old teeth and a curse for this town

I inadvertently stayed up too late and I'm falling asleep on my couch as I type this, but I had a v. nice day all in all. The last couple of months have been almost absurd in terms of what I've been able to do - between my dad being in the hospital a couple of months ago + my surgery immediately after that, followed by two weeks in Iowa and almost two weeks in Tahoe / SF, this really was my first weekend day here since August when I could actually lift things / walk around / hang out without my belly hurting. So, that was pretty exciting!

I mostly spent it thinking about food - I haven't cooked much at home in forever, mostly because of the aforementioned issues (and cooking when you can't lift more than ten pounds is not ideal). So I made a sweet potato and sausage hash this morning - it's one of my go-tos that I somehow haven't had in months, and it was delicious. Then I went to H Mart in Westminster in search of ingredients to try some new-to-me recipes. H Mart is a Korean supermarket with all sorts of imported Asian food products - and I always feel like it's amateur hour when I go there, since I don't know where anything is and spend a lot of time searching for things in the wrong place. For example, the dried anchovies were not at all where I expected them to be (and not at all something I usually buy). So, my shopping trip took a big chunk of time. But I got some cute little housewares along with the food products, and I got a milk tea to drink on the way home, so that was fun.

When I got home, I did a bunch of stuff around the house. Then, my new neighbors came over for a drink and some snacks - so far they seem nice, and I think we'll get along great. After they left, I put the dried anchovies to use - I'm going to try making soft tofu soup tomorrow, and it requires a dashi (stock) of water, dried kelp, and dried anchovies. I've never cooked with dried anchovies before, but pulling their heads off and removing the inner waste (similar to deveining shrimp) was oddly satisfying, and the dashi smelled amazing. So hopefully tomorrow's experiment turns out well.

I then ended the evening by looking at furnishings for my Iowa house, which was a fun exercise even if it's just an endless series of things that say they'll ship next July. And now I really should sleep - goodnight!