👋 Hello everyone!
It’s officially decorative gourd season. I wrote a bit about how fall feels so hopeful to me in the last issue of The Clever Week; does it feel hopeful to you?
In all honesty, we’ve had one illness, one surgery, and three deaths in our families in the past month alone. Our hearts are so very tired. We could use some autumn hope.
Today I really do feel it. We walked to the farmer’s market, chatted with chefs, shared a blackberry ginger beer, and nibbled on the end of a baguette on our walk home. I can hear football in the background as I write this (I love Red Zone so much). I’m looking forward to this week of work, now that I have an amazing team to help ease my workload a bit. We got great news on the family health front, my besties are back in town after a long summer apart, the weather is cooling, and there are ripe bananas and homemade applesauce just begging to be made into banana-pecan bread. I think things are going to get better.
All I have for you today are food, jokes, and this song. Enjoy.
What have you been up to lately? I’ve been…
🍕 Eating
We finally made it up to H-Mart, where we shared this friggin delicious bowl of sundubu jjigae and a fried-potato cheese dog. Holy moly, this stuff was good.
I then proceeded to buy all the things. Like, ALL the things.
I cracked open this mochi on the way home. Ugh, so good.
The next day, I made jumeok-bap (tuna-rice balls) to eat alongside some kimchi and a banchan sampler we picked up. I gotta say, it was a good day.
We’ve been loving our farmer’s market Sunday walks. I picked up some cashew cheese and these amazing tomatoes, which were perfect with bagel and cucumber.
We ordered takeout from Hopdoddy; we don’t usually order from there, because I’m not often feeling burger-y, but I was feelin’ it, so I tried their Beyond Burger. It was so good! I was afraid it would taste too much like meat (and then I’d be grossed out), but it was juuuuust non-beef enough for me to like it, especially once I added my usual pound of pickles.
More jumeok-bap, this time on the patio, because FALL.
We went back to Love Pizza and tried their square pie (jalapeño-pineapple, plus pepperoni on Justin’s half). It’s really more like a focaccia with pizza vibes, but it was still good.
Numasan! I found milk bread at Central Market, so we had to make cheese-tomato numasan. It’s just so good.
I bought like, 73 vegetables, then was like, “oh no the vegetables are still in the fridge,” so I roasted them all. We had a giant veggie-rice bowl that night, and we’ve been adding the leftover veggies to soups, sandwiches, eggs…
More farmer’s market tomatoes, plus Easy Tiger baguette, cashew cheese, and our fave Barely Buzzed cheese.
Another of our fantastic farmer’s market finds: Simplithai meal kits. This little booth puts together all you need to make an amazing Thai meal in one little bag; you just add your protein of choice (tofu for us). This was the green curry, which came with Thai eggplant, bell peppers, chiles, rice, sauce, lime leaves, herbs… This week we’re trying out the yellow curry, and I’m so excited!
Sunday lunch of grilled cheese tteok and Sriracha.
Tuna salad and pickles on ciabatta, plus a big ol’ salad.
😂 Laughing
That’s it! Thank you for reading—hit reply and tell me what you’re up to.
--Crystal