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Nancy and I went through 1.5 pounds of butter in 3 days. Do you know how disgusting that is? We’re bordering on Paula Deen here. But it’s totally worth it because I’m living on a prayer baked goods—chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, rice krispy treats have made up the majority of my diet in the last few days.

And the bundt cake—O Lord, the bundt cake! Really, the bundt cake is a mere mortal of regular cake batter. But spoon it into a pan with scalloped, curving edges and a hole in its center, and my-oh-my! When I finally flipped that bundt out of its mold, I was literally jumping around the cake with joy. I kid you not! This is no regular cake—this is a bundt cake with choclate chips embedded in swirling orange and chocolate batter, Kahlua glaze running down the sides like melting glacial ice frozen in time.

But even this pales in comparison to the deliciousness to follow.

Here’s a bit of a background: My mom has always been amazing at making Japanese food—somen, ramen, all kinds of soba, tempura, tonkatsu, udon, maki sushi, fried eggplant, fried tofu, fried everything in dashi, onigiri, nabe, teriyaki stuff, unagi—all kinds of awesome! That said, when I visited Japan at 11 years old, I was intrigued by only one food she never made: okonomiyaki.

(Okay, really more than one, but I’m claiming artistic license for dramatic effect.)

We were in one of those awesome 5-story high-end department stores where the sales ladies all line up when the mall opens, bow, and greet you in a uniform chorus of irashaimase—welcome! In the basement of this amazing mall is a food court, and in this food court was a chef making Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki—a layer of yam-egg batter, another layer of cooked cabbage, another of meat, and yet another with yakisoba! This was then all topped with a fried egg and generous amounts of okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, shredded dried seaweed, and bonito flakes! I begged and begged to buy one of these little mountains of heaven, but to no avail. Instead, Mom promised that she would make me one when we returned to the States, and of course, I believed.

LIES. Thirteen years and still, I waited.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, I made okonomiyaki. BAM.

BAM.

and BAM.

It tasted just as I had dreamed it should have. Reid and I made it in the Osaka-style which supposedly does not have the yakisoba and the fried eggs. But still. We’re rock stars, baby. BAM.