tteokbokki Tag

So, today is the day.

No, not the day I rolled out of bed looking like Beyonce.  Because that was yesterday.  Nor is it the usual days that I hallucinate behind my gas-mask about the elusive, blue-est of the blue sky-day in Beijing that never comes.  Because today, it actually is.  Totally smog-free.  Yay.  But you know, the cheerleader in me rather focus on the fact that – like how snowstorms only come on the weekends – this miracle just had to happen in the fucking middle of the week.  A thursday.  Pffffff….  Today is also not that day that I unveil another fabulous cooking-alternative like how to make a creamy scrambled egg in 15 seconds, or how to make cruffins with a pasta machine, to say, help you get on with your lives in desperate needs of delicious comforts.  I mean really, enough about you.

In fact, today is the day, that I’m finally done with… my Invisalign.

Yup, that’s right.  For the past 6 months, I’ve been wearing my borderline-intrusive, and not-so-INVISible teeth-ALIGNment devices inside my mouth, 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, which I’m finally getting rid of after what felt like a fucking million years, and why?  Well, to make adjustments on my low-profile and pre-middle-aged teeth so SUBTLE, that it could only be noticed by me, myself, and my forevermore judgmental selfies (that bitch just can’t let anything go, can she?).  You see, this is what ultimately happens, when an emotionally unfulfilled woman is left alone in her solitary confinement for far too long that she starts to talk to herself in the mirror.  Whereas a man may see from the reflection, an utter failure; but a woman, one crooked tooth.  Hey, we’re optimistic like that.  So, in 2 hours, I’ll be lounging at the dentist’s office, in a sacred ancient ritual where I rip these damn things off of my mouth and light them up in a hysterical bonfire until they turn to ashes.  That shall feel good.  Then I’m going to come home, with my device-free and minimally improved teeth, I’m going to eat as much as this as I can.

If you’re wondering why this, a savoury version, pork stuffed sticky rice balls giddying in a red pool of spicy, Korean tteokbokki (stir-fried rice cake) sauce as my first meal out of the pit, well there are good reasons.  Even though there were plenty of sticky rice-things here and there in the past few weeks already, the experience of ingesting them was, well to say the least, a highly skillful and demanding task.  You see when you mingle the word “sticky”, with devices that are trying to hold onto your teeth for dear life… things can get complicated.  Somewhere along the chewing and the friction and the physical bonding of things, I could, without any notifications, lose a “grip” or get “de-capped” or worse, lose the last trickling ounce of dignity and the will to somehow make this feel funny-ish.  So in the most appropriate and rewarding matter, the only thing that I should be granted with at the end my “correctional” sentences, I am going to eat as much of chewy and sticky rice-things drenched in plastic-dying sauce (yeah did I mention that?  they get colored, too), to the content of my now invisibly aligned teeth.

But what’s in it for you?  Well, if you were already a fan of Korean tteokbokki, then you should know that they’re always a reward even in the absence of a good reason, especially when stuffed with ginger and soy sauce flavoured ground pork, with a fast and easy and dare I say, better, spicy tangy and sweet tteokbokki sauce that will make your flat tires taste good.  But really though, enough about you.

So here, another sticky rice ball recipe.  If you want a word with it, talk to the teeth.