it was at costco that we realized there we things we needed that neither costco nor restaurant depot seemed to have (like eggs; restaurant depot has eggs but you need to buy them in bulk). so we decided to add one more stop - to the chelsea market basket - which is pretty much next door to restaurant depot anyway.
at restaurant depot the most important thing we needed to get was brown paper bistro bags with handles for our takeouts. we also got another case of 20 oz. clear plastic drink cups, afraid there might be another supply chain problem like what happened this past summer. waiting in line to checkout took nearly as long as shopping through the warehouse.
at home depot we stocked up on eggs - medium organic brown eggs sold in packages of 18 - we bought 8 packages, enough to last us through several weeks. my father also got some boneless pork butts for char siu.
our last stop was bianco & sons to pick up 2 cases of chinese sausages. we left by 11am, i texted my sister to let her know it'd take us another 30-40 minutes before we could get to the cafe. we made it back around half an hour later. while i uploaded supplies, my father cut up the pork butts and marinated them in the char siu sauce. we also helped out with some incoming orders and i made half a dozen more tea eggs. my sister made me a honey ginger drink, a new recipe she was trying out.
my father and i left again around 2pm, for the second half of our supply run. this time we went to south boston, to get supplies from foodpak (baifu). we took storrow drive and got off at kenmore square to connect onto mass ave. that turned out to be a mistake, as traffic in the city was a snarl, a combination of nice weather, red sox game, and an influx of marathon weekend tourists. my father promised himself that we wouldn't come back the same way.
we picked up a lot of bubble milk tea supplies, including another case of boba, and many different tea flavors. it was my first time at foodpak after having worked at the cafe for several weeks, and i began to see the supplies differently, had a better idea what we needed to get even though we had a checklist.
we left foodpak by 3:15pm. we went onto 95 north first, before connecting to storrow drive. there was a some traffic as well, but nothing like the bumper-to-bumper traffic going into the city, and much faster compared to returning via mass ave again.
if memory serves me correctly, i think we've only ever done a everett-medford-chelsea-boston supply run one other time (though i can't recall the exact date), and that didn't include returning to the cafe to work a few hours. i did more cafe-related stuff today - on a day where i wasn't supposed to be working - than on a typical weekday.
we made it back to the cafe in about 30 minutes, close to closing time. my sister's godmother left to go home, while we stayed behind and cleaned up after unloading the supplies. my father and i didn't leave until 4:30pm.
i didn't eat the whole day, so when we got to belmont, i had one of the croissants my father got from costco. my father warmed up some beef broth and we had noodles for dinner shortly afterwards. i got a ride back to cambridge after dinner.
i watered my seedlings when i got back home, the circulation fan plus the additional heat has a tendency to dry out the soil. i also added water to the trays. i'm tempted to go back to my gravel trays, at least those i can keep wet and not have to worry about soaking the bottom of my pots. i also noticed tonight that some of my nigella seedlings have sprouted, i'll need to give them some light eventually.