in the aftermath

I slept a long, long time on Saturday. Didn't get out of bed until around 3 p.m. Had myself a late lunch. I've got enough leftovers to last me a few meals, i.e., a few days. This is good.

I started off by slaughtering the remains of the brisket. Cut everything up Korean-style, reheated the meat, then served it to myself, Korean-style, with a bit of chimichurri as my dipping sauce. Most excellent, and a meal that would have made Dr. Atkins proud.

Slept again for a couple hours, from about 8 to 10 p.m. Got up, went downstairs to the building's grocery, and bought myself several sweet drinks and snacks that would have made Dr. Atkins very sad. On impulse, I chose a weird-looking drink that had caught my eye months ago, but which I had tried to ignore up to now:

Despite the word "basil" being prominently displayed on the drink's front, the basil seeds had no taste whatsoever: I could only guess they were there purely for texture, floating in suspension in part because each seed was surrounded by a clear, bouncy, gelatinous layer. This wasn't so much about tasting the seeds as it was about feeling them—the sort of experience Koreans apparently delight in: Koreans seem to love drinks that you can chew, i.e., drinks with chewable elements in them. This explains the popularity of bubble tea in Korea—a fad that I assume has played itself out in the States by now. Other chewable drinks found in Korea include aloe juice with chunks of aloe; orange-pulp juice with inflated, blister-like bits of orange pulp; yuja-cha, a citron-marmalade "tea" with sugary rind in it; the CocoPalm drinks with gelatinous bits of something that's supposed to be coconut but isn't, etc.

The drink was labeled as grape-flavored, but it turned out to be generically bland. I'm not sure a person would instantly think "grape!" upon drinking this drink. It was okay, as drinks go, but nothing spectacular. The way the drink looks is, sadly, its only true gimmick.