Who needs birthday cake when you can have corndogs? While Caroline and I were up in Oregon a new Korean corndog joint called Two Hands opened a few doors down from H-Mart in Mesa. When I saw this last week I held back and didn’t go in figuring Caroline would like to try them too, nor did I share the news with her. So today on her 21st birthday, oops I mean 53rd, we needed to visit H-Mart again, because not only did we need more provisions for sundubu but Caroline likes looking at the Korean goods in their stylish packaging. And as soon as we arrived it was clear that we were not going to pass up the opportunity to try a reinvented classic. From left to right you have the German corndog holding the box containing a Crispy Rice Dog, a Potato Dog covered with Two Hands Dirty Sauce and Cheetos powder, and finally the Two Hands Dog with a drizzle of sweet ranch sauce. All three were great but the Potato Dog was greaterer. We’ll be back.

Now, what about the packaging comment above? Caroline isn’t only enamored with Koren packaging as any Asian, South Asian, or Mexican packaging will draw in her interest. It’s the bright colors and often cute or humorous graphics that are used in the design. Our dominant grocery stores are boring with limited selections although they do feature 100 variations on some puffed grain sugary cereal. Essentially they are created for people with narrow expectations when it comes to their palate. But in other countries, they aren’t afraid to put cheese and corn in ice cream, use red beans in cakes, or roll corn dogs in French fry bits topped with Magic Cheeto Dust. Innovation in teas, drinks, and fast food is big business in Asia where a ballooning population of young people is willing to try non-traditional things on a quest to be hip. While we celebrate the comeback of the McRib or a variation on a chicken sandwich, places like India have been mashing up traditional items into Chinese dishes to create Indo-Chinese dishes and Korea fills up a fish-looking pastry with purple yam ice-cream topped with Fruity Pebbles. (By the way, the ice cream is called Ah-Boong if you are interested.) So, take the vibrant colors, peculiar ingredients, and playful packaging and Caroline is super happy to explore what’s available and on occasion try some rather peculiar things, such as the squid-flavored Lays potato chips she recently had.

So John, is that seriously how you celebrated your wife’s birthday? Well, yes. We’ve done dinner at gourmet restaurants, I’ve given her an extraordinary number of gifts for her 40th birthday, 40 as a matter of fact. We’ve gone to Disneyland, Disney World, and Euro Disney to mark the occasion of her birth. Cakes? We’ve had fancy and plain but Korean corndogs are something out of the ordinary so why be ordinary? If you marry someone extraordinary you should do things and share times that step out of the mundane such as that year we went snowshoeing in Yellowstone for our wedding anniversary. Someday we’ll look back and cherish this memory of our first ever encounter with Korean corndogs and it’ll make us smile in much the same way as when I posted that photo of Caroline sitting on an outdoor toilet on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Okay, there was also that time up in Alaska during a white water rafting trip where I caught her reading the paper sitting on the can 🙂