S.M.M.E.T.: The Royal Flush

FYI: S.M.M.E.T. = Someone Made Me Eat This. Now you know.

I should have given MIL more credit. But for one thing, I'm not much of a betting gal and for another, MIL's past track record has proven over and over again that she's not exactly the best chef (except, surprisingly, during Chinese New Year). I thought for sure that last night, after 2 nights of her doing well in the kitchen, she would totally bomb. But she didn't.

When I saw the table, I immediately knew FIL was coming for a change. How, you ask? Well, there's 4 giant bowls of rice, that's how. Why she ever serves me so much rice, I'll never know. She does it every time even though I always dump out more than half into another rice bowl. Anyway, FIL never comes over anymore. He once told Jeremy that our house is boring. Yes. OUR house is boring. Not their smelly house (see the end of this post for photos). OUR HOUSE. Which pisses me off on many levels because we have all kinds of toys and things for Raelynn to play with here. You'd think he'd be happy playing and learning with her. You'd think he'd come over more to play with her period but he apparently has better things to do. You know, somewhere that isn't BORING. Smeesh.

Anyway, MIL encouraged me to dig in before Seoul woke up so that's what I began to do. Let's take a look at everything, shall we?

This is some rib dish cooked with a potato-like vegetable. I always forget what the name of the potato-like vegetable is. It's good but I call it "Ajumma Face." An "ajumma" in Korean is an old lady. So it basically looks like an old lady face before you peel it. She's topped it with cilantro. I guess she's trying out for a spot on Masterchef now. Is there a Masterchef China? There should be. That shit would be hilarious.

This dish isn't too awful. Not my favorite but definitely edible. I ate more of the "Ajumma Face" than the ribs though.

 Overcooked zucchini. In lots of oil. Oh MIL. *facepalm*

This potatoes and onions dish (sprinkled with cilantro to be artsy of course!) was great. Better than the potato dish she made earlier this week. No complaints here.

 Celery topped with 1,000 cloves of garlic in soy sauce. Not bad. Just too garlicky and salty. I tried going for the pieces that weren't completely covered in garlic.

So this meal isn't too awful and normally I wouldn't even really care to rank it. Until she busted out with this:

Oh hells yes! Fresh steamed crab! You win, MIL. You win this whole week. Nothing beats fresh steamed crab, except maybe steamed lobster. Hot damn!

So what was with the whole big dinner? Why the crabs? Why did FIL bother to show up? And then I realized why...MIL was making a big dinner to celebrate Seoul being a month old. Awwww. That is certainly sweet of her. And a big reason to have a crab dinner and take shots of baijiu (a very strong Chinese liquor, in case you were wondering).

How could we not celebrate this little face?

She's even vogueing for the photo!

And of course our original party girl was all on board. She wanted some baijiu. We told her no. She still wanted it so we let her smell it. Just as I suspected, she's not interested anymore. I'm sure that will change by the time she's a teenager though. Eek.