i bought 9 cabbages, all of a small size. i first weighed them all to see how much i got. the total was nearly 23 lbs. which surprised me. so i had enough to save one for my mother, we called me last night to remind me. that left me with 21 lbs.
next i cut the cabbages into quarters and removed the core. that left me shy of 20 lbs. the next part was the most tedious part, breaking the cabbage leaves into pieces. i've dealt with many types of cabbages over the years. these cabbage were still green but getting a little old as they weren't as crispy as they should be, more on the softer and tougher side. that made pulling apart by hand a challenge. it ended up taking me half an hour. i was finally finished by 10:30am. i had enough cabbage that it nearly overflowed the large plastic tub.
i salted the shredded cabbage. 20 lbs. requires 20 tbsp of salt. i mixed it one gloved hand, and kept mixing it every 20-30 minutes or so. i already shredded about 2 cups worth of carrots (one large carrot from chinatown) and salted that as well in a separate bowl.
all that time mold remediation guys were working in the basement, on labor day no less. i couldn't hear them but knew they were there because they kept coming up to use the bathroom. my parents showed up around 11:30am. they were on their way to the somerville market basket to get some ground pork to make new batches of minced pork and zhajiang noodles.
i decided to only reduce the cabbage for about an hour. by 11:30am it had already reduced to nearly half its former size. i transferred the cabbage into the large strainer basin and rinsed it as best i could under the sink. i then manually squeezed a handful of cabbage to remove as much liquid as possible before tossing the pressed cabbage back into the large mixing basin. i though this would take a long time as well, but i got it done in less than 20 minutes. it was during that time the mold remediation guys were done for the day. i had the television on to the news, but switched it to the US opens at 11am.
once that was done i added the shredded carrots before adding the addition ingredients. as a rule, 20 lbs. of cabbage means i should add 10 cups of vinegar and 10 cups of sugar. but i've found in my experience that's a little too much, so i usually reduce it by 2 cups: so 8 cups of vinegar and 8 cups of sugar. i also added a tablespoon of sichuan peppercorn and 2 chopped thai chili peppers. the peppercorns and peppers are a little extra, but that separates my taiwanese paocai from everyone else's.
then came time to scoops the paocai into quart-size plastic containers. i made sure to wipe down any drops since it wasn't water but sticky sugary vinegar. i ended up with 13 containers, and just barely enough liquids to keep all the paocai submerged. by then it was well after 12:30pm. my parents also came back from their supply run, i helped them put everything into the fridge, along with my paocai.
i didn't leave the cafe until 1pm. so even on my day off, i still worked 4 hours doing cafe stuff. i hope i don't need to make paocai again until the end of october. before i left i went down to the basement to see the remediation work. in the corner room they'd cleaned up the mold and basically whitewashed everything, removing the peeling plastic and putting on a brand new coat. the room looks decent now, versus what it looked like before, which was a place you didn't want to be in too long for fear of contracting something. i don't know what additional work they need to do. put in mold resistant insulation?
in belmont my mother bought a baguette. we cut it up into slices and spread some camembert cheese along with some fruit jam. my mother wanted to get brie but got the wrong cheese instead. it was okay, but we like the creaminess of brie a lot better.
my father helped me straighten the lever arm of the front side-pull brakes from the schwinn bicycle. we clammed it in a vise and i used a pair of pliers to gently bend the aluminum back into shape. it's not 100% but better than before.
i told my father we were moving the hybrid hot water heater down to the basement today. it's been sitting in the garage since june, taking up valuable space. we probably should've installed it during the summer, but now it's already september, so it's long overdue. moving the heater involved two things: clearing a path in the basement so the water heater can get through, and then actually moving the water heater.
cleaning the basement ended up being easier than i originally thought. there were a few file cabinets we should probably dump when we get the chance, but we cleared up enough space.
next it came time to move the water heater which weighs 200 lbs. neither of us can lift it alone, and even the both of us combined is back breaking work. we pushed it onto a UPS push cart. my father strapped it down before he pushed and i guided the push part plus heater into the backyard. that was the easy part. hard part was getting it down the basement stairs. we pushed it a step at a time, but it was so heavy my father could grab ahold of it once it started descending, and i could barely it keep it from crashing down or crushing me against the side of the basement door. we finally had to get my sister to help, who thankfully stopped by belmont with esmei. while she was downstairs supporting the hybrid water heater box, i went upstairs with my father and we pulled and guided the box down into the basement. once it went over the wooden planks and crossed the threshold into the basement, we were able to upright the box and was a simple matter of pushing it to the other side of the basement where the current hot water lives.
the tank of the new hybrid heater is the same as the current tank - 50 gallons i believe - but it's a lot taller because of the condenser/heat pump components. that's also why it's so heavy, there's essentially an industry level air conditioner hidden inside the tank. now all we need to do is to contact xiaowu the HVAC guy and have him come and install the new tank.
around 4:30pm my father started grilling the dry brine wings. 6 minutes on one side at 350 degrees, flip, coat with sauce, grill 6 more minutes, flip again, sauce, grill until desired crispiness. we've got it down to a science now.
while he was doing that, i climbed the ladder to collect the hops. even though we didn't really take good care of them (let too many bines grow, didn't really fertilize), they still produced a good amount of hops. my hands smelled like beer afterwards.
we ate the wings. my mother said they were cooked perfectly this time, the right amount of crispiness, but not charred. it was already 5pm, so close to dinner time. my mother said we wouldn't eat dinner proper until 7pm, but i said that was too late, so instead we would have dinner at 6:30pm.
i watched more US opens coverage from the zero gravity chair and ended up falling asleep briefly. earlier naomi osaka (23rd) beat coco gauff (3rd). i think i was watching the kostyuk-muchova game, but i didn't recognize either players.
dinner came in the form of shredded beef stirfry over rice. i went home afterwards. i went by the cafe to check if anyone had taken out the trash yet, before i realized today was labor day so trash pickup would be delayed by a day.
when i came home there was the sinner-bublik game. sinner, being the no.1 ranked male player, easily beat his kazakh opponent. sinner is a unique name for an italian player, so i had to look it up. "sinner" is actually of germanic origin, that northern part of italy used to belong to the austrian-hungarian empire, so a lot of people there are ethnically german even though they consider themselves italian now.