Lunch In The Middle(-ish)

We met up with Tita and Daniel for lunch today in Columbia. It's definitely a longer drive for them than for us but it is sort of a mid-point between our two cities. We were hoping they could come home this weekend due to a gathering at the Yousefians on Sunday but Daniel and his brothers are participating in a triathlon tomorrow, so lunch in Columbia was a good compromise.

Both of the girls and Daniel went to USC. The girls always talked about one of their favorite restaurants, Blue Cactus, owned and run by an American man and his Korean wife. It turns out that both Tita and Daniel lived in apartments above the restaurant during different but overlapping years. Daniel realized after clarifying the years Tita lived in Columbia that she was actually the girl Daniel knew as "Saskia's roommate." How about that for coincidence!

Blue Cactus serves both Korean and non-Korean food and seems to have a loyal following. We had actually eaten there before when the girls were still students at USC. I wondered if the married couple were still there. They are indeed. 

The weather, for Columbia in July, was very comfortable. We were able to eat outside in the fresh air (other than periodic cigarette smoke from students passing by and the older gentleman you see in the back of the picture) and I enjoyed myself very much.

Tita ordered "tofu fingers", something we would never order because they are fried, but they were delicious!! I followed Daniel's lead and dipped it in the soy sauce concoction first and then the other sauce and my gosh it was yummy.

 We all ordered  bibimbap, a signature Korean dish. The word literally means "mixed rice". Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (a general term for a Korean seasoned vegetable dish) and gochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, or doenjang, a salty soybean paste. here's a picture off the web:

Here's mine before I put the gochujang sauce on, and of course without the egg. Tita explained that it's important to mix everything up with the gochujang sauce and I did as I was told. It was definitely made with fresh ingredients by someone who knew what they were doing and it was good, but I'm not sure it would ever be my favorite. I'll probably try something else next time.

I'm not sure what Saeed was thinking but I wanted to include this picture because I think Daniel looks very handsome and is certainly performing admirably with his chopsticks.

Although Shirin and her family didn't join us she placed her order for her favorite Korean tofu soup that we brought back home for her. Saeed, of course, wanted to tease her that "oh sorry, we forgot" or "oh sorry, we got bibimbap instead" but I knew better than to let him do that. You don't stand between Shirin and her food. Hey Shirin, it's in the refrigerator so don't let him tell you otherwise. Sigh, I'm always protecting my children from the Persian tease master.

Hey ya'll, next time let's go to Al-Amir on Main. To be continued...