i got out of bed at 8am and got dressed so i could check if that neighbor had tossed out their metal collapsible bed frame yet for trash day. it was pouring rain outside, supposedly transitioning to snow around noontime. the neighbor still hadn't taken out their trash yet, so i returned home and crawled back into bed. of course i couldn't fall back asleep, just surfed the web from bed, before finally waking up around 9am.

i called doctor huang's office to schedule another visit to fix the crown filling. his wife answered the phone, she was surprised it fell out, that's very unusual. she was willing to book me an appointment for tomorrow - weather permitting - but since i have to work at the cafe tomorrow, i scheduled the appointment for friday morning.

around 11am it started snowing, fast snow, falling at the speed of rain. it made me nervous that maybe we wouldn't escape unscathed this time, and got actually get some substantial accumulation this time around.

i watched an hour of noontime storm coverage while eating some canned soup, campbell spicy gumbo. on a gross wet day it's a good time to have soup. i also kept an eye on the cafe, reminding my parents when takeout orders came in that they haven't seen yet. surprisingly, it was kind of busy today despite the bad weather. i think maybe a lot of people hunkering down at home and they just wanted some comfort food.

1pm i went out to run some errands. the heavy precipitation seemed to have tapered off, and now it was a combination of very light rain and some sleet. i carried an umbrella which ended up breaking, but i really didn't need one. and with the strong winds, it was actually better not to be holding an umbrella.

i went to walgreens to pick up a prescription. i saw a pickup truck in the parking lot covered with snow. it had new hampshire license plate, which explained it. there was no snow around boston, outside of the city further west and north, towns were getting dumped on, with snowfall measured in feet, not inches. but we still had time for the weather to change.

since i was already more than halfway there, i ended up walking to market basket to pick up a few things. i always knew this but it was still kind of special seeing it in person: during snowstorms and bad weather, the super markets are empty, even market basket. there were plenty of parking spots and inside only 6 registers were opened (3 express, 3 regular). the employees were all very relaxed, and many of them were restocking the shelves, on a rare day when the place wasn't crammed with people. one of things i wanted to make was tzatziki, so i got greek yogurt, english cucumber, and fresh dill.

i made it back home by 2pm. i immediately started making the tzatziki. the recipe i was using was a chef john recipe with modifications:

i bought some pita bread (whole wheat $2.29) yesterday and wanted to enjoy them with some tzatziki. normally i just buy it¹ (typically $3.99 for a 12 oz. container), but i learned that making it at home is actually very easy. the ingredients are basically greek yogurt (32 oz. $4.49), cucumber (european $1.69), garlic (loose, 2 heads for 42¢), and fresh dill (organic $2.29). i used a cheese grater to shred the english cucumber, but i suppose you could also use a food processor. at first it looked like i had a lot of cucumber, like a quart worth already. so instead of adding just a teaspoon of salt, i doubled the amount.

while the cucumber was reducing, i started combining the other ingredients. i bought a 32 oz. tub of greek yogurt. i only needed half to make a quart of tzatziki, so i used the scale to figure out when i scooped out exactly half. i used my garlic press to mince the garlic into a paste like consistency. for the fresh dill, i just eyeballed about a handful of leaves and chopped them up. the recipe also calls for lemon juice which i added only because i had it on hand, but i don't know if you can taste the difference since the yogurt itself is already sour (i guess if you wanted to add a lemony tart flavor, but sour and tart is very similar flavors in my opinion).

finally it was time to add the cucumber. i used a sieve to strain the cucumber at first, before wrapping them up in paper towels and squeezing again to get more water out. i ended up with a much smaller and greatly reduced lump of cucumber that i mixed with the yogurt. i tasted it before putting it in the fridge, it tasted exactly like store-bought tzatziki, maybe even better because of all the fresh ingredients.

i ate the scallion mantou buns that i got from the cafe on friday. i heated them in my microwave steamer box, the buns came out super puffy and soft. it was also the first time using the steamer box in the new microwave. i knew it'd fit because it was the first thing i tested when i got the new oven, but still nice to see everything work as intended.

at 6pm i started making my corned beef. it needed 90 minutes to cook, so i figured it'd be ready by 7:30pm. unfortunately when i opened up the corned beef package, it smelled rotten like the first one. not surprising since i bought the two of them together, so that whole batch was spoiled. i carefully wrapped up the corned beef in a plastic bag inside of a paper bag, then went down to star market to ask for a refund.

there was nobody at the service desk, but the girl monitoring the self-checkout kiosks was able to help me with the refund. when i told her the corned beef had spoiled, she believed, even though i told her she could smell it herself. the refund wasn't a lot anyway since the corned beef was on sale, just $4, but it's the principle of it.

not sure why, but i ended up buying two more corned beef, enough though there was a pretty good chance they'd be spoiled as well. maybe they replenished their supply, maybe the ones i was picking out were different from the ones i picked out on friday.

i opened up a package of corned beef when i got back home. so the corned beef we bought from the mt.auburn star market on sunday were odorless. that's the hallmark of fresh corned beef. when i opened up this package, the first thing i noticed was an off odor. i wasn't as bad as the first corned beef we cooked on sunday - the one that was unmistakably rotten. but it wasn't a good sign. the odor disappeared for the most part after i washed the beef. i put it into the inner pot, added a tablespoon of pickling spice on top of the spices that came with the meat, poured in 4 cups of water, and set the instant pot to cook on high pressure for 1-1/2 hours.

i started the pressure cooker about 6:30pm. i figured the corned beef would be ready by 8pm. however i didn't take into account that it takes 30 minutes for the instant pot to come to pressure, before it can start cooking, so it wouldn't be until 8:30pm. while it was cooking i didn't notice any weird smells, but that's to be expected, since the pressure cooker was tightly sealed. i went to use the bathroom before taking a shower.

when 8:30pm rolled around i was anxious to see the results. fresh out of the pressure cooker, foods always look a bit ugly. i didn't notice any bad smell nor was there any good smell. cooking corned beef in an instant pot turned out to be a bad idea as the meat was super tender to the point of falling apart. most of the fat had been rendered - in fact i could scoop off the fat cap from the beef with a spoon. i tasted a little bit of the corned beef. it tasted like expired salted pork. there was some rancid flavor. it was edible, but it was like eating mystery meat from a can. when i chopped the beef into slices, it just broke apart, looked more like pulled beef.

still, i continued with the experiment. i made a reuben sandwich, this time using provolone cheese, and spicy brown mustard instead of russian dressing. i put the sandwich back in the pan after assembly so i could further melt the cheese. the sandwich looked good, but so afraid was i of getting sick, i couldn't properly enjoy it. besides, the meat was simply awful, salty and rancid, no additional flavors. i'll probably throw away the rest and return the second unopened package of corned beef tomorrow. as for the spicy mustard, it gave the sandwich a harsh taste. i prefer the sweetness of the russian dressing better.

so basically the somerville star market is selling spoiled corned beef, at least the point cut variety. i don't know the condition of the flat cut. the irony is my mother called me today, said she loved corned beef so much she asked me to pick up two more from the supermarket. i'm not buying anymore corned beef from this star market; for safety reasons, i'll need to go all the way down to the mt.auburn star market to procure my corned beef.

i spent the night waiting for the side effects of eating bad meat. surprisingly, nothing happened, though i did have a weird sensation in my stomach, which could just be my imagination. but like i said, i have a very strong stomach, able to survive eating a myriad of spoiled foods without consequences.

while washing the dishes, i noticed a dent on the stainless steel fridge door. how did that get there? i put jars on top of the fridge; earlier tonight one of them fell off, and i think when i tried to catch it, i bounced the jar into the fridge causing the small dent. if i get a fridge magnet i can just cover it up.

later in the evening i tossed out the trash. i poured the greasy brine solution into a bag that was inside another bag before tying up the entire trash bag. i also throw out a container of frozen congealed fat i had in my freezer, kept forgetting to get rid of it on trash day. it was snowing again outside, but the temperature was still so warm (34 degrees) that nothing was sticking. in fact, all the rain we've had since last night had basically melted all the remaining snow piles. not only did we not get snow, we ended up losing what little of it that was still around.

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¹ i did the math: using up an entire 32 oz. container of greek yogurt to make tzatziki (buying another english/european cucumber), it comes out to $10.36. that's 32¢/oz. of homemade tzatziki. compared that to store-bought, where a 12 oz. container costs $3.99, which is 33¢/oz. so pretty much the same. that's not including the lemon juice which i already had, plus the salt. i also didn't use up all the dill, there's still probably enough left over to make another 32 oz. batch of homemade tzatziki.