Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 5
6:09am - wake up. Fitbit tells me I got 6 hours of sleep!
6:45am - do my Centr workout. My favorite trainers, Jorge and Tiffiny!
7:30am - first work call of the day.
8:00am - pick up breakfast during the call.
8:18am - they call to say we can pick up the breakfast.
9:20am - finally get around to eating breakfast. Today, there were some repeats, but very welcome ones. Well, of course there was the hard-boiled egg (白煮鸡蛋) as always. And the Vitasoy (维他奶) soy+dairy milk which alternates with the yogurt. But there was also the purple sweet potato, which showed up as red sweet potato on the menu (红薯hong2shu3).
Another very welcome repeat was the brown sugar rice cake (红糖松糕). It has this spongy yet delightfully chewy texture, and is just a bit sweet with the depth of the molasses flavor of brown sugar coming through.
Then for the first time there was a very tasty and well-filled mushroom, vegetable, and pressed tofu bun (香菇蔬菜包). It looked handmade, unlike the kind that look like extruded or molded dough product, with the very even “pleats” on top.
12:00pm - pick up lunch.
They like to cook up ribs a lot, and this was a version I really liked: a very savory salt-pepper-garlic ribs (椒盐金蒜骨). It was served with some veggies, like red onion and red pepper.
The fish cake of the potato and fish cake (土豆酱爆鱼饼) was a bit fishy for me, but I liked the potato a lot.
The julienned carrots with bean sprouts (胡萝卜黄豆芽) was a very healthy addition.
Then there was the leafy green, the black bean stir-fried lettuce (豆豉油麦菜).
The soup of lunch was, like always, quite watery, but today it had the strong flavor of celery of the 香芹粉皮汤.
The other component was the 粉皮, or starch noodle. I’m not sure if I’ve had this before, at least not in a soup.
Oh yes, and lunchtime is when they provide fruit. I forgot to include this in the overview shot of lunch.
3:28pm - temperature check
5:27pm - dinner is left out. I pick it up soon after, to take a break from work.
It smelled quite fishy upon opening up, and I was a bit daunted to find a whole, boned fish. But this yellow croaker (酱汁小黄鱼) was delectable. It had firm flakes, and while it was lightly sauced to have a rich taste, it still remained a bit crispy all around. Very well done!
The fried tofu in the napa cabbage with fried tofu dish (大白菜烧油豆腐) were really cute. The chef’s hand was a bit heavy in adding starch to the sauce, so it was a bit gloopy. And a bit of hot sauce livened things up a little.
Surprisingly, the other dish that needed a bit livening up with hot sauce was the chives scrambled with egg (韭菜炒蛋), which was unusually bland. It was a bit dry, too.
Then there was a side of stir-fried bok choy (清炒小塘菜) - I’m learning that 小塘菜 isn’t some exotic pond vegetable (I always picture small lily pads or something like that).
Today’s soup was also a new experience. I didn’t know what the 扁尖 was with the winter melon in the soup of the evening (扁尖冬瓜汤 bian3jian1dong1gua1tang1), but it turned out to be slices of bamboo.
