lahbokkie

it's not a good sign when the weather report uses words such as "frigid" and "arctic". thankfully, i grew up in a chicago suburb so i'm pretty used to it but even i need warming up once in awhile. and the perfect snack for cold, windy days is lahbokkie! dukbokkie is a dish made of rice cakes swimming in a hot and spicy, slightly sweet sauce. when you top it off with ramen noodles, it's called lahbokkie. in korean, ramen is pronounced more like "lahmyun". so when you mix dubokkie with lahmyun, you get lahbokkie. still with me? i like to add onion and carrots to mine and some people like to put in fish cakes too. but no matter what you toss in, lahbokkie will definitely warm you up! i wanted to post a recipe here but i didn't really measure anything. maybe next time :P

kalbi jeem + mexican pizza

a couple of weeks ago, i went on an asian food kick and we ate nothing but korean food for days. one of the new things i tried was kalbi jeem... braised short ribs cooked with carrots, onions, garlic, radish, and soy sauce until the meat is so tender that it just glides right off of the bones.

i used this recipe by maangchi (who by the way is the master of cooking homestyle korean food) and the recipe found in this book as a guide. easy to make but time consuming. by the time it was finished, i was so tired of standing that i wasn't hungry anymore! but artie really liked it so it was well worth the effort.

after all that asian food, i needed a break and so we had a mexican pizza last night. i saw the pioneer woman's mexican "flatbread" pizza recipe and followed the basic idea. i threw on refried beans, leftover taco meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, green onions and topped it all off with sour cream and taco sauce. being extra lazy, i used a tube of pillsbury pizza dough. so good! i actually got bummed when i got full last night because i wanted to eat more. but that's okay because now i have leftovers for lunch today :)