Since I don’t get out of the house enough, it was quite a treat to hang out with my new friends Katharine and Haakon on Friday night. We went to a little basement bar called Marcus’s Martini Heaven – a place where I used to frequent in the late 90′s when I was drinking quite heavily and waiting on tables for a living. Since it’s heyday, Marcus’s has lost a bit of it’s luster … but who really can speak ill about a place that serves both edamame and tater tots? With special sauce, even. Oh, I just love Seattle sometimes.
Given that my drinking binges are pretty sporadic, my next day “aftermath” can be pretty unpredictable as well. Sometimes drinking can be a two day event, one day of debauchery and the next day reserved for recovery. This morning I woke up with a splitting headache and felt as though I had a 50lb weight tied around my neck. It’s days like these that I wish that I had a doting husband who would, in my invalid condition, bring me black coffee, crispy bacon and my laptop so I can watch Youtube videos and catch up on my favorite blogs. And really, it would have been nice to have someone scream at the neighbors this morning for taking out their recycling at 7:00 am on a Saturday. Recycling at 7:00 am! ISN’T THAT AGAINST THE LAW OR SOMETHING?!? Oh, fuck you too!
Luckily, I had already planned a trek to the suburbs to eat Korean food with Rene. And thank God. There is nothing like Korean food to make you feel right as rain.
This is the Number 13 at BCD Tofu House in Lynwood, Washington. I am going out on a limb and saying that this is hands down the best hangover cure ever. I’ve had a lot of hangovers and a lot of hangover breakfasts, but this meal brought me back from the dead – LET ME TELL YOU. I think Maker’s Mark has met it’s master.
Rene starting having contractions at 4:00 am Sunday morning. True to Pisces form, the baby did not want to leave the watery confines of her mother’s womb and made us wait and wait and then wait some more. The midwives and doctors tried everything in their toolbox to coax her out, but she wasn’t budging. After a good fight, they decided to perform a c-section because she was quite content just swimming around and not descending into the world like everyone was expecting.
Rene was full of grace but by the end, she was a bit loopy from a combination of exhaustion, delirium and drugs. She started saying the funniest things, with my favorite quote being:
“Look at all these tubes! You [midwife] should be an electrician. I look like the back of my television.”
Lily was born at approximately 1:00 am Tuesday morning. I didn’t get home until 3:00 am. And I left for Oregon less than 6 hours later.
If you were to rate me on my Korean-ness, I would probably be a “2″ on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being a church going Korean who has a perm and drives a Honda). I don’t speak Korean. I barely know any Korean customs. I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer – or an accountant for that matter (basically the three professions that every Korean parent pressures you to become). However, if you were to rate me on how much I love being Korean, I would rate my Korean pride at a “10″ which is basically: “I can’t fucking believe I come from the country that created kimchee and bulgogi!!!”
While Seattle has a diverse Asian population, most Koreans I know of live just north or just south of the city in the suburbs. Sadly, I can only think of one Korean restaurant that is worth eating at in Seattle proper – I personally think this is a travesty. The last time Paige and I tried someplace new, her bulgogi came out stir-fried with broccoli and carrots! This is enough to make a Korean grandmother roll in her grave.
So last Saturday, Rene, Scott and I went on a field trip north specifically to eat good Korean food and to visit HMart, a Korean grocery and variety store. We first met up with our friend Jeff and his cutie pie daughter Emma at a restaurant called Ho Soon Yi. I don’t know why we do this but every time we eat together we end up ordering so much food that it is completely ridiculous and embarassing. Stuff like Bulgogi, jap chae, seafood pancake (hae-mool pah-jun) and soon dubu barreled out of the kitchen in gigantic portions. Seriously, I could have just made a meal out of the banchan and rice, but nooooo, we had to order the family meal for what seemed like 20. The waitress actually had to pull up another table to accomodate all the food we ordered. They probably looked at us and were thinking, “oh they must be taking a day off from the freedom fries.”
After lunch, we took our engorged bellies to HMart to get our shop on. I had never been to HMart and now I can’t wait to go back. I generally can’t shop the first time I go someplace new like this because I am so overwhelmed by the choices. When you go to a store and you see 20 different varieties of rice – well, it gets kind of exciting for this old girl (What already? I shop at Safeway and I have no life) and I can’t make a decision to save my life.
Since then, I have had a couple of listless nights dreaming of their kimchee deli. They had so many varieties that it was like taking a walk through my childhood. And of course, one of my favorite things was in the food court. While there were a bevy of Korean food options that looked really wonderful, I just couldn’t get over the kaiten sushi cafeteria deli:
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