Well, shit, it’s May.
And Day 50. A new milestone, every time I look.
I delivered cocktails to ~20 people last Thursday and Friday. I complained about doing the deliveries myself (and by “myself”, I mean + Javier as driver because he has infinite patience), but it actually ended up being really nice. I met some people I’d only done business Zooms with. I met their wives and babies (from 6 feet away from their doors, of course).
Friday, I made brioche dough. One quarter of it got shaped into sausage rolls (still with sausages from that one meat box we got weeks ago) that night. Another quarter got shaped into a loaf on Saturday and went to Sophie & Garrett, where we had a lovely stoop hang. Another quarter got shaped into a loaf on Sunday and half of it went to Elain, and the other half became our dinner: fried eggplant tortas (brioche makes terrible torta bread, but it’s what we had) with some chili oil Javier’s stepmom sent from Idaho. She calls it “100 pepper chili.”
We went on a 3-mile walk in John McLaren park on Saturday, and another 3-mile walk around Golden Gate Heights on Sunday. The Golden Gate Heights walk took us to Grandview Park, where the view was, indeed, grand. The SF urban walks book we have described the area as having relentless winds, and the winds were, indeed, relentless.
I finally got all the pieces together for jiu niang. The fermented rice I made a week or so ago. I pressure cooked the red beans over the weekend and cooked them down into red bean paste. And then today, I massaged some glutinous rice flour into a wet sticky mess, had to call Javier down to FaceTime my dad for me, and eventually worked it into balls filled with red bean paste. (My dad said, I sent you a video with instructions! But actually in the video he sent, his phone had slowly slid such that it was just a video of his countertop.) We had it for dessert before dinner.
For a Monday, today went pretty well. I think the first three or four weeks of this, I found it all very interesting. Then the last two or three weeks I’ve been grumpy and listless. Today feels like a normal day, and I feel like a normal person in a normal world.