Pizza & Chop Chae!

Carol is great about cooking for the family.  There's nothing better than sitting around the table eating a home cooked meal with Carol and the boys.  Carol's home cooking is one of the major reasons why my belly extends beyond my belt line right now.  The other reason is my sloth-like behavior towards working out.  I'll get back into a groove one of these days.  Anyhow, Carol needs a break from the kitchen every now and then.  Back in the States, that break is called pizza delivery.  We haven't deciphered the code on that one yet - you know, language barrier and all.


Until now that is!  Domino's pizza delivered to our front door tonight.  Yes!  My predecessor gave me the number to the local Domino's Pizza before he left.  I totally forgot that we had it.  Carol called and was able to speak with someone that knew just enough English.  It was challenging for her to communicate where we lived and what we wanted.  Even though we told them we lived in the Trump World and wanted a large pepperoni, it wouldn't have surprised me if they delivered a rump roast to the local aquarium instead.  With our fingers crossed, we hoped for the best.

30 minutes later, we've got a nice pepperoni pizza in our hot little hands.  That's the delivery guy, safety helmet and all.  He was very nice.  I'm sure that once he hopped on his motorcycle or scooter, he turned into a madman though.  Those guys are absolute maniacs on those things!

So here's what you get with your pizza in Korea - pickles and hot sauce.  What's up with the pickles?  I scarfed the pizza down with a cream soda.  Thank you Domino's!  End o blog post...until the doorbell rang.  It was one of the neighbor's Carol recently met in the elevator, Shin Young.  she came to deliver us this tasty dish:

This is chop chae.  I'm sure I'm botching up the spelling of this tasty dish.  It's a Korean noodle dish with meat, veggies, egg and other good stuff.


How nice was that?  She came up with her 5 year old son, James.  That's his English name anyway.  A lot of Koreans pick their own English names partly because their Korean names are difficult to pronounce for foreigners.  Some names just come naturally.  For example, if I was Korean, my English name would be "Sexual Chocolate."  So now Jake has a play date with James and Carol has a cooking date with Shin Young to learn how to make chop choy and mondu.  Mondu are like potstickers or dumplings.  Very tasty.


Even though I felt like a stuffed sausage after devouring half a pizza, I just had to dig into the fresh chop choy.  Man was it good!  That was some serious noodle goodness there.  I'll say it again.  The Korean folks are so friendly.  We are really fortunate to be living in this country.  Pizza and chop choy - that's the way to start a weekend!  -- C2