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i found out i lost my amazon prime visa card (i just had it replaced back in august). it didn't help that it's completely black, so it's very easy to lose track of. i either lost it at the speedway gas station yesterday when i was fueling up my motorcycle (the last time i used it) or it's at my parents' house or it's somewhere on the road (having fallen out of my pocket). i'd get it replaced, but it's peak online buying season and i can't be sidelined without my credit card. so i'm going to hold off on replacing it for the time being, maybe wait until after christmas. i still have my bank debit card, which is what i used this morning when i went to market basket to get a few grocery items. it was crazy but not yet apocalyptic crazy. i wouldn't want to be there wednesday night before closing though.

i bought two bags of PEI mussels ($5 each), after looking up online that they can stay fresh in the fridge for a few days after purchase (covered with wet paper towels). they don't look very large or pretty, but it'd be a break from our usual thanksgiving fares. the last time we had thanksgiving mussels was back in 2017.

from my living room window earlier i could see the line from petsi's pie stretching down beacon street. when i went by the shop, there was about 20-30 customers waiting outside. they even set up a tent outside to process all the orders.

i got back home by 10:45am and started making the thanksgiving flan. in the original recipe, the portions for 8 flan are: 5 eggs + 3 cups milk + 1/2 cup sugar + 1.5 tsp vanilla + 1/4 tsp of salt. using those numbers i scaled up accordingly, this time for 14 flans. why 14? because i only had a roasting pan that could hold 8 ramekins and a pyrex lasagna dish that held just 6.

thanksgiving flan
(14x 6 oz. ramekins)

9 eggs
0.9 cup sugar
0.5 tsp salt
5.5 cups whole milk
3 tbsp vanilla extract
1.5 cups sugar (caramelized)

preheat oven to 350°F. mix eggs with sugar and salt. mix in remaining liquid ingredients. set aside, let bubbles dissipate. boil a kettle of water and pour into lasagna dishes lined with ramekins. caramelize remaining sugar (melt in small batches, 3/4 cups each), coating ramekin bottoms. pour in flan mixture, using fine mesh strainer to catch any unmixed egg bits. bake for 120 minutes, switching trays after 1 hours to brown evenly.

i have bigger pans and dishes but i couldn't find any of them. after each thanksgiving all my dishes and pans get scattered until next november, when i need to consolidate everything, and often times i can't find them anymore. hopefully i do a better job this year of collecting everything afterwards so i don't have to hunt again next year.

the flan were in the oven by 12:15pm. the original recipe called for just 40 minutes of baking, but i've found with my oven and the amount of flan i make that it takes 2 full hours. i waited after the first hour to swap the pans, but when i opened up the oven, none of the flan had brown yet, so i decided to leave it as is, bake for another hour.

so talk about a black friday miracle: my amazon visa card mysteriously reappeared! i searched everywhere this morning, and then suddenly it just showed up on my coffee table. either i'm losing my mind or there are evil spirits living in this house that like to hide credit cards. i'm tempted to punch a hole in the card and wear it on a chain so i'll never lose it again.

i had an hour to kill, so i decided to bike down to my sister's godmother's apartment in central square to pick up her mail. i also figured on the way back i could get some mcdonald's takeout since i hadn't had lunch yet. after the kirkland intersection, a somerville police officer in a SUV chased after me and chewed me out for crossing during the pedestrian cross signal even though nobody was crossing. the temperature was a little blustery, but in my new used puffy jacket i was quite insulated and warm. the jacket was actually too warm, and when i stopped i quickly unbuttoned and unzipped.

after collecting the mail, i went upstairs to check on the apartment. using the mcdonald's app, i ordered a spicy deluxe chicken sandwich ($5.98) which came with a free medium fries and medium drink after i used a coupon. i went back downstairs and biked to mcdonald's to collect my order. i didn't really want the drink because it was hard to carry back, but if i ordered the fries separately it would've cost more. i put the drink (sweet ice tea) in my cup holder and biked home gingerly, afraid the lid from the soft drink would pop up at the next road bump.

as soon as i got back home, i heard the timer going off, perfect timing.

before i could even start eating my lunch, i first took out the flan and placed them on wooden cutting boards to cool off.

as for the mcdonald's spicy deluxe chicken sandwich, it was okay. much spicier than i expected, which is a surprise, a kind of vinegary spiciness, like if you mixed frank's redhot with mayonnaise. i noticed more and more fast food restaurants offer spicy sandwiches, and legit spicy, not just peppery spicy. i always figured the typical american palate has a very low spicy tolerance, so maybe it means people's tastes are changing.

when my father returned home, he set up the stainless steel tent stove that arrived this morning. it came in a wooden crate already assembled. we'll fire it up either on thanksgiving or definitely this weekend, with the stacks of old wooden in the backyard.

i didn't eat until after 9pm, heated up a brick of stouffer's lasagna in the oven. i ate while watching the live-action cowboy bepop on netflix. afterwards i took out the trash. my upstairs neighbors were lazy and instead of pulling out the other recycle bin, they just cramped all their boxes into one bin, overfilling it. i had to take out some of the boxes. one of them was for a coway airmega air purifier.