Lockdown Day 29: TGIF
I actually got a pretty good night’s sleep last night, before a big meeting today. I still prepared my vegetable congee, this time with Napa cabbage, carrot, and mushrooms, and I topped it after cooking with the salted olive vegetable and a cube of fermented tofu 豆腐乳.
This was a good mixture! I actually also added some oyster sauce and white pepper to the mixture last night, so it was very savory and peppery when cooked.
I had to be quick for lunch, because my meeting was at 1pm.
I reheated my remaining caramelized cabbage. onion and mushroom soup, and toasted some sliced almonds mixed with olive oil and the garlic parmesan mixture to put on top.
And then I had my remaining chilled vegetables - cucumber, iceberg lettuce, and green beans. I think it’s nice to have these ready-to-eat in the fridge.
Miraculously, there was no PCR test today! It was on account of not enough 大白 Baymax resources, supposedly. That was a huge relief, because when the whole morning passed without a call to go downstairs, I worried that I’d be caught during my afternoon meetings.
I had tea and a mandarin orange to finish up my lunch.
We did still have to do our 6pm antigen test.
I did a quick “espresso” workout of the day - lots of glute and ab work today. And then I had a quick snack of a daikon radish pancake, before a Zoom reunion with some former colleagues.
I originally hesitated to add myself to the reunion list, because I’d spent all day, and all week, on Zoom. But it was really nice chatting with everyone and catching up! One tidbit that I learned was that the reason why I have especially frequent and bountiful government rations was because my sub-district (Hunan sub-district 湖南街道) is has a lot of 高官, or high ranking officials. Certainly my community itself does not, but I had heard of the areas to the west of me having many high ranking officials.
After the Zoom reunion, I made a little pizza, with my cabbage-wheat flour crust. I took out one of my precious little packets of mozzarella from the freezer. I had started out with two huge bags from Costco sometime last year, thinking I had really overdone it with buying so much shredded cheese. But now I’m really wishing I had more cheese. It’s a great way to change the taste of so many common ingredients like cabbage and onion.
Besides the mozzarella, I topped my pizza with my Chinese chive pesto, and roasted eggplant, olives, and sun-dried tomato, and more parmesan cheese. The crust had a good texture! It was soft from the cabbage yet firm and elastic enough to pick up, thanks to the wheat flour.
This evening we had to do another antigen test. And perplexingly, we not only had to label the test picture with the date and our name, but we also have to physically bring this used test to the PCR test tomorrow. Why? For what?
