after draining the soaked rice, i added 2 cups of cold water and put the inner pot inside the instant pot and pressed the rice cook button. it took a bit over 20 minutes, but after the glutinous rice was cooked, i followed my father's recipe. last time i went through all this effort to put the inner pot in a cold water bath to lower the temperature. my father told me i could simply soak and rinse the cooke rice in cold water to reduce the temperature. that had the added benefit of separating out the rice grains so they weren't clumped together. very quickly i got the temperature down to 64°F.
i didn't have to add any additional water like last time since the cooked rice was already soaked from the rinsing. after crushing a yeast ball (i got these from my parents yesterday, my father already made jiu niang with them once before, so i know they work) with a meat tenderizer, i sprinkled the powder into the rice and mixed everything with a spoon.
the rice was of the right consistency that i was able to make a hollow in the center for aeration and to allow me to check for liquid production amount; last time the rice was so runny i had a hard time forming the hollow space. i put the inner pot back into the instant pot, set to low temperature yogurt with a timer of 30 hours. now i just sit back and wait until tomorrow to see if i'm successful or not.
i had granola with yogurt for lunch. the tub of plain yogurt had been in my fridge for at least a month if not longer. it hadn't gone bad because i never opened it. i also had a container of blueberries in the fridge i'd never gotten around eating. i bought these back in mid-october, the last time i went to haymarket, so almost 2 months ago. a few of them were moldy, but surprisingly most of them were fine, just a little dried. i tried one and discovered it was actually very sweet - like blueberry raisins - so i put some with my yogurt.
coronavirus cases in massachusetts has been steadily increasing. today we had 6477 cases with 49 deaths. things seem to be getting worse, not better, and it's not just like that here but all across the country. americans just seem to be unable to contain the pandemic. one reason was all the thanksgiving gatherings that happened last week despite warnings not to do so. sure, people were lining up to get tested beforehand, but that's just a snapshot, a negative test doesn't mean you don't have the coronavirus. anyway, it's got me thinking that maybe they're going to restart the supermarket lines again, so i decided to go back to market basket again to get a few more things. my mother asked me to stock up on thin korean noodles for my 2nd aunt and herself, so i ended up lugging 12 lbs. of noodles, which meant once again i couldn't get everything i wanted since my bag was full. looks like i'm coming back again tomorrow.
i returned home briefly to check star market to see if they carried any diet root beer (nope) because heading to the cafe to drop off the supplies (noodles along with a bag of bean sprouts and sleeve of garlic). my parents were making some chunbing as they discovered they still had some leftover thanksgiving turkey. thanksgiving was just a week ago but for some reason it feels like a long time has already passed. i asked my mother about her samsung phone, she said it works great, no problems, not even any touchscreen hiccups. she even managed to figure out a few things on her own, like change the screen background and sync up her google photos with my father's.
i brought my dji mini 2 drone just in case there was an opportunity for me to fly it. i was going to launch from the parking lot but there were too many cars nearby so i decided to do it from my sister's backyard which was more private.
the small nature of the drone means i can basically take it out of my pocket and launch it. the longest part is connecting my phone to the controller and waiting for the app to sync with the drone. i launch from the ground manually but i land it on my hand. the buzz of the drone must've attracted one of the children of the restaurant owners whom i saw watching the drone when i flew it straight up into the sky. my sister's backyard is surrounded by trees and a few wires, so it's like a canyon. even though the drone was directly overhead, i still got "RC signal loss" errors a few times, so i didn't dare navigate the drone anywhere else but overhead for fear of lossing it. i basically sent the drone up 400ft, did a slow 360 panorama video, then flew it back down.
i left by 4pm. it was starting to get dark enough that i put on my bike lights. for dinner i made another meatball sub. i watched up to episode 6 of devs, just 2 more episodes left.
