Food Truck Cookout

This afternoon my mom, dad and I headed to my aunt’s house for a Memorial Day cookout. When we arrived, I was surprised to see my cousin’s husband in the driveway with his new BBQ food truck up and running, serving food to the party guests.

Kommie Pig serves BBQ pork and spicy chicken in both sandwiches and platters, smoked ribs, and hotdogs with a variety of sides to boot.

I opted for a BBQ pork sandwich and tried out the potato salad and coleslaw on the side.

The sandwich was great, a little spicy but nothing I couldn’t handle, and the sides were AMAZING. Both were really, really good but the potato salad with egg, dill and cucumber (?) in the mix was my favorite of the two.

If you live in the Baltimore area, keep your eyes peeled for the Kommie Pig truck and definitely treat yourself to some tasty barbecue if you come across it. Word on the street is they frequent Towson in the late night hours for all of those bar-goers heading home for the night.

Drunk college students + barbecue sandwiches and french fries = sure sale at 2:00 a.m.!

That’s some pretty smart businessmen if you ask me.

Pair the delicious BBQ with some pasta dishes and salad from my aunt along with a variety of cupcakes from a second cousin and homemade Italian cookies from a great-aunt and we had one heck of a Memorial Day cookout.

There really is nothing like an afternoon with family, friends and yummy food!

Question:

Do you like BBQ?

Do you visit food trucks often?

Takorea

With yesterday being Cinco de Mayo, we obviously were not going to let the holiday pass without getting into the Mexican spirit and made our second visit to an awesome Mexican restaurant here in Daejeon, Takora.

The restaurant is owned by a Mexican man who is a very welcome and gracious host. The food is all authentic Mexican recipes as well.

Enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas, tacos, burritos…

They also offer a variety of Mexican beers, frozen margaritas, pina coladas, sangria and other Korean spirits as well.

On our last visit there, I tried the chicken tacos and the sangria and was delighted with my meal. However, I definitely had food envy of Brian’s chicken fajitas, so I knew what I was getting last night before we even got to the restaurant!

We both ordered the chicken fajitas which come with chicken cooked with peppers and onions, two small tortillas and refried beans.

I love that the tortillas already have cheese melted inside for you!

After piling up two fajitas with meat, peppers & beans, I still had to finish off the rest of my chicken and peppers tortilla-less.

Overall, the perfect sized fajita dish. I was left satisfied and not overly stuffed like I normally am after a visit to a Mexican restaurant. Maybe the fact that they don’t have complimentary chips and salsa on the tables helped with that!

Keeping in the festive mood, while waiting for our dinner, I sipped on a lime margarita because, well, when in Rome…I mean when in Mexico…errr, when in Korea, yea, that’s it! 😉

And since one of the deals of the day was 1 + 1 margaritas (that’s Korean terminology for BOGO or “Buy 1, Get 1”), I obviously had another while enjoying dinner. Who passes up a free margarita ON Cinco de Mayo?! Isn’t that like sac-religious or dissing the Mexican Gods or something?!

Like I said, the last visit to Takorea, I had sangria (which was a great fruity, red wine variety) but the margaritas on this trip were really good as well. Great flavoring and they had just a touch of finely crushed ice instead of being a complete frozen concoction. Yum!

In the end, an awesome Cinco de Mayo celebration in South Korea! Thanks Takorea, we will be seeing you again soon, I’m sure!

Question:

How did you celebrate your Cinco de Mayo?

Easter Sunday Mass

I got back to Daejeon this afternoon around noon and made the walk back to our apartment. I grabbed a quick-lunch of a bagel with peanut butter and honey and then got dressed in my Sunday best.

But obviously didn’t take my best self-pictures.

Church

It’s amazing how awesome Social Networking can be for a variety of different things and in my case today, it helped me be able to celebrate my Catholicism. After getting in touch with another local blogger here in Daejeon, she directed me to a facebook group that has been beyond helpful for Brian and I since we have joined it. One of those things was where a Catholic Church with an English mass was located.

I took a taxi from our apartment to the church but the driver actually dropped me off at a different church down the road from where I was supposed to be. Luckily a friendly English-speaking Korean there helped point me towards the Catholic Church down the street.

When I entered the church, there was already a fair amount of people there and mass was getting ready to start so I grabbed the English mass hymnal and took my seat.

The hymnal included the mass in English and the different hymns played during the mass.

Special for today’s mass was an insert with the Easter Sunday readings and additional songs.

The entire service was completely in English and easy to follow along with. The priest didn’t have the best English, but you could understand him and even could make out the moral in his homily.

One thing that was completely different for me was after the homily, the whole church (including the priests, readers and alter servers) started having conversations amongst themselves. I sat there quietly as I would normally in church but wasn’t sure if this was time to discuss the homily with each other or what.

Also, instead of offering the sign of peace with a handshake, we bowed to one another, which is an important custom in Korea.

After mass was over, I grabbed a cab back to the apartment and hit up the market for some ice cream and other goodies since it is Easter afterall.

I dug right into the ice cream.

And then had to open the other ice cream treat since it was a Korean one.

It was a thin outer shell, like you find on some of their rice ball treats here.

With cookies and cream ice cream in the center.

These may become a favorite of mine here!

While I was getting my sugar high on, I was also watching the Eagles second game on TV. Unfortunately they lost again to the Giants and are now 0-2 to start the season.

Dinner

Dinner tonight wasn’t a traditional Easter dinner for me but it was simple to make and did the trick.

I browned a pack of ground beef and added it to a bottle of Classico pasta sauce and served it over penne pasta.

Again, not the usual ham on Easter but it was still delicious.

Now I’m waiting for my sick boy to get home. After I left Busan this morning, he had to go back to the hospital for x-rays, another IV, shots and more medicine. They tried to send him home on the KTX but all of the trains were booked so he had to wait out the game at the hotel and is on the bus ride home now.

I’m sure he is miserable being on the bus for a few hours and I hope he makes it home soon!

Question:

What is your traditional Easter dinner?

What did you give up for Lent and how did you introduce it back into your life today?

Happy Easter!

The best part of being in Korea right now? Easter came 13 hours early for me! I can’t wait to dig into some ice cream after church this afternoon!

I have an early train from Busan to Daejeon today so woke up to pack and get a quick workout in before heading to the train station. However, my workout clothes that I sent with Brian’s laundry yesterday to the hotel laundry service still aren’t back. I don’t think I’m going to be working out without a sports bra so fingers crossed they make here soon so I can still stay on schedule.

I’ve tried to pack and do everything else possible while waiting for the clothes so I figured getting a jump-start on my protein shake for post workout would be a good idea too. I brought a scoop of powder in my shaker with me and simply ordered some milk from room service.

Great idea, right?!

Not such a great idea? Not checking that the lid was completely in place before shaking.

Whoops, I guess I need my morning workout to wake me up!

However, after a little scrubbing on my hands and knees the carpet is clean again and I have a protein shake waiting for me post workout. Now if only I wasn’t waiting on a sports bra…

I think I just heard a drop at the door…workout time! 🙂