i grilled some chicken sausage in the smokeless cooker and had some oatmeal for lunch. missing was some chopped cilantro, so the final porridge was a bit bland. i also used some of the new MB brand worcestershire sauce, didn't seem to have enough flavor, maybe i just needed to add more next time. it doesn't make sense that $1 worcestershire sauce can compared with a name brand that costs $8, but i still give it the benefit of the doubt.

in the afternoon i biked to the allston super 88 market. it was either that or the malden super 88. malden was a bit farther even though it would've taken the same amount of time. but the temperature was a still little cold today (40's) and i wanted to get some exercise.

i went there via harvard street, which is a more direct route than following the charles river and crossing by the BU bridge. i pumped the tires and readjusted the seat before leaving, but the seat ended up tilting forward again after just a few minutes of riding.

a white maserati sports car pulled into the parking lot while i was locking up my bicycle along a sign post. i took a quick stroll through the food court. when i came last time, there were still a few places opened even though it looked like they didn't have any customers. this time, about 80% of the shops were empty and for lease. gone was the katsu shop. gone was the korean restaurant. there was an indian curry place. a bubble ice tea shop. a cantonese takeout place. most surprisingly, there was actually a new shop opened, TKK fried chicken, never heard of them before, but i love fried chicken and might give them a try one of these days.

super 88 had my rose brand sweet (glutinous) rice for $7.99 (5 lbs). they also carried other brands of sweet rice like hakubai ($9.99 5 lbs.), plum blossom brand ($18.99 10 lbs.) and a korean brand. i went browsing and found some hot and spicy indomie mi goreng. i picked up a 6-pack of apple sidra and got some chicken feet, saving me the trouble of going to chinatown tomorrow to get them.

i left by 3pm, getting home by 3:30pm. i noticed something that happened yesterday as well: i was getting blind spots from some kind of glare. this never happened before, and i wonder if its because of the transition lenses? that it's somehow creating glare, or maybe my irises aren't closing correctly? this only happens when i bike. maybe glare from the handlebar on a sunny day? i do love these new transitions, partly because they change colors, but also because they're so wide, i can get very clear peripheral visions as well. in the meantime, i'm going back to my old glasses, until i can figure out what's going on.

so the whole reason why i went out was to get sweet rice so i can make fermented glutinous rice dessert with the instant pot. but i was reading over the directions and one recipe said you can directly make it in the instant pot container, while the official recipe from instant pot said to steam the rice in cheesecloth inside of a steam basket resting on a steam rack (that's 3 extra pieces of equipment). i tried searching for more "instant pot jiu niang" but surprisingly there's very little information about it. all the others i've found were making jiu niang without using an instant pot. in the end i decided to go with the easier direct cook method (no steam basket), but rinsed 2 cups of sweet rice several times until the water became clear and left it to soak overnight before cooking and then fermenting it tomorrow.

i did test the instant pot to make sure it was still working, test boiled 3 cups of water. when they tell you that an instant pot can cook foods in matter of minutes, that's technically true, but it first takes 10-13 minutes for the pot to come to pressure before it starts cooking. so whatever time it takes to cook plus all the time it takes to pressurized. sometimes pressurizing actually takes longer than the actual cooking.

i finished watching all 7 episodes of the queen's gambit. that last episode was fantastic, i watched it twice, shed a few tears, so good.

my $10 cob work light arrived from amazon today. i got it for my father since we never seem to have enough light when we're barbecuing at night during the colder months. it's got a ridiculous rating of 1500 lumens which sounds like false advertisement, but if it's just half of that amount it'd still be plenty bright. it has its own built-in battery and can also charge a device from its built-in usb port. the main cob light turns on from a dial, which is kind of a weird design. it can get very bright, turning it past the halfway mark of the dial doesn't seem to be any noticeable brightness. it's designed to be mounted magnetically, or held up by a folding attachment which also acts as a handle.

for dinner i made the last of my anchovy pita bread pizzas. i preheated the baking sheet as well, i think it helps with keeping the crust crunchy instead of soggy. i'm all pizza'd out, tomorrow i'm making some spicy korean rice cakes with tofu.