Hotarational

Matt's parents are in town for a few days, on their way down to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Last night I had dinner with Matt and his parents, and when they couldn't decide where to eat dinner I was like, "Duh, let's eat at Hotaru!", which of course everyone agreed to. I lurrrrve the Nabeyaki udon at Hotaru; I haven't gotten anything else there the past 10 times I've gone. It's so exciting how it comes out in a little cauldron, and the soup seems to take the grease away from the tempura shrimp.
If you've never had a Nabeyaki udon, it's hot udon noodles with vegetables (usually napa cabbage, spinach, carrots, mushrooms), chicken, fish cake, an egg, and topped with tempura shrimp. The thing that's so exciting about it is that the soup is so hot it cooks everything else in the bowl. The chicken and eggs are put in raw, so you can take them out when you think they're cooked enough, and I've had some of the most perfect soft boiled eggs this way. This is what it looks like, although at Hotaru the noodles don't look so dismal:

Also, Matt's mom (who just got back from Iceland, Sweden, and Finland), got me a funny pillowcase with Moomintrolls on it! They're this weird Finnish children's book series which I happened to have read a little when I was in middle school (we had this thing called Junior Great Books, and we read a few stories from them).



This is what they look like: the "Moomin" are the purply things that look like hippos. My pillowcase has a moomin, the evil looking little girl, and the guy in green on it. Matt's mom said she was looking for a stuffed Moomin, but no one seemed to have one. I think the pillowcase is really cute anyways.