08. 31. BREAKFAST

plain yoghurt and scrambled eggs with sausage

This time we did have milk in the house so I was able to make scrambled eggs. The sausages were not being et so I decided to take care of them — wait, deja vu, have I mentioned that before? So I am still the maker of best eggs that I know. Granted the scrambled eggs are a little different every time I try them because I don’t exactly know when to stop, but still they are excellent. I just undermined myself. Anyway here is a crapload of pepper and some parsley that’s been expired for over two years now but is fine because it’s just some dried flakes of grass, nothing bad will happen to it that you won’t notice. It’s okay! You’re safe! WAR IS OVER

08. 14. BREAKFAST

omelette

And my brother tries his hand at making an omelette. Since my dad won’t ever do it, all there remains is for me to do my part — unfortunately I refuse to, unless there are mushrooms and paprikas in the fridge. Meat is optional and so are onions, but without mushrooms and paprikas I will not stir. Of course the only person that would be benefiting from my stirring would be me, I have better things to do in the morning than be charitable. At any rate, my brother’s omelette was ambiguous. I felt uncertain whether to thank him or, you know, not. I did thank him, because I got a breakfast out of it just by sitting on the couch and staring at the TV for a quarter hour, but my oscillation stemmed from the fact that nothing in the omelette was actually cooked. I asked him, Did you stir-fry the onions and the potatoes before you put them into the egg? And he confidently replied that he hadn’t. I don’t know what to do with such honesty. I did advise him to do so, the next time he planned to make an omelette. For some reason the family harbors this opinion that his cooking skills are better than mine — probably because I don’t actually do any cooking unless I really really have to — but honestly, sometimes they should think to doubt.

08. 05. DINNER

계란찜: steamed egg custard

If I have to learn one thing and one thing only from my mother, it would be how to make the perfect 계란찜. No, wait, wait, I would rather learn how to make those soy sauce-based fried chicken limbs that she — is it too late? Aw man. Anyway, these are pretty darned good. They taste fine, of course, but what’s even more remarkable is the sort of creepy consistency they have going on. It’s less steamed and more — it’s — it’s like a barely-solid ectoplasmic gel. I think the secret lies in liberal use of chopsticks and a sieve, but whereas I thought I learned how to make this last year, apparently I’ve completely forgotten in the meanwhile so it’ll just have to wait. Also I think it is pretty obvious that I am backdating all this, but forgive me my truancy, I’ve been busy doing… whatever it was that I was doing for the past few days. Mostly watching movies (OH GOD THE DARK KNIGHT Y/Y? Y.) and trying to escape the heat somehow. I failed at the latter. I’m still failing. Also also, having neglected to take pictures of the rice and the other side dishes present at this meal, it seems like this was the only thing I had for dinner, which is funny so I’m going to leave it at that. I had a huge bowl of steamed egg for dinner!

07. 20. BREAKFAST

omelette

It appears that my mother has decided that my brother and I are devoid of all emotion. She is determined to make us cry at all meals. Otherwise why are we getting an omelette for breakfast, what have we done to deserve this? It was a pretty good omelette too. I mean, honestly, I know I make the best ones out there so it’s hard to compete, but these are passable. I say they will do. I didn’t actually eat mine with ketchup, but the picture definitely looked better with it so I just put the ketchup on and then handed it over to my brother. It is sort of amazing how this is the first decent breakfast I’ve had in a week or so. Oh, the humanity. But really my life is pretty good. And this radio show is worming its way into my heart. No, self, you can’t let this happen, it’s a show on the educational channel, it’s not supposed to — aw, but the jokes are so overboard and the music is fantastic and the POP CULTURE REFERENCES ahahaha what is this madness. Zhuge Liang is closer to the Red Cliffs portrayal of him as opposed to, you know, the whole icy aloof Please Don’t Touch Me with Your Filthy Hands I Have Chronic TB and I Am Generally Flawless Excuse My Beauty version of him. Speaking of which, I need to watch the movie a third time sometime this week. I’ve only ever done one other movie three times, I think that was The Two Towers, and that was up for considerably longer. And was a less shameful movie to watch three times. But just barely. My dedication amazes me at times. Here I go miles off track again.

[ETA] I have grown bored. The next two meals weren’t that interesting (beef, fish and tofu, respectively) and I’m not saying anything worthwhile anyway, so I’m going to give up and give in and focus on the radio show. And then maybe do homework or something, what is this homework that you speak of? This is not the student you are looking for.

07. 13. DINNER

appetizer with shrimp and clam

Actually it might not be clam. It might be abalone. But it might be clam, and I’m going to say that it’s clam, because this is not really the most important part of the post. So here’s the deal; every time we can, which is probably once or twice a year at most, the old comics club from high school meet up and proceed to squander away our earnings on some ridiculously outrageous item of food we happen to be obsessed with at the time. We did it before with beef, multiple times — this time around, it was crab. To be exact, crab sashimi. This is our version of an eating disorder, we go and we stuff our faces and then we purge our purses. It’s rather edifying, honestly.

steamed eggs with crab and mushroom

By this point, we were already in tears. It was just so warm, and so soft, and why do all words used to describe food always sound so drastically perverted? I especially feel Pedobear lurking around the edges of this one. But enough about Pedobear while talking about a hulking beast of a meal.

appetizer salad with some fantastic dressing

I’m not completely certain where the crab was in this. The meat appears to be pork. Or we thought it was pork. But at any rate, it also had cherry tomatoes and walnuts and pecans and croutons and an amazing sweet-sour dressing. It is going to be increasingly more difficult to add commentary to these pictures, so forgive me if you are spared my nonsensical babble. It is better for all of us.

crab gratin

Also, this is for reference, but the restaurant we went to was called Kora, and its website can be found at koracrab.co.kr. Their site insists that it’s only three hundred meters from the exit of the subway station to the restaurant, but this is a blatant lie. We walked at least twenty minutes just to get to the intersection.

crab soup

We suspect that this misinformation is their way of separating the desirable customers from the less desirable ones. Those who belong to the restaurant most likely will come by car, and thus have no problem reaching it whatsoever. Those, on the other hand, who choose to come by subway, don’t exactly deserve to be eating there. But we made it, through the fire and the flames. Suckers.

crab sashimi

This was our raison d’etre. It was actually a different sort than we’d expected, because we were thinking of a different species of crab, but nonetheless it was really good. I’m rather a fan now. It’s far from chewy, more a gelatinous glob, but it slides off the shell amazingly and the flavor is delightfully. odd. Oh, god, did I just reference what I think I referenced?

grilled crab

My promise of staying silent for this entry has been woefully compromised. Look, here, I’ll make better on it starting now.

steamed crab

crab, sweet potato and squash tempura

crab and noodles and mushrooms oh my

This was the last course, and when we could manage to speak for the joy that clogged our throats, we were very, very, very well satisfied. There was a small plate of fruit afterwards, which was rather disappointing a dessert considering the dimensions of the meal, but we made up for it by getting a dessert of our own that we started craving in the middle of the meal. This seems to be a popular pastime; talking about things you want to eat while eating something really good. Kind of like how I love watching food-related programs during dinner.

녹차빙수: green tea shaved ice with red beans

Ugh, this was so good too. My most recent frame of reference was the piece of crap from Burger King, but independent of that, it was an excellent specimen. The almonds especially, and I liked that they didn’t have fruit, which is only truly necessary when the other ingredients aren’t pulling their weight. Which they totally were. The almonds especially. We were actually going to get drinks from a convenience store and sneak them into a movie or something, but by this time it was magically ten at night and we had to disperse for fear of not being able to take public transportation home. And so we got this out of our system for another long while. The next item of interest is, currently, ostrich meat. If we can find it here out of the zoo.

06. 20. BREAKFAST

shredded omelette with mushrooms and bell peppers

Admittedly, “shredded omelette” is not a real food, but honestly I have my reasons and they are not that I cannot make an actual omelette. The thing is, as usual I got up approximately half a minute before the eating of breakfast, and I wasn’t hungry enough for two eggs. But one egg is not enough to make an omelette that can contain the amount of mushrooms that I wanted, and also there was no milk in the house so scrambled eggs were impossible. And that is why I had a shredded omelette for breakfast. The gallon of pepper can’t really be explained except by saying that pepper is awesome and you should think so too.

06. 15. BREAKFAST

banana milk and half-cooked egg with crackers

Egg is egg and crackers are crackers, but the real star of this meal is the banana milk. They’re smart not to have changed the packaging in the decades that it’s existed — lots of people don’t go around memorizing what company the milk is from, but it’s that shape they reach for anyway. And it still tastes the same, doesn’t it, like when after school you would drop by the corner store and buy a bag of snacks for a dime.

06. 13. BREAKFAST

a fried egg and chocolate cake

I can’t believe I had this for breakfast. Granted, it was a very good slice of chocolate cake and a very good fried egg (courtesy of my mother), but honestly it makes no sense. It’s like somebody looked in the fridge and thought, here are some things that need to be et! and then proceeded accordingly. Which is exactly what happened. Hey, I’m not complaining, I think it’s pretty funny and also it was good. Even the kid-friendly chewy vitamin C tablets.