Sunday, March 02, 2008

i think i've said this before, but once again, the past week was a terrible one. papers and assignments and drafts of papers to grapple with = 3-6h of sleep each night. but enough of the gloomy stuff. my silver lining was going to a Korean restaurant, Tofu House, for dinner on Thursday evening.

i was pretending to do work in my room (pretending cos i had my draft open on Word but wasn't really concentrating on improving it) when Jae IM-ed me to say that he and Steph (both are my dorm mates) were going out for dinner, would i like to come? my first instinct was to decline, given that said paper was due Friday at noon, and my TF had suggested that I needed to rework it quite a bit when i went to see him earlier. then i thought, what the heck, i'd spent 4h in class, 2h writing the paper and meeting with my TF and 1h sleeping off a headache, i deserve a break.

so Tofu House is run by a Korean family and it specializes in tofu soup. this isn't the chinese or miso soup kind of tofu soup with clear broth and pieces of tofu. it's spicy and reddish-orange in color, there's more tofu than soup in it, plus meat, and the texture of the tofu reminds me of savory tau huay. when it came it was bubbling hot, and i cracked the egg that it came with into the soup. after it cooled enough to taste w/o burning my tongue, its tau huay appearance did not disappoint. the tofu was soft and silkily smooth, and the broth was hot and not too salty. the only thing was that it could have been spicier, but that was really my fault, since i chickened out and and ordered 'mild' instead of 'spicy' or 'very spicy'. i could have the soup on its own for a meal, but it was served with purple rice, and tiny dishes of omelette, cold potatoes, glass noodles, bean sprouts and kimchi. according to Jae, who's korean, the rice color is cos they cook it with beans and mix in some wild rice with the white rice.

post-yummy dinner, we went to a bubble tea shop cos Steph didn't feel like going back to campus. we shared a pearl green milk tea, which was excellent. that's high praise from me given that i'm not a bubble tea fan, but it was well-deserved praise. the tea was actually frothy at the top and not too sweet. instead of pure sugar, i could actually taste genuine green tea. it was chilled just right without any ice cubes, and the pearls were soft and gummy and cooked all the way through. far superior to sweet talk.

so, next week looks pretty rough too, but i've a couple of things to look forward to. my uncle's coming to visit cos he's in san jose on a biz trip, and my sis is definitely coming to visit in early april. (: