Joel and I had been planning to make some 삼겹살 and finally did so today. Sam-gyup-sal—made from a slice of pork similar to bacon, but thicker and not cured or seasoned, you grill it on a grill as you see below and eat with rice, 쌈장 (Ssam-jang) a mix of bean paste and red chili pepper paste), lettuce, garlic (that you grill with the meat, as you can also grill chopped up green chili peppers). Koreans will also point out that they use 기름장 and drink 소주 (alcohol) when they eat this—we didn’t care for the 기름장 and drank Coke instead of alcohol (as we always did in Korea).

When I first had this dish in Korea, my trainer said he loved it and it was his favorite Korean food. When I ate it I didn’t see what was so special about it… I obviously hadn’t realized (and subsequently probably not used much of) the flavor of 쌈장. As I progressed in my cultural development, I realized how good the stuff was and found how much better it made 삼겹살 taste. Oh MAN, I eat Korean food fairly often for living in America, but I have only tried to make 삼겹살 once, that was with my buddy Schmidy. We didn’t have the grill and didn’t use garlic so it wasn’t quite as good (nothing like pulling a hot piece of grilled pork off the grill and eating it while it’s still hot). So besides that one attempt this was the first time I’d had the dish in about 3 years… and man it was SO good. Maybe I can’t say for sure since it’s been so long, but to me it tasted just like it did in Korea.

Anyways, I was running late going over to Joel’s and I get a phone call from him, asking where I was and saying a friend had come over and that they were going to try making some 떡볶이 (I hope I spelled that right) and that they’d save me some. By the time I got there there were 3 friends over—Adam, Sam, and Jeff (Kyle showed up later). Even then there was plenty of food, dang. Adam admitted that while he might not have enjoyed some of the other things he partook of with Joel and I, he really was enjoying this stuff a lot. It was a success—so good, we’ll have to do it again soon (it was a combination of Joel managing to find the right cut of meat, and me hooking up with the gas stove and grill).

Later on, Joel and I traded Korean cds through the glory of CD-R, heh. Though I obviously got the better deal, probably twice as many CDs as Joel got from me. On the way home I saw the mountain burning near Kaysville and Layton—unfortunately I didn’t have my camera hand so I didn’t get a shot, but being dark out the mountain looked like a volcano had erupted and that lava was zig-zagging it’s way down the mountain… crazy. I hear it’s going to take weeks to put out that fire… I also heard it was started by some fag who wanted to go to prison for the free food / board. What is this world coming to?

Another crazy thing—when I got off the freeway in Layton on my way to Joel’s house, the left turn lane was blocked by an SUV that was just sitting there BURNING. Sorry for the low quality pic but all I had was my camera phone handy…