ocho

On July 8th we celebrated our 8th anniversary. We like being married to each other.

In the tradition shared by all cultures for all kinds of festivals, we celebrated with food. I took a picnic lunch to Chad: kimbap, strawberries, blueberry scones with lemon cream and iced tropical green tea. Kimbap is a pretty and tasty Korean picnic food. It's usually made with kim -- dried seaweed -- and looks like this:

I didn't have any kim on hand, but in Korea once I'd eaten kimbap wrapped with a really thin egg omelet, so I thought I'd try that. The rice is pre-soaked and cooked with extra water for super-stickyness, then flavored with a little honey, sesame oil and sesame seeds. I put carrots, celery and ham on the inside. I meant to make a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, a little red wine vinegar and crushed red pepper -- but I forgot as I was hurrying to load the picnic on my bike.

For dinner we walked to a nearby uppity bar and grill, where we sat on the patio and ate things like grilled peach and arugula salad with bleu cheese and red pepper croutons, spinach and hazelnut cannelloni, and salmon served on a cedar plank. Chad wanted to ask if they'd box up the plank for him.

A delicious day.