Weekend Eating Fest

Okay, right off the bat, I don't have any food pictures. Why? Because I was waaaay too busy stuffing my face, all weekend. And in all honesty, seeing pictures of everything I ate in the past 2 days is just too much for me right now. hehe. Today is a special day for me and we began celebrating on Saturday. The Mister asked where I wanted to go. In the past, I've usually answered, "Anywhere for great lobster." That would usually mean The Oceanaire Seafood Room. I love that place. This year, I wanted (craved) Buga Korean BBQ. You can read a great review at mmm-yoso!!! (and there's pictures too! hehe).

I think I had Buga on the brain because a co-worker and I had a discussion about Korean BBQ earlier last week. She was telling me about her terrible experience at one restaurant and vowed never to go back again. She didn't remember the name but we kind of figured it out which place it was. I recommended Buga to her, and so started the wheel in my head. The squirrel must of been in overdrive on that wheel because not only did I want Buga, I also wanted Chinese roast duck from Jasmine's. Can you say grease overload? Nah!

So on Saturday, we headed over to Buga for lunch. To our surprise, it was already packed with people at 11:30 am. It was the first time we didn't get a booth. The Mister thought maybe it was some kind of Korean holiday perhaps. I didn't know. Chinese New Year celebration is not for another 4 weeks.

As usual, the meal was delicious! We got galbi for 2. The Mister mentioned later that he knew I was enjoying the meal because I barely said a word through lunch. That's a bit of an exaggeration because I've never been known to be wordless. But the point was made and he was right.

Shortly after our dishes came, the Mister leaned over to me and said, "what's that on their plate?" He was referring to the table next to us with a large plate of curled marbled meat. I thought it was lamb but wasn't sure. We looked around and noticed that a couple of the other tables had the same plate of meat. The Mister then said, "maybe next time we should try something different." I mentioned that maybe we should try the beef tongue. The Mister replied, "maybe we should try something different." Okay. We'll try the something "else," maybe bulgogi and something less organ-y.

So right after lunch, we popped over to First Korean Market for some essentials and then to Jasmine's take-out for duck. The Jasmine ladies behind the counter know me and always welcome me warmly. We got a whole roast duck and a pound of char siu pork (BBQ pork). You think I'd had enough of BBQ by now. Oh no. This is just the beginning. Oh yeah, on the way home, we noticed that Marukai Market has still not opened. According to Marukai's website, it's scheduled to be open this month. I think the original date was Dec. 2007.

We had the duck for dinner that night and it was awesome! Probably one of the best duck from Jasmine's in a long time. The skin was perfect and roasted to perfection. The meat was very tender and juicy and not overly oily. Usually when the duck is very fatty, one meal of it usually saturates me enough for a long time. But by next morning, I was craving it again and we split what was left for lunch.

About mid-day, we got hungry again and I threw together some char siu pork sandwiches for us on sliced King's Hawaiian Bread. If you've never tried this, it's a really good combination. I usually just have it plain, char siu and bread. Nothing else. The flavor combo kind of reminds me of a Chinese pork bun. The char siu pork was okay, not the best I've had. It was a little dry but the flavor was good. Still made a decent sandwich.

We had originally planned on going to Poway Sushi for lunch on Sunday but since the Mister was going to make his famous pork chops for dinner, we opted to save sushi for another weekend. After watching the San Diego Chargers chop the Indy Colts down to size (woohoo!), I was ready for some good eats, again. One of the eating machines (SIL) came over to help eat, I mean celebrate, so we made a double batch of chops. For the first time, I helped fry up the chops and I have to say, I did a pretty good job. The chops were thin sliced with bone, gotta have the bone in for me. And it was moist and delicious. Ah, good way to end the weekend of meat-eating fest.

Have a wonderful week! Now go and eat well.