Stayed up til 3am in a “business meeting” over Gchat. Woke up at 8am to satisfy a high maintenance kitten. Looked outside, Bishkek is again blanketed in snow. A search for a snow shovel in the building turns up only rakes and ice picks.
Well, looks like the only thing to do is make cinnamon rolls. Duh.
Start with some inspiration and remember that there’s already a package of yeast in the fridge from when you did a two-second search on Google Translate and figured out that “дрожжи” is actually really easy to find. Remember that you also previously discovered cinnamon.
Gather ingredients. Estimate capacity of juice glasses and tea cups for measuring milk and flour.
Form dough. Consider the extreme variances of temperatures between drafty, unsealed window and the blazing hot radiator beneath it when looking for proper “warm place” to allow dough to rise.
Keep cat away from rising dough.
Next, make cinnamon sugar filling. Oh, wait. Brown sugar. You need brown sugar for this part.
No worry, you just went to the Chinese market and picked up three bags. Sprinkle away!
Maybe you went a little crazy with the butter.
With the delicate task of slicing this, think about how great it was to invest in a nice German-made knife. Sure, the Chinese one you bought when you first moved here was cheaper, but about as effective as using your hand to slice things. Thank goodness for easy import laws.
Get comfortable, kids. It’s only going to be a tighter fit from here.
And you wait. You watch some Korean TV and notice yet another gang of unruly Bishkek teenage boys standing in your courtyard. Life would probably be a lot better if everybody was at home making cinnamon rolls.
Ugh, you wait patiently for them to cool. Watch more Korean TV in the meantime.
And then, as a reward for your hard work, you eat two.
(how all snow days should be)