Jyaa jyaa men

Last week, we hosted HaeSean in our home. Haewon introduced us to Korean-style Chinese food at Peking Mandarin on Lawrence near Kimball. I was super excited about the black bean noodles (jyaa jyaa men, jjajangmyeon), because they're featured in one of the first episodes of "Coffee Prince" (I know, I'm about a decade behind on Korean dramas; I don't believe I will like any actor more than Gong Yoo). They seem to be featured in many Korean dramas. Also, according to my mother, I went to this place and had this dish when I was a small child. I like how it's kind of mild but still flavorful, and I like how the noodles are chewy. They were really good, and you get what seems to me enough to feed a small village. But I hope to be able to make them on my own soon. I was thinking of using this recipe, which then led to the thought that I need to go to H-Mart or Chicago Food Corp., which then led me to wonder if I should learn to be able to read at least food packages in Korean, so then I started looking at this website. Anyway, the seafood noodle soup is supposed to be popular as well. It was spicy, but not enough to keep me away. 

There were also good shrimp dishes, including one that has a fun description: "Sizzling Rice Shrimp: rice crispies make this dish sizzle." The shrimp itself tasted like typical orange chicken, but with shrimp, and I don't know if the rice crispies made the dish "sizzle," but it was certainly festive. The other shrimp dish, "Roasted Spicy Shrimp (Hot)," was a bit more tangy, a little spicier, and tasty. I forgot to take pictures, and there were none leftover.

Mitsu likes to go out in the backyard, but even she knows that this recent heat is just stupid. Here she is on a cooler (80's?) day, with her frisbee from some construction company or other from Mordecai's work.

I've also been trying to dye the lighter part of my hair pink (without any further bleaching), using Special Effect's "Cupcake Pink." If you have white or super blonde hair and want some Nicki Minaj pastel pink, this might be the right dye, but I think I need the "Atomic Pink" dye. I don't really know what kind of pink I'm after, but I was hoping for something more explicit than this. I bought a bottle of "Joyride" as well, which is some shade of purple. That might go in next weekend. In good lighting conditions, my hair looks like it's tinted pink. This is my Angela Chase moment. She had "Crimson Glow"; maybe mine is "Cherry Blossom Glow"?

I still need to get my pictures together from the Yakushima trip. Part of the problem was that we forgot bring the Canon cameras to Yakushima, so pictures are scattered between Mordecai's camera and my iPhone. But thinking back on it, I'm not sure I could've carried even the G9 (or whatever G is at now, maybe G11?) since it's pretty hefty. It was hard to carry anything on a 10 hour hike. Anyway, I still think about Yakushima a lot, and I jotted down notes when we left so I wouldn't forget certain impressions.