Lockdown Day 4: Another PCR and More Kitchen Experiments
Last night, our entryway head told our WeChat group that we would be doing the PCR test this morning, “sometime between 6:30am and 12:30pm.” Nothing more concrete. At least our time estimate was half a day, rather than the whole day (thinking of when I was bussed from my 14-day quarantine hotel to my 7-day quarantine hotel, and was only informed at 8pm that we would be departing at midnight!)
The entryway head also sent out a handwritten list of 6 groups, and all apartments were put into one of the groups. Well, all except mine, so I asked her which group I belonged to, and she re-sent another handwritten note with everyone on it. We were supposed to go downstairs in groups, in order to avoid congestion. She said last PCR test we did well, but this time we should do better! As in, we should go down in the groups, and not hurry to go all at once.
So, I was debating whether to have a nice breakfast or not, because I wanted to enjoy it peacefully rather than worry about when I’d be called for the PCR. It’s just hard to make plans - my gym friends asked who wanted to do a Zoom workout together, and I just couldn’t commit to a time.
I decided that since I was in group 6 of 6 to go down in my entryway, and group 1 hadn’t been called yet, that I’d make my nice breakfast.
I sliced off a thick slice of my maple milk bread, and cut off the crust. Then I thinly sliced banana to put on top.
Then I layered a layer of custard I made (with an egg yolk), another layer of banana, and then a dollop of whipped cream on top. And a sprinkling of sliced almonds.
It was a banana cream pie, but on toast! While the maple milk bread didn’t turn out fluffy as I had wanted, I actually quite liked the dense texture too. It was kind of like a chewy, yeasted Liege waffle.
The whipped cream didn’t have the lift that I wanted either, but it was nonetheless luscious with the other components. A delicious breakfast, that could have been dessert!
Turns out I made the right call to have breakfast when I did. There had been several messages in our group, telling us to stay in place, to disregard the megaphone announcements that were being made around us (calling other buildings to go get their PCRs). They said that we must absolutely stay put until someone came to knock on our door. They didn’t want us mixing with other buildings. Someone in our building apparently had lined up with another building, where there was someone positive. And because they use pool testing, that person’s result came back positive too, and needed to be retested. Our building’s person turned out to be negative, but it reinforced that we should line up only with our building’s people.
But shortly after these messages telling us to stay put and wait for the knock, the entryway head sent a message for us to come down. Someone asked, “are we supposed to wait for the knock on the door?” Entryway said, “Everyone come out quickly, we are about to do the test!” A few seconds later she sent another message, “请马上下来了，轮到我们了！快点！“ or “Please come out immediately, it’s our turn, hurry up!” So much for waiting for the knock and exiting in spaced out groups!
This time people seemed to respect the social distancing in line a little better than last time. And this time the person with the address list only checked if we lived in this neighborhood compound 小区, rather asking for our building number and room number, because actually other compounds were also coming into ours to do the testing.
After the PCR, I did have time to join my gym friends to do the workout of the day!
And after that I made lunch. Because I have so many vegetables now from stocking up and from the grocery shopping, I am now very conscious of needing to eat a lot of vegetables lest they spoil and go to waste. So for lunch I cooked the green vegetables that kind of look like amaranth but all green. I bought these last Sunday in my last visit to the market down the street, before they closed. Some leaves were beginning to wilt, but otherwise were okay. I prepared these with two blocks of fermented tofu for flavor.
I also wanted to try the egg scrambled with shrimp 滑蛋虾仁again!
That big plate of leafy greens turned into this small bowl!
And the shrimp and eggs came out better than yesterday. I left them a little more moist, and better seasoned.
For dinner, I made another experiment!
I had some chickpeas that I was soaking since a few days ago, and I decided to make them into a mapo chickpea dish. Somehow those flavors of mapo tofu seemed to lend themselves well to chickpeas. Instead of ground pork, I made another switch for finely diced fresh shiitake. This turned out very yummy! I ate this with the purple rice noodles I got from Costco.
I also cooked a whole bunch of what I think are called 鸡毛菜 ji1mao2cai4, kind of like a small, narrow bok choy, with sliced garlic (also from the neighborhood grocery delivery).
