Keep Going 063

Brought to you by the color purple.

Apr 24

👋 Hello everyone!

It’s been a while! I’ve been focusing more on YouTube videos lately, because I’ve had so much fun learning more about video editing. I’ve also been swamped at work—life just happened, I guess!

The biggest focus of the past few weeks has been planning a girls’ trip to Vegas to see BTS in concert, which was SO much fun! Vegas is still not my favorite place—it’s basically an introvert’s nightmare—but being there with friends when the entire strip was decked out for BTS was awesome. All the hotels had purple neon glowing, concert billboards flashing… the Bellagio fountains were set to BTS tunes… restaurants up and down the strip had BTS specials like purple pancakes and purple boba drinks… the band basically took over the city for a couple of weekends. There was a BTS Cafe at Mandalay Bay, a photo exhibit and a pop-up at Area15, after parties at the Aria… it was insane.

I went to two BTS concerts (which were amazing, of course) and saw Lady Gaga’s jazz show, which was incredible. I also somehow got lost in my own hotel (the Aria) EVERY day. I usually have a pretty good sense of direction, but for some reason, every time I stepped out of the elevator, I just got lost in a sea of slot machines and walked in circles trying to find an exit, or the coffee shop, or even just my way back to the elevators. We joked that at some point I’d just give up and sit down at a slot machine and live the rest of my life there. 😂

Anyway, I’m back home now, though I’m quarantining since two of my travelmates tested positive for COVID this week. I’m hoping I’m in the clear (no symptoms yet!), but we’re being safe just in case. Everyone say a little prayer that Justin and I stay healthy!

What have you been up to lately? I’ve been…

🥢 Eating + Drinking

If you want to see what I’ve been up to in my kitchen, please check out my little YouTube channel! It’s just a fun project, and I have no idea how long I’ll do it or how often I’ll post, but for now, I love filming things in our little kitchen.

It’s been a while, so here’s a ton of food things…

I was on a serious banana-nut bread binge for a while there.
I made a parfait out of toasted banana-nut bread cubes, coconut yogurt, and fruit, and it was insanely good. I need to do this again!
Strawberry-banana stuffed French toast! This works best with a super soft bread like challah.
I made some rosemary crackers because we had leftover rosemary. (Somehow that makes sense in my brain.) I served them up with a tuna salad and pickles.

A friend sent me a Seoulbox for my birthday! It’s full of Korean snacks and goodies. I think I’ve now tasted everything in this box, and I have a list of the things I loved to take with me the next time we go to H-Mart. I’m going to bet I won’t be able to find that Jeju carrot pie, but it was SO good.
I went with a couple of friends to Seoulju for dinner, and we shared this ridiculous hot pot. It had a spicy broth and just about everything you could think of swimming in it—ramen, dumplings, fish cake, fried mozzarella sticks… it was really good.
I ordered these treats from Art of Sucre, and they are SO good! We tried the limited edition Lucky Charms cotton candy, and holy moly, it’s amazing. I also got some packets of cotton candy glitter bombs—you drop them into your bubbly drink and they dissolve into pink or gold edible glitter!
My sister sent me these GIANT cookies from Crumbl for my birthday! I had never heard of them, but they were super delicious. We couldn’t finish them all, so we cut the leftovers into wedges and froze them, so we can pull them out bit by bit whenever we want a treat.

On to Vegas food!

The second-worst meal I had in Vegas: really bad pasta from Eataly. It was basically raw. At an Italian place. (sigh)
At some point in our Vegas week we decided room service was in order. This was a surprisingly good California club with crispy fries.
We went to a BTS cup sleeve event at Feng Cha, and while it was so much fun to be surrounded by Army and buy from local vendors, I’ll really be dreaming about this Dirty Boba. (STOP THE PRESSES I just found out there’s a Feng Cha nearby in Austin!! This is gonna be troublesome for my sweet tooth…)
The winner of the Worst Meal I Had in Vegas award goes to Wendy’s at the airport. I was starving, my flight was boarding soon, and I figured a grilled chicken sandwich would be just fine. I was wrong. I don’t know what that was, but I don’t think it should be called chicken.

Winner of the Best Meal I Had in Vegas award goes to Best Friend! This supercool hangout by Roy Choi was hip and fun with a playful menu of Korean-Mexican fusion dishes. We started with banchan and had to order a second round because it was so good!
The aguachile was fantastic. I was with a group of people, but I really wanted to have one of these to myself and just drink the juice from the bowl.
The kimchi carbonara was equally delicious. Just a really good, creamy, garlicky pasta.
I was surprised at how flavorful this yuzu grilled shrimp was! Kinda fajita-y. We had other dishes, too, but I didn’t take photos (fried chicken wings, kogi short rib tacos, pork belly hot pot…)

We had to try out the BTS Cafe lunch at Mandalay Bay! Everything was BTS-themed, from menus to decor, and nearly every other person at the (packed) restaurant was Army. We made new friends from Australia, gave and received lots of freebies, and ate yummy food to BTS tunes.

This was the surf and turf gimbap with fried mushrooms and truffle aioli, and the bibimguksu (chilled sesame-chile noodles), which was my favorite.
The jajangmyeon wasn’t our favorite, but the KFC (Korean fried chicken) was super yummy.
For dessert, we opted for bungeoppang (sweet red bean-filled pastry) with vanilla bean ice cream and blueberry syrup, and the crispy rice ice cream sandwiches.