2020

People get delivered all kinds of products from necessities to anything you can imagine.

Express delivery, a unique characteristic of consumer culture in China is at a maximum since Cnvid19 as people still prefer to get goods delivered at their door.

Now instead of reaching each home’s door express services can only reach a building’s gate to avoid contagion. We can see packages stacked at each entrance gate of a compound or building waiting to be taken to their homes.

After our initial 14 day quarantine, we decided to bake. It took a little creativity as compound access is restricted to...
14/03/2020

After our initial 14 day quarantine, we decided to bake. It took a little creativity as compound access is restricted to residents, but we successfully snuck in my friends, Carolina and Anne.

Double dark chocolate olive oil cookies - an original recipe I've been working on for a while to perfect.

Swirl banana bread and muffins from Smitten Kitchen

Almond tart which was topped with a passion fruit and clementine sauce - Anne's original recipe

Supply of fresh food of all kinds in Shanghai is kept at a high level, as an example this variety of onions and shallots...
14/03/2020

Supply of fresh food of all kinds in Shanghai is kept at a high level, as an example this variety of onions and shallots in display at a local supermarket

From my friend, Ling Ger. She just returned to Shanghai from Taiwan where there are only 45 cases.
14/03/2020

From my friend, Ling Ger. She just returned to Shanghai from Taiwan where there are only 45 cases.

Sanitizer and disinfectant wipes stocks are available again as a normal item in Shanghai so people can buy them easily i...
14/03/2020

Sanitizer and disinfectant wipes stocks are available again as a normal item in Shanghai so people can buy them easily in supermarkets like City Super or City Shop or in online shops like Epermarket after weeks without stocks

500 masks, 3-4 weeks of water, wine, and groceries.As we will be cooking all meals at home for the foreseeable future, i...
14/03/2020

500 masks, 3-4 weeks of water, wine, and groceries.

As we will be cooking all meals at home for the foreseeable future, it's been important to have a variety of ingredients to cook with.

While planning ahead like this may seem like panic to some, it's not in our situation. When we first arrived and started ordering our groceries, we found many items were out of stock and deliveries were taking 2-3 days when normally they are the same day.

Essentials we included in our prepping:

Dried beans (and lentils), noodles, grains and rices
Dried mushrooms and peppers
Frozen vegetables and fruits
Spices and seeds
Flour, sugar, yeast (no more buying fresh bread every afternoon)
Toilet paper, kleenex, soap (so much soap)
Laundry detergent including a special disinfectant from Dettol
Doritos, spicy flavored nuts, and chips
Chocolate
Beer and Wine
Canned tomatoes, artichokes, beans, sauerkraut
Canned fish (sardines, anchovies, and tuna)
Olive oil and vinegar
Eggs
Mustards and salsas
Cereal and oats
Frozen pork, chicken and fish (all imported)
Tea and coffee
Dried fruits: apricots, cranberries, mango
Aged cheeses (keep them in the freezer to keep fresh, bring to room temperature before serving)

14/03/2020

I'm sharing this from my good friend Dr. Pat. It's a long read but I think worth a few moments of your time.

"Stay at home as much as possible. Stay out of restaurants. I would cancel any travel that is not absolutely essential. Work from home if you possibly can."

From another doc.....
Thanks to my respected friend and colleague Dr. Julie Silver for sharing this— please read the whole thing, it is an important summary:

From Julie —“It has been years since I have posted anything on this page. As a physician at Harvard Medical School, I have amazing access to the best information and resources for . I know people are getting a lot of information, and not all of it is accurate. My friend Dr. Reem Ghalib summarized the situation in one of the best social media posts to date on this topic (copied/pasted below). Please read what she has to say and share it with your loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Urge people to be calm and logical in their decision making. Err on the side of caution. Re the info below--note that "coronavirus" is used generically to mean the specific strain Covid 19. I will apologize in advance for not responding to comments as work is very hectic right now:

Dear Friends,
So much confusion, misinformation, and denial is bouncing around on social media about the coronavirus that I thought I would try to explain, in plain language, why the experts see this as such an emergency.
You will see the claim online that this virus is a lot like the viruses that cause colds, and that if you get it, it will probably just seem like a bad cold and you are very unlikely to die. Depending on who you are, these statements are probably true. But they are incomplete, and the missing information is the key to understanding the problem.

This is a coronavirus that is new to the human population, jumping into people late last year from some kind of animal, probably at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. It is related to the viruses that cause colds and acts a lot like them in many ways. It is very easy to transmit through the respiratory droplets that all of us give off. But nobody has ever been exposed to this before, which means nobody has any immunity to it.

The virus is now moving explosively through the human population. While most people will recover, about 20 percent of the people who catch it will wind up with a serious disease. They will get pneumonia that causes shortness of breath, and they may need hospitalization.

Some of those people will get so sick that they cannot be saved and will die of pneumonia. The overall death rate for people who develop symptoms seems to be 2 or 3 percent. Once we have enough testing to find out how many people caught the virus but did not develop symptoms, that might come down to about 1 percent, optimistically.

This is a large number. It is at least 10 times higher than the mortality rate for the seasonal flu, for instance, which in some years kills 60,000 or 70,000 Americans. So just on that math, we could be looking at 600,000 or 700,000 dead in the United States. But it gets worse.

Older people with existing health problems are much more vulnerable, on average. The mortality rate of coronavirus among people over age 80 maybe 15 or 20 percent. It appears to have 7 or 8 percent mortality for people aged 70 to 79. Here is the terrible part: If you are a healthy younger person, you can catch the virus and, without developing serious symptoms yourself, you can pass it along to older people. In other words, as the virus spreads, it is going to be very easy to go out and catch it, give it to your grandmother and kill her, even though you will not die yourself. You can catch it by touching a doorknob or an elevator button.

Scientists measure the spread of an epidemic by a number called R0, or “R naught.” That number is calculated this way: for every person who develops the illness, how many other people do they give it to before they are cured (or dead) and no longer infectious? The R0 for coronavirus, in the absence of a control strategy, appears to be a number close to 3 – maybe a bit higher or lower, but in that ballpark. This is an extremely frightening number for such a deadly disease.

Suppose you catch the virus. You will give it to 3 other people, and they will each give it to three others, and so forth. Here is how the math works, where you, the “index case,” are the first line:
1
3
9
27
81
243
729
2,187
6,561
19,683
59,046
177,147
531,441
1,594,323
4,782,969
14,348,907

So, in just 15 steps of transmission, the virus has gone from just one index case to 14.3 million other people. Those 15 steps might take only a few weeks. The index person may be young and healthy, but many of those 14 million people will be old and sick, and they will likely die because they got a virus that started in one person's throat.

The United States is not at this point yet, with millions infected, as best we can tell. We don’t really know, because our government has failed us. We are many, many weeks behind other countries in rolling out widespread testing, so we don’t really have a clue how far the thing has spread. We do know that cases are starting to pop up all over the place, with many of the people having no known exposure to travelers from China, so that means this virus has escaped into our communities.
We do not have approved treatments, yet. We do not have a vaccine. The only tool we really have now is to try to slow down the chain of transmission.

This can be done. In other words, R0 is not fixed – it can be lowered by control measures. If we can get the number below 1, the epidemic will die out. This is the point of the quarantines and the contact-tracing that you are hearing so much about in the news. But the virus is exploding so fast that we will not have the labor available to trace contacts for much longer, so we have to shift strategies. This has already begun, but we are not doing it fast enough.

It is now likely that the majority of Americans will get this virus. But slowing it down is still crucial. Why? Because the healthcare system has limited resources. We only have about a million hospital beds in America. We have well under a million ventilators. If millions of Americans get sick enough to need treatment, we will have a calamity on our hands. What will happen is a form of battlefield triage, where the doctors focus on trying to treat the young and allow the older people to die.
This is not theoretical. It is already happening in Italy, where people over 65 are being left alone on hospital gurneys to suffocate to death from pneumonia. They basically drown in their own sputum. There is simply not enough medical capacity to take care of them. The United States appears to be about two weeks behind Italy on the epidemic growth curve.
What do we need to do now? We need to cancel all large gatherings – all of them. You have probably seen that the N.B.A. has postponed the rest of its season. Other sporting events, concerts, plays and everything else involving large audiences in a small space – all of it needs to be canceled. Even if these events take place, do not go to them. No lectures, no plays, no movies, no cruises – nothing.

Stay at home as much as possible. Stay out of restaurants. I would cancel any travel that is not absolutely essential. Work from home if you possibly can. You may have to go buy groceries and medicine, of course, but make the trips quick and purposeful. Wash your hands assiduously after you have been in public places, for a full 20 seconds, soaping up thoroughly and being sure to get between the fingers. Sunlight and alcohol will kill the virus.

And please stop passing around statements on social media claiming that the situation is not serious or is being exaggerated. This is a national crisis, and conveying misinformation to your friends and family may put their lives in danger”

A little gym close at Fengyang Rd is open again and you can see people inside wearing masks, activity is slowly returnin...
14/03/2020

A little gym close at Fengyang Rd is open again and you can see people inside wearing masks, activity is slowly returning to normal

28 hours later, we have finally arrived in Shanghai. The airport is calm, it's late, maybe 10 or 11 by the time we depar...
13/03/2020

28 hours later, we have finally arrived in Shanghai. The airport is calm, it's late, maybe 10 or 11 by the time we depart the plane. I have no idea what the date is, I'm terrible at understanding the time difference still after almost 2 years.

Upon arrival, we were able to quickly pass through E-Check (it's the fast pass in China for registered residents) after the first of many temperature checks, forms declaring our health status and our recent travel.

Then it was off to the taxi, it took a few tries but we were able to get all of our luggage into the little van. 4 very large suitcases, 2 carry one, 2 backpacks and two personal items!

We live in the center of the city about normally an hour's drive from PuDong airport. As we drove it became clear very quickly life in Shanghai had changed while I was away. The elevated roads (interstates) were empty. I counted 3 cars along the way that we passed. We arrived at our complex, Guillermo and I had to exit the van for another temperature check, then we were able to navigate to the building with all of our things in tow.

Exhausted. But home at last.

Changing planes again. Thanks to the bans, we could get back to Shanghai from St. Louis but with an extra stop along the...
13/03/2020

Changing planes again. Thanks to the bans, we could get back to Shanghai from St. Louis but with an extra stop along the way in Japan.

We spent a little time looking for food while amusing ourselves with clever recommendations and the state of the art toilet situation. Because, why wouldn't you recommend alcohol for the weary traveler?

The last signs of normalcy as we transitted through Chicago O'Hare on February 11.
13/03/2020

The last signs of normalcy as we transitted through Chicago O'Hare on February 11.

February 11. We left St. Louis with 500 masks, 700 latex gloves, 45 bottles of hand sanitizer. We had no idea what to ex...
13/03/2020

February 11. We left St. Louis with 500 masks, 700 latex gloves, 45 bottles of hand sanitizer. We had no idea what to expect when we would arrive in Shanghai.

Guillermo was able to arrive in the US the day before the first travel ban, he would have been denied entry as a Spanish citizen, to say we cut his escape from China close is an understatement. We spend most of his visit to St. Louis shopping for supplies, visiting the Forest Park and the amazing museums, and catching up with friends and family.

I am so grateful for the 6+ weeks I had in St. Louis, I don't think I'll be back anytime soon as the situation worsens in the US and honestly, I feel safer now in China especially with compromised health after the surgery.

When traveling it's imperative to sample all of the ice cream.
06/12/2019

When traveling it's imperative to sample all of the ice cream.

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