Have I become nostalgic for the meals of quarantine hotels?

Frozen dumplings and easy-to-reheat dishes make weekdays a lot easier.

Today we got a delivery of ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat food, and I had the ready-to-heat zongzi 粽子 from a previous delivery for lunch. Plus, an oddly specific request for tonight’s midnight antigen test.

Second time making budae jjigae, in order to use up that Shanghai red sausage. And we’re still locked in, but the government announced that we should be resuming normal lives … a month and a half from now? So we’re only halfway through?

Today I finally made these Anson Mills Sea Island Red Peas, which I’ve kept in a freezer ever since April 2020. And in other news, there was an announcement that Shanghai might be gradually opening up?

A venture to the gate to get scallions from a colleague, and then an unheard-of venture just outside of the gate to pick up a group purchase of watermelon.

Stir-fry noodles has become one of my go-to meals lately! And that means I’ve gotten a lot of practice with technique.

It was a go-go-go day

I was excited to try a simple technique for cutting cucumbers, which I’ve come across twice in a week or so! And for the umpteenth time in a week, more obfuscations and missing pictures about the lockdown situation…

Today was such a slog, I even forgot to take a picture of a meal! A perfect day for comfort food - lentil shepherd’s pie.

“Why do we do 2x [antigen] tests a day? The test on the same day is to see if we were infected during the [earlier] PCR test, and the following morning’s test is to see if the PCR test from the day before was correct.”

I got the gift of a whole chicken from my friend, and I gifted back a chicken dinner. And our compound is now supposed to be free, except the neighborhood committee has put their entire jurisdiction back under the strictest lockdown.

I’ve never seen ricotta sold in Shanghai, not even in expensive expat-oriented supermarkets. But in this lockdown, with a carton of milk from the government, I found out how easy it was to make my own! Plus, a notice was sent saying that we’ll be locked up for at least another week, even though we haven’t had cases in the last 13 days.

Experimenting with the tofu that was in our May 1 gift box

I’ve been practicing cooking the fresh noodles all week, and I think I’ve finally got it down. And we got a delivery of zongzi 粽子!

The tofu - our first ever delivery of tofu! - was put to use right away in a tofu kimchi jjigae.