i raced down to the cafe this morning around 10am to prepare casey's daughter's big bento order, which she gets every wednesday. however when i got there, my mother told me they were going on christmas vacation to taiwan and would be gone for a few weeks. so instead i went down to fresh pond parkway to return my 2nd's aunt's old gateway. that xfinity office is so big but it's always empty. nobody ever goes there to "shop" around, they're only there to either get equipment or return equipment or adjust something with their bill.

when i got back to the cafe, casey called, said her daughter was making a bento order after all, for immediate pickup. it was an order for 9 bentos, 6 children and 3 adults. i thought it was weird they'd be making so many children orders if they weren't in school today, so i asked my mother about it. she told me to stop asking so many questions and just fulfill the order. casey showed up minutes afterwards. apparently the kids were in school today, and their mother decided at the last minute to make an order, giving us zero time to prepare. to make it even more complicated, we also had an uber eats order at the same time as well, so it was a real logistical mess. the last minute order used up most of our rice and a chunk of tea eggs so i had to make a new batch of tea eggs afterwards.

my sister took esmei to the fresh pond dog park today. my sister leaves esmei by herself in the car often. esmei doesn't cry or make a fuss, just very quietly waits in the car, looking out the window. even when i went to go see her she seemed fine just being by herself, not clingy at all.

besides bentos, the highest selling item today was beef noodle soup. there was a brief period where 6 orders came in in rapid succession, along with an earlier beef noodle soup delivery order.

today we had a chance to use the new 5-tier stainless steel steamer that we ordered off of temu for just $35. the price seemed too good to be true and its cheap because the walls weren't very thick, thin enough to dent the trays if you drop it (which happened during shipment, so my father simply hammered it back into shape). we already have two steamers. my parents use them to cook their meat/vegetable buns. both of those steamers are only 2-tiered. each tray can fit a maximum of 8 buns, but that's a really tight squeeze, and ideally it should only be 7 buns per tier. even though the new steamer is advertised as 5-tier, it's only really 4 levels, as the final level is just the water. but even so, only "5-tier" steamer can do the work of the previous two steamers. however my parents made so many buns that we ended up having to use all 3 steamers at the same time. luckily it wasn't busy in the late afternoon and we didn't need to use the induction cookers other than for steaming the buns.

the new steamer worked well, but because it was stacked 4-layers high, it took some time for the topmost layer to finally get the steam, so 5 more minutes needed to be added to the overall 25 minute steam time. because each layers were perforated pots, it was easy to remove the buns, just flip the pots over. compared that to one of our old steamers which uses flat perforated discs, which are harder to get out. the new steamer has bigger perforation holes but i don't think they make that much difference either way. the new steamer is slightly smaller than the old steamers in diameter, but just by a tiny amount, it can still hold 7 buns just fine. because each layer is shallow, were were worried that the buns would get smooshed from the top. that did happen but only a tiny amount, there was still enough overhead clearance.

around 4:30pm my parents were telling me i could go home since it wasn't busy anymore. but i stuck around until about 5:30pm, when they finished making their vegetarian buns.

first thing i did when i got home was change out of my work clothes which smelled like fry oil because my father was using the deeper fryer this morning to make a large batch of breaded chicken. i drape them over the back of chairs in the kitchen, after a day or two they loose their oil smell and i can wear them again.

i was watching youtube videos on the couch and fell asleep for an hour, waking up at 8pm. i didn't make dinner until 9:30pm, reheated some leftover gyudon and rice from last night. i have one more serving left which i'll eat tomorrow night. i ate while watching last night's new episode of fargo, episode 5, "the tiger".