Over...and Out

It’s been real. It’s been fun. It’s even been real fun, but all good (and really fun) things come to an end. This is mine. So without getting too emotional or melodramatic, I’d like to say thanks to those who’ve read and even bigger thanks to those who’ve contributed through their comments. I’ve made some fabulous friendships via this crazy blogosphere and they’ve enriched my life. Take care, live well, and keep on blogging bloggers, ‘cause even though I don’t feel like writing anymore doesn’t mean I’m so unselfish I don’t want to keep reading every word you write.

Peace out.

안녕히가세요.

Wild Ride

Sometime last week, I was indulging in my latest obsession, aka Craigslist. This was the first time I’ve ever checked it out. Yes I know, I’m a little behind the times. I also still record things on VHS tapes and listen to DVDs on a DVD player. I’d heard people refer to Craigslist before, but I don’t buy and sell much of anything, so never really thought I needed to investigate. Little did I realize that Craigslist is so much more than buying and selling. There are community events, groups, and discussion forums with crazy people talking about topics ranging from haiku to atheism and beyond. But I do digress. Sometime during my exploration of all Craigish things, I clicked on motorcycles. My guy talks about buying one now and again, and since we’ve put off our previous summer pursuit of pop-up campers, I figured why not waste spend the money we would have for one of those on one of these. I was shocked to find that for not much more than $2000 you can own a really cool motorbike. Electric blue Kawasaki Ninja 250s led to Yamaha Vstars and all sorts of Suzukis in-between. When my guy got in on the fun, we let our imaginations run wild and were both gunning off into the sunset. Today we went to a dealer and straddled monster-sized motorcycles. I should say attempted to straddle because in most cases, I couldn’t even get my leg over to the other side. Having never owned anything bigger than this (him) and this (me), we were both a little intimidated by the sheer size and weight of these machines. We left the store kind of shell-shocked. We still have the fever, but now we’re thinking along the lines of scaled-down, ‘cause it’s for him (really!), but I’d like to be able to take a spin on it now and again too. Lighter and slimmer Sportsters are looking attractive, and tomorrow we’re going to see this Honda Shadow.

Then again, it may make more sense to wait until spring since there are probably only about 10 more days left of summer here in Vermont. Ugh. Why do I torture myself with this negativity? I just can't help it. The concept of fall is just about as ugly as ‘back-to-school’.

If He's Asking For It...It Must Be Good

I am a slave to recipes, especially when I’m cooking Korean food, I guess because I’m hoping if I follow them closely enough I can make up for my lack in background knowledge. Having eaten Korean food every day for six years while living in Korea does help, but only with determining whether my final product tastes right or not. It doesn’t help at all with knowing what in the world to throw in to get there. I’ve followed a lot of recipes for doenjang jiggae, and I’d pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never make any that tastes like I remember. Then the other day I was having little daydreams about bowls of bubbly, salty soybean paste stew and I decided that I might be getting some sort of divine inspiration or something. You know, like when artists have visions! So I pulled out my뚝배기 and got busy. And…well, what do you know? It came out awesome. I liked it. My guy liked it. My guy even asked for it again a few days later! Woo-hoo!!! I may have reached the realm of doenjang perfection. I wonder what this gets me in the afterlife. I can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, if you’d like to be in a little doenjang jiggae heaven yourself, here’s my recipe:

Ingredients:
6-7 mussels
3 cups of water
3 oz. beef, minced
3 Tbsp. doenjang (soybean paste), more to taste
1 Tbsp. gochujang (red pepper paste)
2 tsp. ground myulchi (dried anchovies) powder
1 small(ish) potato sliced or diced
a handful of kongnamul (bean sprouts), optional
½ mild onion sliced in strips
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. gook (soup) kanjang (Korean soy sauce)
1 Tbsp. gochukaru (red pepper flakes)
3-4 shitake mushrooms, sliced
½ medium zucchini, sliced thickly in half circles
3 scallions sliced diagonally

Directions
1. In a pot, boil the mussels in 3 cups of water for about 5 minutes or until the shells open. Remove mussels from the pan, and take them out of the shells after they’re cooled. Strain the mussel water, and add to it if necessary to make three cups. Set aside.

2. Fry the beef in a뚝배기 (or medium-sized pot) with the doenjang and gochujang for about 3 minutes (no oil necessary!) or until the beef is cooked. Add the ground anchovy powder and the water and bring to a boil.

3. Add the potatoes and bean sprouts (if using). Boil for about 5 minutes or until the potato starts to soften.

4. Add the onion, garlic, soy sauce, and red pepper flakes. Boil for another 5 minutes or so.

5. Add the mushrooms, zucchini, and mussels. Boil briefly. Put in the scallions just before turning off the heat.

6. Enjoy salty, bubbling goodness.


Bad photography, but you get the picture (pun intended)!

Twenty Questions

My bloggy 친구, Amy on the Flipside tagged me for a twenty question meme-thingy so here it is:

1. What is your favorite food?
cheese pizza--New York style, dak kalbi

2. What was your happiest moment when you were a child?
playing outside with my three sisters—skating on the swamp in the winter, digging up clay in the backyard, dancing in the street during thunderstorms

3. Where is the place that you want to go the most?
North Korea

4. Which part of you do you hate the most?
my skin (it's sensitive)

5. When you encounter a sad moment, what do you do?
cry

6. What are you afraid to lose the most?
aside from the people I love? My wallet!

7. If you win $1 million, what would you do?
travel, travel, travel

8. What do you love the most about last year (2007)?
NYC with my sisters

9. Which actor/actress would you like to play you in a movie?
Looks/age-wise, Sandra Bullock Talent-wise, Susan Sarandon

10. How do you cope with boredom?
play way too much Bubble Town

11. Till now, what is the moment that you regret the most?
um, probably the time I crashed my sister's scooter into a chain-link fence. it wasn't my most shining moment.

12. What type of person do you hate the most?
ignorant know-it-alls

13. What is your ambition?
to be helpful

14. If you had one wish, what would you wish for?
an end to poverty and suffering

15. If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
a cat (if the nine lives thing is really true)

16. What has been the craziest thing you’ve ever done in your whole life?
probably jumping off a cliff into a waterfall on Pohnpei Island in the FSM
that or rollerblading down very steep hills sans knee pads or a helmet

17. What do you look forward to in 2008?
(finally) getting my master’s degree

18. If your life is a song, what title best fits it?I’m afraid of what the title would actually be, but I wish it would be something like, “Never Ordinary”

19. If you were to change one event in your life, what would it be?
i'd probably get married before going on my honeymoon (long story).

20. Who are you going to tag?
anyone who’s game

Kale Gets a Makeover Against Its Will

I love kale. I usually saute it in olive oil and garlic until it's good and wilted. That's pretty much the only way I ever eat it, unless a recipe for a soup or casserole calls for it. After making our yeol-mu kimchi and being sort of wildly excited about having non-cabbage kimchi around, my guy and I got a little ambitious and decided to see what other greens we could ferment the living daylights out of. I got the bright idea to try kale. Turns out it wasn't such a bright idea afterall, because kale is very stubborn. We salted the heck out of it and waited and waited and waited and... nothing. The kale couldn't have cared less that it was drowning in salt. It didn't budge. Not a single wilted leaf. I was disgusted, so I rinsed off all the salt and put the huge lot of it in the fridge. I know I said I love kale, but this was a LOT of kale and a future of eating nothing but kale as my side veggie was really depressing. That's when Green Smoothie Girl rescued me. My sister had sent me this link and I checked out this chic's Youtube video (I don't feel like posting it, just type "green smoothie girl" in the youtube search box; she's the first one who comes up). I watched her put spinach in a smoothie. A smoothie that had bananas and berries in it, like the ones I make for myself just about every day. Then I surfed around and read some message boards on green smoothies and found one that had kale in it. Things were definitely looking up on the kale front. I read that if you freeze fresh kale, it will get crumbly and break up really easily. I threw my massive bag of kale in the freezer and came up with the following "recipe". It actually just tastes like my regular smoothie, so moms--you might even want to try this with the wee ones. They won't even know it's in there. I promise.

Kale Banana Strawberry Smoothie

makes: 1 serving

1 cup soy milk* (I use WestSoy Organic Unsweetened)
a drizzle of maple syrup (honey would work too, I'm sure)
crumbled up frozen kale (as much as you think you can handle)
half a frozen banana
4-5 frozen strawberries

*Use more or less, depending on how thick you like your smoothies.

Put the soy milk in the blender and add the maple syrup. Throw in the kale and whiz it on high speed until the kale is unrecognizable and it just looks like you have green milk in there. Add the banana and strawberries and blend until smooth.

That's it. Like Green Smoothie Girl mentioned in her video, if you use berries they'll mask the green color, so your smoothie will look a little less healthy and probably be more appealing.

Green Makeover

Before:




After:


And in between, we watched this YouTube video of "Maangchi" making yeolmu (young summer radish) kimchi:


I wish I could say that these greens were grown in our garden, but we live in a townhouse so yeah, no. Our pastor and his wife (yes, the crazy one--she may be crazy, but she's also insanely generous and kind) let us pick these from their community garden on Sunday afternoon. I have never made this kind of kimchi before so I worried about wasting these beautiful greens, but through a little team effort my guy and I pulled it off. He washed them all (a long and tedious process), we watched the video, and the rest is history or...kimchi as the case may be. I love this stuff! I can't wait until it's fermented. Mmm... I definitely see a garden in our future.

Reading Love

I’ve got books on the brain lately. I’m a Paperback Swap junkie and as a result, I not only have a whole shelf full of books I haven’t begun to read, but I also have a billion book credits in my account just waiting to be used when I find more books I want. Unfortunately, I’m suffering from a little attention deficit problem (probably induced by playing too much Bubble Town on Facebook) lately, so the only things getting read around my house are short and sweet--blogs, magazines and maybe a few Eddie Bauer catalogs (I actually get engrossed in those).

I’ve always been interested in the benefits of reading aloud. This is an activity that definitely happened at my house when I was growing up. For us, it went beyond the bedtime stories when we were in our toddler years and extended all the way to high school. Yes, my father read to me when I was a teenager. Gasp. I know! He read articles here and there to my mom which we girls got in on, but I also remember him reading The Hobbit and Joshua.

I was sorting through some catalogs (school ones, not clothes—I swear!) recently and found some books that some of you might be interested in if you have (or know) children of Korean heritage or any other children for that matter.

Here’s the short list. For the catalog, call 1-800-888-9681 or go to www.asiaforkids.com
I"m sure you can find them on Amazon, too. And no, I’m not getting any kickbacks. I'm just nice that way.

If you read (or have read) any of them, I would love a full book report to know if you liked them or not. I’m tempted to order a couple of these myself even sans kids. They’re short so I might even get through them, ADD and all.

Minji’s Salon by Eun-hee Choung
“A little girl, Minju, plays hairstyling with her puppy while mom is getting her hair done at a salon. An ode to the power of children’s imagination.” Ages 4-8

Dear Juno by Soyung Park
“Juno cannot read a letter from his grandmother in Korea but he figures out what it means by the photograph and enclosed dried flower. He decides to send a similar letter.” Ages 5+

The Green Frogs by Yumi Heo
“Two young frogs always disobey their mother. They even croak backwards! Learn how she tried to teach them to behave and why misbehaving children in Korea are called ‘green frogs’.” Ages 4-9

Waiting for Mama by Tae-Joon Lee
“This bilingual English/Korean children’s book tells the story of a child waiting for his mother at a bus stop. Told with powerful words and a poignant art style. Ages 3+

Long Long Time Ago
Twenty wonderful stories from Korea are whimsically illustrated in soft water colors. Learn about the rabbit who outwits a tiger, the lazy man who wished he was an ox, and many more. Ages 6+