i got up at 9am and left half an hour later for mass general hospital for my 3rd and last hepatitis vaccine. i got there in just 20 minutes, once more hitching behind a convoy of cyclists heading out to work. the vaccine wasn't anything difficult, a thin needle that i barely felt. afterwards i made an appointment for my annual, which supposedly should be scheduled in the fall, but the earliest they could slot me in with my primary care doctor was january so i took the appointment. i then went one floor down to 5th to get some lab work done. these were tests ordered by my gastroenterologist. they gave me a number ticket like the kind you find at the deli; fortunately i was only the second person so got called in soon afterwards. the needle for taking blood was a bit thicker so i felt it going in, but it wasn't that bad, and the nurse only took two test tubes of blood. i was finished with hospital business before 10:30am.
from MGH i biked to haymarket. it's actually my first visit in august, haven't been there since mid-july. a lot of vendors had cherries, a few even had rainier. one vendor even had lychees for $3/lbs. although it's cheaper in chinatown ($2.50/lbs). i ended up getting some pluots (4/$1), some flat-shaped clementines (4/$1), and some rainier cherries ($2/lbs.). i left haymarket close to 11am.
i got home pretty fast, in just 21 minutes. i took a quick shower, my bicep just a tiny bit sore from the vaccine. i left soon afterwards, getting to the cafe by 11:30am.
first thing i did was to make another batch of tea eggs, as my mother was already using the spare batch i made on wednesday. she said yesterday there were 8 tea egg orders, which meant 16 eggs sold, not including the tea eggs that come with a bento box. i brought my allspice berries and assembled some additional spices to make my own tea egg spice. the spices in the commercial tea egg spices i buy are: fennel, cinnamon bark, licorice root, anise, bay leaves, allspice, black pepper, clove. unfortunately there are no portion numbers, so i basically have to guess based off of that list of ingredients. my father searched some chinese websites for spice ratios. seems like there's a lot of recipes, each one different.
i also made a batch of taiwanese paocai, using a 3 lbs. head of cabbage which yielded two containers of paocai.
my 2nd aunt showed up in the late afternoon, directly from chinatown where she was grocery shopping earlier. she bought some braised chicken for my mother, as well as portuguese egg tarts. they were completely intact, no breakage, and i had one, the first thing i ate today.
i set up the tuya-compatible sensors: a temperature/humidity sensor and a contact sensor. i got them for our basement freezers, as the doors occasionally get left open, defrosting and ruining all the food inside. i got two just to test out, if the work well, we'll get some more. these are battery-operated wifi/bluetooth sensors, so we can check them from anywhere, no hub required. the contact sensor won't work for the fridge, because often times the door is only left ajar a crack, and the contact sensor needs a larger gap to register open/close events. the temperature sensor however will work. we placed it right beneath the bottom of the door. you can set a low and high temperature limit and the app will contact you with an alert if the temperature goes beyond those points. the sensor can also be set as to how frequently it checks the temperature, the default is every 2 hours, we set it for every 30 minutes.
i finally left by 4:45pm. i stopped by the community garden to check on my plot. no watering required as it rain a good amount last night, and it's due to rain again saturday night. my garlic chives are close to flowering. a lot of long beans, far more than what we have in belmont. nigellas continue to bloom randomly in my plot after i sprinkled some seeds in late spring. some of my squashes seemed to have withered, but there's one squash that looks promising, currently about the size of an orange.
back at home i browsed some youtube videos while snacking on some watermelon seeds. i fell asleep on the couch around 7pm, woke up by 8pm. i started making dinner at 9pm, my luxury korean ramen. it gave me an excuse to use my softbox lights, and i lit the kitchen that way, turning off the overhead recessed lights. i felt like i was in a photo studio. even though i still don't know how to use the softboxes, just having them on made everything look good.
the ramen was filling, but made me sweat so much i had to change my clothes afterwards. i ate while watching the new johnny manziel netflix documentary.