Lockdown Day 49: Quick lunch and dinner
Since I discovered my unused box of Starbucks VIA, I’ve been rationing its use. There were only 8 sachets in the box! By pouring in just a bit of coffee each time (and trying not to use a lot of water), I’ve been getting about 3 cups of coffee out of each sachet!
Today’s breakfast reminded me of breakfasts in quarantine. Sweet potato, baozi, and yogurt.
The baozi from the government delivery included both meat and vegetable baozi, and today I had meat. It was okay, a lot better than the ones in the quarantine hotel Homeinn Select, but of course not as good as the ones one can find on the street (and definitely not as good as the ones in Valencia’s Chinatown!).
Lunch had to be fast, so I had frozen dumplings. I was going to make a simple cucumber salad, but I found that it was kind of going bad, so I chopped off the slimy part and decided to cook the rest, to hopefully be okay food safety-wise. I just peeled it, cut it into quarters, and sliced diagonally like Chef Wang shows on YouTube. I didn’t follow the other steps like blanching the the cucumbers first, but I did follow his advice to wait until the end to add the salt, and add in a starch and water slurry as the very last step to kind of make a sauce. Very nice!
Because I had so much cucumber, I took out just six frozen dumplings. Three celery and pork, three Chinese chives and pork.
PCR test, 2nd of three days in a row, I think it will be, happened in the afternoon again. Entryway leader said yesterday that the testing was happening later because a lot of medical staff had returned to their home provinces as the COVID surge in Shanghai subsided, so the Shanghai crews were covering more ground. I think we’ve been fairly consistent to get Shanghai staff.
Soon after the PCR test, our afternoon antigen test was due. This could be any brand of antigen test.
After work, I put in my beans and rice leftovers in the Xiaomi pot, set it to cook as rice for 6 minutes under pressure because the rice was quite firm when I cooked it the first time around. Then I did my workout of the day, showered, and came out to a piping hot meal. The rice had the perfect texture - still chewy but fully cooked. What a comforting meal. Garnished with a sprig of carrot leaf!
Then I had my watermelon treat.
And of course, my midnight antigen test. Using the special brand for midnight tests, of course.
