I have such a love-hate relationship with blogs. I love reading them, I am addicted to NetNewsWire, and I love going back to my old ones and remembering little things, but I am just so bad at keeping them updated. I have decided to follow Vivian’s example and keep things short and simple – no long-winded philosophical nonsense and whatnot. Unfortunately, I don’t wear super-awesome clothes most of the time, but I’ll try to come up with my own unique daily feature!

Today I am thinking of food, one Chinese dish and one Korean dish. The Chinese dish is Niou Rou Mian (Cow Meat Noodles, to be literal). Basically, it’s this amazing spicy noodle soup with braised bits of beef. There is/was a fantastic little Taiwanese place that served the best Niou Rou Mian I’ve ever had, but I never seem to have time to drive all the way out there and I am terrified of finding out that they are closed. Therefore, I decided to search for some recipes, and I found this forum discussion. Will have to try it soon. Here’s a picture of how I’d like it to turn out:

The Korean dish that I am dreaming of is a bibimbap. It ends up kind of like fried rice, only spicy. We used to order it at a little cafe in near DePaul in Chicago (Ethan’s, I believe) and it came in a scalding hot stone bowl that cooked the rice on the bottom into a crispy layer of awesome. The ingredients come in the bowl unmixed with a raw or over-easy egg on top and then you mix it all together with Korean chili paste, called gochuchang. There’s a good little write up with recipe located here. And, of course, here’s a picture, via Wikipedia: