Zephyr Dirge

I don't think i've discussed before the pervasive smell of boiled mutton in Ulaanbaatar, but what I can only imagine is also in Mongolia, a very large country. Sheep, a national treasure right after massive coal, gold and uranium deposits lingers in the air, pervades your clothes, the walls, infiltrates and numbs your olfactory senses, it creeps into government buildings, coal factories ( I swear on sunshine and warm weather), museums and shopping malls. For some, this may be a tantalizing prelude to a steaming meal of buuz (meat dumplings) or a warm memory associeted with noodle and meat soup or a nice piece of glistening sheep butt fat.

For me, it is a serious affront to the bouquets of coal ash, exhaust fumes and burning rubber I've grown so fond of. This malodorousness finds no place in my heart or on my plate, so when, on Monday morning, I went to take my first sip of coffee, ( a religious experience for a night time person) and found myself slurrping a coffee so redolent of sheep I had to take a second and third sip to make sure I wasn't losing it (Patrick thinks i'm becoming a paranoid meat hircinist) I had to begrudgingly replace that revered first cup of coffee, with green tea. I much healthier option, but one less likely to keep the snooze button at bay.

After some sherlockiaian forays into lactic investigations this morning that included taste testing the milk on its own, in coffee, and two different types of cereal, I am loathe to report that it is indeed the box (not carton, box) of 2.5% milk (the one with the slight cartoon lady on it that indicates if you drink more fatty milk than is accepted in some Western countries, you're likely to develop a peachy pink complexion, trim waste, buxom top and bottom and straight, flowing hair) that has commingled with a cooked form of its cousin and thus has ruined another healthy morning of instant coffee and sugary cereals.

This harkens me back to a fine tuna salad I had made for myself not two weeks ago, when an earnest bite into a cucumber left me floored by its uncanny degustation of sheep. Another meal sabotaged.

This wicked infiltration of non meat products into my repasts is either a massive conspiracy or a test of will. I refuse to lose my mind or my appetite to this ursurper of palates and am considering a second career in cold chain supply methods of the Mongolian meat industry - this will also help us understand how Patrick's stomach, which ingested escargots and steak tartare at a French restaurant in UB, let it be known, that snails and raw meat, were not a choice made of sound mind and constitution.

Round 1: We fought the meat, and the meat won.