Lockdown Day 50: Quarantine hotel breakfast redux

Today was supposed to have been our third consecutive PCR test in as many days - after all, this was why they gave us a special brand of antigen tests to take the morning of the PCR test to show to the staff. But this morning, entryway leader announced that there wouldn’t be a PCR test after all. Yay!

This morning, I treated myself to a revival of quarantine hotel breakfasts! That is, often there would be baozi, sweet potato, and yogurt. Well, Jianguo Hotel served yogurts at breakfast, while Homeinn Select served yogurts at dinnertime, and Tianlin Hotel served them at lunchtime.

Today, I steamed a vegetable baozi from the last government food delivery, and accompanied that with roasted sweet potato, and yogurt from my friend. To drink, I had water and a third of a sachet of Starbucks with coconut creamer.

The vegetable baozi was excellent! It was abundantly stuffed with mushrooms and what seemed like peppery mustard greens.

I’m going to miss having sweet potatoes around. From having so many, I had to store them on the floor, I now have just a quarter of a sweet potato in the fridge. And roasting is a great way to prepare them: just wash, cover them in a thin layer of oil, and then roast in the oven. The orange flesh kind of shrinks as it concentrates in size and flavor, creating a gap with the outer skin which doesn’t shrink, making them very easy to peel.

For lunch, I reheated my last tamale pie, with a filling of turkey and green spicy peppers. I doused this in Tapatío hot sauce. Yes, this was a Thanksgiving leftover! The texture of the corn part kind of suffered in the freezer, but it was still enjoyable.

Just after lunch, in the middle of a meeting, I got a call and text message from the Pinduoduo 拼多多 group buying platform, saying my eggs had arrived. I rushed down as soon as the meeting ended, to get them. I’d heard some reports that people’s orders were being taken by other people, so I wanted to try my best to avoid that.

Our eggs were labelled with our addresses.

Yay, eggs! I wouldn’t have imagined that I would group buy eggs, having had over 50 eggs at the beginning of lockdown. But my supply had dwindled, and I’d started to ration my use of eggs. I still have 9 in the fridge, but I have been afraid to make scrambled eggs or tortilla de patatas and soon be without any eggs at all. So I ordered these 30 eggs (minimum quantity per order), to feel safe with my supply of eggs.

I kept working until almost 9pm, which is when I got the phone call and SMS saying that my water had arrived. The price (37.90 RMB) was just a bit more than what I paid a few weeks ago, but not by much. When I went to get these, I observed something curious.

The guard let a lady go out to walk her dog! I asked the guard if the gate was open (I mean, it clearly is), but he said it wasn’t. We were still a locked community. But I guess the rule doesn’t apply as strictly for everyone.

After picking up my one case of water (4 x 5L bottles), I did my workout of the day. This time I did faster “espresso” workout focusing on glutes and abs, because it was so late and I didn’t want to do the regular workout which was 20 minutes longer.

I made a pizza with my last cabbage-wheat flour crust, topping it with tomato sauce (which I allowed to concentrate by putting it in the oven without other toppings for a good amount of time), mozzarella, marinated artichokes, olives, red onions, and parmesan cheese.

To celebrate somehow the end of a very long week, I had one of my few non-water drinks. A pompelmo/grapefruit soda from San Pellegrino. Having soda (Coke, always), with pizza was something I did with my roommate in Spain, at home!