today marks the beginning of thanksgiving week. thanksgiving is different than many other holidays in that it always falls on the third thursday of november. so the whole build-up to thanksgiving is the same every year.

monday we do some cleaning (my father and i already did that yesterday sunday when we cleaned out the sunroom), figure out what last minute items we need to buy. monday night is also traditionally when i make my flan, so it'll be ready by thursday. tuesday i do the last of my supply run, hitting one or two supermarkets, and visiting a liquor store to get some craft beers for matthew. wednesday is a backup day, in case we forget something, there's still time to get it. however, i try to avoid all supermarkets on wednesday if i can. thursday is thanksgiving, i get to my parents' place in the morning, help my mother with the cleaning, as we wait for the guests to arrive late afternoon to early evening. there are also a few football games on this day, but with the patriots doing so poorly this season, i've pretty much tuned out of football weeks ago (it's all about the NBA for me from here on out). friday is a big shopping day, as i go online looking for black friday deals. pretty much the rest of the weekend will be spent shopping online and eating thanksgiving leftovers. the cafe will be closed from thanksgiving thursday until tuesday, so the only time in the year where we're closed for this long (business is slow during that time anyway).

i woke up at 9am this morning but surfed the web from bed until 10am. i wasn't in any hurry until my mother called me. she said they were just returning from a baifu supply run, and that if i went to the cafe i could help them unload. so i took a quick shower and was out the door by around 10:30am. it was cold this morning, temperature in the 30's, i wore my puffy black winter jacket. there was also street cleaning, so one side of the street was completely empty of cars.

i went to the cafe not so much to help my parents unload the supplies but rather to search for my missing ramekins that i needed for my flan. i got the cafe right when my parents were pulling into the parking lot, i actually thought they were leaving. my mother and i searched everywhere, but the ramekins were nowhere to be found. i did find a few more ceramic ramekins that belongs to my sister. those will at the very least increase my ramekin numbers so i can still make a decent number of flan.

my sister was already at my parents' place with esmei when we got to belmont. esmei was sporting a purple fleece-lined dog cape. i followed here everywhere she went around the house, seemingly investigating everything. i forget that everything to her is new, but i also think she was just searching for things to eat or chew, like power cords or in my mother's case, balls of yarn. at one point esmei saw a mirror and spent some time looking at the other dog in the mirror. she wasn't aggressive nor was she overly curious, but she definitely saw something.

at one point i took esmei into the backyard and was chasing her around. my sister said not to do that, as it trains her into thinking being chased is something fun, and would encourage her to run off if she's ever out in public off-lease. i noticed esmei starts getting a little nipping on the heels whenever i start chasing her. it got so bad i went inside because she wouldn't stop biting my pant legs.

we had ho fun noodles for lunch. esmei was hovering around the dining table but she didn't bark or cry like she did yesterday. my sister was washing her blankets using my parents' industrial-sized LG washing machine and dryer (sunny day, solar power, free electricity). she left esmei to wander around in the house, and i kept an eye on her. at one point esmei jumped onto the couch by herself to take a nap. she fell asleep in a matter of minutes (i don't think dogs get insomnia) and even though we were making noises, she slept without waking up.

my sister finally took esmei home around 3pm. as fun as esmei is to have around, it was also a relief when she left and couldn't get into anymore dog mischief. i took the time to finish watering the basement houseplants. i brought the spanish lavender and lemon verbena back into the sunroom. these plants are cold hardy down to the 20's, and in the case of the verbana, it requires cool weather to shed its leaves and enter winter dormancy. however i did move the holiday cactuses inside the house as the temperature tonight is supposed to dip into the 20's.

for dinner we had a plate of cabbage and egg stirfry and another plate of chinese celery with smoked ham and fried tofu puffs. i returned home early - 6:30pm - as i still had flan to make.

there was plenty of parking on my street, feels like 70-80% of all my neighbors had already left for thanksgiving. i went down to the basement one last time to search for the ramekins but still no luck. i basically searched everywhere. and then all of a sudden i found it. it was underneath my pot rack, in a metal baking dish, covered up by a paper bag to keep out the dust. so it was in my house this whole time! which sort of made sense, because i remember after last thanksgiving that i didn't want to go through the trouble of finding all my ramekins again, so i decided to consolidate them and keep them safe at my place. little did i know how much trouble that'd cause.

reunited with my glass ramekins, i could finally start making my flan. unfortunately i was too engrossed in the celtics-hornets game, and i didn't get cooking until after halftime around 9pm.

not only did i find my ramekins, but i also found the large metal baking pan, the one i used to use all the time for making flan because it can easily hold a dozen ramekins. i ended up only using half of the glass ramekins, after realizing they hold the same amount as the ceramic ones. the ceramic ones are actually better in that i can fit more of them in a smaller space. so in the second baking dish (a large glass pyrex lasagna pan) i managed to squeeze in 11 ceramic ramekins, for a grand total of 23 servings of flan. we only have 7 people total, 8 if you count my 2nd uncle (who hasn't been to a thanksgiving in many years now but my 2nd aunt will bring him home a doggie bag). this means everyone can have 2 flan, with anther half a dozen to spare. last year i only made 16.

making flan is actually dangerous. first there's the hot water bath. then there's the melting of the sugar and pouring them into the ramekins. finally i need to put the two baking dishes into the oven, and swap out the dishes at the midway point. all opportunities to burn myself, whether its from boiling water, molten sugar, or the hot interior of the oven.

around 10:30pm the flan went into the oven. it took 2 hours to finish baking, filling the house with a sweet eggy smell, like being inside a pastry store. the ceramic ramekin flans came out golden brown because they were on the top rack during the 2nd hour of baking. no one sees this layer anyway though because it's actually the bottom of the flan when you invert it to serve. but there's something satisfying about seeing a brown "top" on a flan.

oh, by the way, celtics lost tonight. they had a double digit lead at one point, but it was another trap game, as it went into overtime and boston couldn't get enough points to win it in the end. this was the second game of an on-the-road back-to-back schedule. i swear, the NBA does this to tire out good visiting teams so there's a greater chance of an upset win. we still have the best record in the NBA. celtics' next game is going to be crazy: the bucks come to boston on wednesday, the battle of eastern conference titans. plus the first time jrue holiday facing his old team. i can't wait!