Another bulgogi insight. I had some leftover bulgogi the other day, so I brushed a hot dog bun with peanut oil and toasted it in a pan, then spread the bun with kochujang (Korean hot sauce) and filled it with reheated bulgogi. I think this could be huge at the ballpark, and I’m already thinking ahead to other stir-fried sandwiches.

Two minor updates to recipes I’ve published in the past.

In the rhubarb crumble recipe, I called for “rhubarb, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces”. There’s no need to peel rhubarb for this recipe. I don’t know why I thought you had to. Blame me for this, not Nigella. I’ve fixed the original post.

As for this bibimbap recipe, this is very minor, but last time I made the bulgogi, I was delighted with the flavor, as always, but not with the gray color. This time, I substituted 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge Mushroom Soy Sauce, to be specific) for 1 tablespoon of regular soy sauce. Same great taste, beefier color.

A couple weeks ago, I wandered into a new store in the basement of Westlake Center and into another world.

The store is called Daiso, and it’s one of the few US locations of an enormous Japanese department store chain. They carry a wide variety of household products, most of which are identifiable to non-Japanese speakers. There’s a huge section of plates, bowls, teapots, and the like, both ceramic and plastic, with nice designs. You can get those green colanders, of course. Slippers, stationery, cookware, tools–it’s a department store. There’s a rather perfunctory food department which didn’t much appeal to me.

Even if you don’t already know about Daiso, I hope you’re sensing a punchline, and here it is: everything at Daiso costs $1.50. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. There are a few things for $2 or $5, or even $10, but these constitute certainly less than 10 percent of the items on sale. The hip notebooks that girls pay $10 for at Kinokuniya are $1.50. Mise en place bowls that I buy for $6 at Sur La Table? $1.50. It’s hard to get your head around, like a wacky TV segment where a guy tries to give away free stuff on the street.

The quality is, as you’d expect, variable. I would not buy a $1.50 chef’s knife, but the dishes seem fine. They sell dozens of styles of little plastic food storage containers which are very cute. Probably they could snooker me into buying things that are normally less than $1.50. “You mean this potato is only $1.50? Awesome–hey, wait a minute.” They have a decent selection of drill bits, for example, but I can’t remember what they charge for drill bits at the hardware store.

Today I ended up with some of those green vegetable-preserving bags and a little tennis game for Iris. There’s also a Daiso at Alderwood Mall and one in Richmond, BC. It will definitely freak you out.

Rhubarb season is at hand. Iris and I got some at Stillnovich Corner Produce at Pike Place Market last week. Stillnovich’s is my favorite rhubarb in town; they grow it on their own farm and sell it cheap, which is good, because I’m going to need a lot.

After last year’s rhubarb crumble adventure, I swore I’d never need another rhubarb recipe. Iris and I brought that rhubarb home and made a crumble right away, and it’s still my all-time favorite dessert.

But there was leftover rhubarb, and Laurie reminded me about Dana Cree’s rhubarb compote. It’s simple to make and really does take 13 minutes, 17 seconds. If you cook it longer than that, it explodes.

On Sunday, we had our usual French toast, but instead of syrup we spread the slices with rhubarb compote. Awesome! Later that day, for snack, I had an Eggo waffle with rhubarb compote. It’s also great on ice cream or, even better, stirred into Greek yogurt. I’m sure there are many other things I should be doing with it, such as bathing in it.

Luckily, I stopped at Stillnovich today and got a couple pounds of rhubarb, enough for another crumble and another batch of compote.

In fact, it was an awesome day at the market in general, even though I didn’t bring Iris along today. I’m making this fennel recipe from The Wednesday Chef tonight to go with some mini-frittatas, so I grabbed a fennel bulb and a Meyer lemon. At Bavarian Meats, I got Iris some landjäger, the very chewy German pepperoni that is a current obsession of hers.

I was thinking about morels and ramps for the frittatas, but Frank’s said that ramps aren’t in yet and I should check back soon. They had some early morels at Sosio’s, but I’ve had mixed results with early morels before and these were $20/pound, so I guess I’ll wait until the Broadway farmers market and see what Found and Foraged has on opening day, May 13. The frittatas will be cremini and shallot. As Iris has been saying lately, “That seems reasonable.”

Whenever I shop at the market, I have the same thought as when I nail a funny one-liner (in real life, not online): if my life were a TV show, this is pretty much what it would be like all the time.