blonde

Due to an incident at lunch yesterday related to my usual inability to correctly pronounce words, the blogger bond is now the “blonde”.

I spent yesterday blonding with these two lovely brunettes:

On your left is Sophia, with whom I instantly blonded (okay, done with that word, it’s officially annoying!) and Maya, who I’ve met before, but I was excited to chat with more in depth, especially given that her blog has been RIDICULOUSLY GREAT lately and TOTALLY SPEAKIN’ MY LANGUAGE.

Hilariously, Maya and Sophia came up with our lunch plans completely independent of me and still chose one of my favorite restaurants! Oh the blonde blogger bond. Honestly, this meetup was more of a focus on chattin’ up a storm than me taking proper pictures, so I’ll refer you to the last time I went to Lighthouse Tofu. Yes, Korean food of bliss!

A parade of delicious beginning with iced barley tea:

 

So great. Do Korean food expert people know, can you make this at home with regular barley? Is it reasonably low maintenance?

Continuing with panchan, yummy pickled Korean appetizers, the most famous of which of course is kimchi (in the foreground), although I have to say that one behind the kimchi may be my fave (Sophia, fortuitously enough, just returned from a trip to Korea and is a PRO at explaining everything. I may have to kidnap her and drag her to HMart and have her explain all the things I’ve been marveling/confused at) and I was told that it was some kind of root vegetable, likely burdock. Yum!

Also bean sprouts and cucumbers, yum yum yum!

Palates invigorated with some water kimchi (it had all the best things about gazpacho- cool, crunchy, tangy!)

Aaaaand check out Sophia’s awesome veggie pancake! I would’ve cropped it but I kind of love the lens in the picture.

Veggie Pancake Confronted by Paparazzo. Poor guy.

Then we cut him up and ate him.

This is fantastic. I’ve had a recipe for Korean veggie pancakes (along with a gazillion other recipes) bookmarked for awhile, but I’m glad to have tasted the real thing to have a standard for comparison.

Thanks for sharing, Sophia!

I, meanwhile, ventured into new territory. Lighthouse Tofu gives the uninitiated a scale for spice-itude.

Y’all know I like my spice. Let’s look at the trajectory of my brain development here: half my genes are from my father, the man who puts Dave’s Insanity on everything, including Campbell’s chicken soup.

My mother, whilst incubating me in her belly, took to snacking on jalapenos straight out of the jar.

So I like it.

So…. I went for the SPICY SPICY! And dayummm I definitely needed the accompanying rice to sop it up! But my oh my it was marvelous.

Hilariously, I was too busy talking and didn’t get a picture of my own dish (go figure) but I did get the massiveness of our table, plus an action shot of Maya (in her adorable top!) gettin’ her ‘fu on.

So so so fun. We had a very long photoshoot together and my charming camera ate the pic of me and Sophia but I love this one with Maya.

I’ve been to meetups before, but I have to say that this was a super great lunch (as evidenced by the fact that it went for three hours and I had to BOOK IT to work and hug everyone goodbye there :D).

Quality, QUALITY conversation. I know a lot of food bloggers have commented on the instant bond you feel with someone else who enjoys reading and writing about food in a public forum and totally understands why you like to do it too, but I feel like with these two fab ladies in particular, we just had a lot in common. All people who genuinely love food, but also people who’ve struggled in the past (to varying degrees, in various ways) with their relationship with it. It was nice to very happily get our eat on!

Our next destination was Shilla Bakery.

There is serious debate amongst Annandale-ites (Annandalians? Some have been know to ironically call it A-Town) which Korean bakery reigns supreme- there’s Morning in Paris, which I visited the other week, and there’s Shilla.

I’m going to have to go with Shilla just because I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY AWESOME SAMPLES. I mean come on:

Yes. Shilla, I am yours forever.

I headed home with this beauty:

A bun (bagel-like in flavor and consistency) filled with white bean paste, with a chestnut on top and a sprinkling of sesame. SO yummy! I love Asian desserts.