that's some spicy ramen you got there

Today we drove into Cleveland for dim sum and shopping for groceries at Tink Holl, an Asian market that has everything from mochi ice cream to mi goreng to possibly the most delicious fresh barbecued pork ever. I've been looking for any sort of Indonesian/Balinese food in supermarkets since I got back. For breakfast every morning, my host families all served me some variation of mi goreng (which is sort of like ramen, but spicier, without broth, and sprinkled in this amazing crunchy stuff), coffee-flavored Bali cakes, and coffee so thick with grounds and sugar that you had to strain it with your teeth. A lot of the kick-your-face-in-spicy stuff that was standard fare and so amazingly good isn't really obtainable except at a dusty warung with a mangy dog or two hanging out beneath the table, where the woman in the kitchen can bang out five orders of fried rice in as many minutes and you drink coca-cola made with real sugar through a straw because the lip of the can is rusted. While such places might exist somewhere in the US, I figure it's probably easier to go for the mi goreng. And Tink Holl... it has it.

I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.


My various lace projects are making progress. While riding to Cleveland, I knit the last 12 rows of garter stitch of the center of Crown Prince. Apparently a few of the servers at the dim sum complimented my knitting, although my housemates do not view my lace-knitting as awesome and instead tease me that I am like a female Benjamin Button, and that I am secretly seventy-six and hiding a whole lot of cats in the house somewhere despite my outward appearance of twenty-somethingness.

To which I say, humph.


And dang those whippersnappers, 'cause they don't know what kind of "you're my friend and I like you well enough to knit you things out of cashmere/Malabrigo/endangered pygmy yak fleece" gifts they're missing out on.