when i went to bed last night there was no activity in my seedling pots. when i woke up this morning though, some of the pingtung eggplants and ground cherries had germinated. i moved the newly emerged seedlings into the grow closet. i also checked my seed starter containers and the nigellas have germinated as well. there is almost no more room in the grow closet. i can add 5 more 16 oz. pots and that's it. barrina notified me that my led grow lights have shipped but they seem to be stuck in windsor locks, connecticut, no updates. it's been shipped by USPS and i've discovered they're not the most accurate when it comes to tracking. packages will seem to be stuck at a location, but then just as quickly the next day it could be out for delivery.

i ended up putting the nigellas and asters on the top rack. it's not ideal because they're sort of off on the side, but that's the only space i had left. i might turn them every day so they don't grow sideways, until my new grow lights arrive. i now kind of regret buying directly through the manufacturer. had i just gone with amazon (even though it was $10 more expensive), i'd have the lights by now.

i left for chinatown by 2pm. i was waiting for the weather to turn sunnier, compared to this morning when it was very grey and somber. despite the clouds, it was a very warm day, warmer than yesterday, and i only had on a t-shirt. i pumped the tired before i left. in boston, instead of circling around the public garden via beacon and then down arlington street, i took advantage of the new bike route then went down the normally one way road between the public garden and common. from there i cut through columbus avenue to get onto arlington and back onto my usual route.

i went to c-mart again. ming's market has the cheaper prices, but they don't have as much selection as c-mart, and the few times i bought produce there, they've been freezer damaged (rotten ginger, soft daikon radishes). also they don't seem to have the weekly sales that c-mart has. like i picked up bags of oranges for just $1 a bag. most of the things i bought were kimchi ingredients. i decided i was going to make some yangbaechu kimchi today using the "green" cabbages i bought for st.patrick's day.

instead of going home, i went into chinatown proper to check out some bakeries. i ended up getting some stuff from 101 bakery. an old lady was ahead of me in line, picking up a specialty cake she'd ordered. i asked her what flavor, she said it was matcha.

passing by the boston garden and beacon street, i stopped to admire some flowers. there were witch hazel in the garden, i was smell the fragrance though my mask. on beacon street some white magnolias were in bloom. seems a bit early, but these particular trees have full sun all day.

it was weird riding by the charles river bike path, since i was here just yesterday. not physically - i was across the river - but my drone was here surveying the area from the sky. kind of disorienting to see everything from the ground level, but gives me a better appreciation of the geography.

my new shimano chainwheel was waiting on my doorstep. i opened it up to see if it included the left crank arm. at first i thought it was just the chainwheel, but when i took a closer look in the book, i found the other crank arm. i actually think most chainwheel come with the other crank arm. if not, then a lot of bikes would have mismatched cranks whenever they replace their chainwheel. getting new cranks makes me feel like getting new pedals as well. the ones that i currently have are a little beat up, and one of the reflectors even fell off.

i went to the dollar store to get some more 16 oz. plastic cups for my seed pots. when i came back i ate one of the pastries, a scallion bun covered in pork floss, stucked with mayonnaise, and sprinkled with ham. it was pretty good but i'm sure it broke my caloric intake for dieting.

neighbors enjoying the warm weather:

around 7:30pm i finally started making the yangbaechu kimchi. i used the following ratios for salt and pepper powder: 1 lbs. vegetables = 0.54 tbsp salt = 1.3 tbsp of pepper powder. originally i was going to make a glutinous rice flour paste but after consulting several recipes, green cabbage kimchi is a lighter type of kimchi that doesn't require a paste. i made it in the same way that i used to make my kimchi, the only difference was substituting green cabbage for napa cabbage. i also chopped up a bunch of carrots which i use when i'm making a paste, but decided to add it anyway.

after 48 hours, i finally removed the jiu niang from the instant pot. these was a lot of liquids, which usually means high fermentation, which also means high alcohol content. there was strong jiu niang odor when i opened the jar. it didn't taste as sour as yesterday, but i also wouldn't exactly call it sweet. yeast ball fermentation has never really worked in the instant pot. the real test is to see if the slow fermented long grain glutinous rice will result in some sweet jiu niang. that won't be ready until tomorrow night at the earliest, i think it'll probably take a bit longer since it's been so cold in the house.

by 10pm i drained the reduced cabbage and daikon radish, and started preparing the other ingredients. using only one gloved hand (so my other free hand could take photos, naturally), i mixed all the "sauce" ingredients together before adding the reduced vegetables. instead of packing the kimchi into jars that i normally would, instead i filled a 10 cup plastic container with kimchi, saving myself some time. i did still fill up 2 jars with kimchi.

i was finally finished by 10:30pm. it was so late, i cancelled my plan of making korean rice cake for dinner, but had ramen noodles instead. i added an egg, some pickled radish, some very old leftover iceberg lettuce (i'm surprised it's still crispy), and some chopped scallions.

tonight i also discovered some issues with my webserver. i seem to be able to make blog entries but i can't edit them once posted. or at least i can't edit some of them. there's some kind of security filters in place that's detecting my blog posts as dangerous server intrusions and blocking my php calls. i sent tech support a message, they haven't replied back yet. every year or so something goes wrong with the server and i have to put on my debugging hat and try to fix the code on my end. worse case scenario i think i can still update entries by directly accessing the mysql database.