when you can't separate them, roll them into one!

Reading the instructions and following them is one of my biggest weaknesses. I learn well from observing and from visual instructions, but not the written ones. Hence, I can't play a new board game unless I've played it before or if it has simple instructions. The same goes for cooking. I was ready to make my super host friend Elisa's yummy sausage rolls. These things are killer appetizers. But I came across a conundrum today while preparing to bake the sausage rolls. You remember I wrote a blog about the lack of random stuff in HK? For a week, I've been on the hunt for puff pastry for the sausage roll skin but to no avail. 5 different supermarkets and NADA! But I finally found packs of them at a random Park n Shop in Happy Valley. I grab 6 of them because God knows when I will be able to find them again. Hence, this is the reason why my fridge and refrigerator is always packed and ready to feed the army.

I bought some local Chinese brand puff pastry, but it didn't do the job. Luckily I find these Australian ones and thaw them. I'm ready to separate them into thin sheets and roll up the sausage mix I had ready for 2 days.... BUT, they can't be separated! They've become a block of puff pastry! What the...!!!! Without my glasses, I am reading the instructions where the first line says Thaw it. Then, I thought I read to separate the layers (only to find out later that it was all in my imagination). So here I am cursing out the darn puff pastry, why the heck didn't they separate them into layers by plastic sheets??? I don't want to discard them nor do I want to make a trip to Happy Valley which is 15 min away to return them.

So out of desperation, I turn to "Hong Kong Moms Facebook Group" If you live in HK, you've heard of this Facebook group. It should be made into a drama because there's some juicy stuff in there. Among the genres of the K dramas, GOT and Versailles, Hong Kong Moms Facebook group is up to par with the aforementioned epic dramas.

There's a range of some heartfelt stories, but also entertaining and sad stories about helpers, mostly employers bashing their helpers and getting bashed in return by human rights activities moms who themselves have helpers... to moms who ride in first-class on a flight but stick their "mom" and baby in the economy class, and she wants her "mother" to change the baby's diaper in the first class bathrooms. When asked why she can't change the baby's diaper herself, she replies she gets sick from the sight of the baby's poop. The heated exchanges and gloriously obnoxious comments that ensued were promptly deleted by the admin only for someone to re-post the captures of the posts back on chat! Oh geeze the drama of witnessing some of the locals and expats who don't live in reality. And I suppose I could very well be one of them too..

Going back to the puff pastry... so I post it... and most moms post that it's a roll out dough! Huh???? I didn't think such a thing existed, but stupid me who neglected to read the instructions all the way through clearly states to roll it out. Geeze, I feel stupid. And now, most of HK expats know I don't read instructions. Sigh....I roll them out and make the sausage rolls and char siu puff pastries, and they are quite yummy and fluffy. I felt super guilty before about using multiples of plastic sheets that separated the puff pastry layers so while rolling out the dough meant more work on my part, it was worth saving a yard of plastic.

Lesson well learned: Next time, before I curse anything, read the instructions!