42

42 is, of course, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's also how old I am now. (When did that happen? Time marches on!)




Dinner! We went to O Bok Jip and I got kimchi jjigae (again) and some leftovers to bring home. Yay! (Not the best jjigae I've had, but still quite tasty.)



Little Gulp tries out the chopsticks.

After dinner we went over to Paldo World to pick up a couple of things. Since I've been teaching Kate how to read Korean, I got her to practice on some of the signs. The best was the tank of geoducks (strange looking creatures, they are) with the sign saying "구이덕." That's "goo-ee-duk." Kate got a kick out of that.

While we were out my phone kept ringing with family calling to serenade me badly, as is traditional. What a great evening.

Cosmos and Cold Noodles

We went down to Lakewood to get some Korean lunch for my coming-home-from-mission anniversary day. And since we were out of kim (seaweed), we had to stop by Paldo World first to get some. Outside Paldo World was this big stand of cosmos flowers. Cosmos always make me think of Korea in the fall.  It's not quite fall here yet--we've just barely had our Pacific Northwest Summer, during which everyone is miserable for about a week or so because no one has air conditioning here, and then it goes back to normal. 



I got some naeng myun at Chung Ki Wa. By this point the warm weather had broken and Saturday was rather cool, but I'd been thinking about cold noodles all week so I went ahead and got some anyway. (As it turned out it was not the best naeng myun I've had... I like Chung Ki Wa but they seem rather inconsistent. It had apple slices in it instead of pear. I've never seen that.)



The kids mostly ate lots of rice and kim, and whatever else we could tempt them with. I gave Kate the half-a-hard-boiled-egg out of my naeng myun. She has recently discovered that she likes hard boiled eggs. (We hardly ever make them. Doug is not a fan.)



I also got some kimchi jjigae to go, to take home and eat for leftovers. It's always better the next day!



Here I am at Dae Dun San, in Korea, surrounded by cosmos (looks like some daisies in there too).  This was taken in early October, 1992. 

Children's Day Anniversaries

It's Children's Day! (in Korea.) Time for pictures in the park.

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the day I first arrived in Korea for my mission. (Still can't believe it's been that long.) It's also the fourth anniversary of the day I learned I was pregnant with Andy, which means Andy is the same age that Kate was when we found out we were expecting him. I've been feeling rather sentimental about this.



Kate says, "Do bunny ears on me, Mom!"



Awwww!




Andy gets some help across the stepping stones.



Running to the playground.




We went down to Chung Ki Wa in Lakewood for lunch, and I got some really yummy kimchi jjigae. I brought home the leftovers--judging from past experience, it should be even better the next day!



Andy has developed his own rice-and-kim technique. His concentration is very cute.



We all like kim! I brought four packages and it all got eaten. Yum.

In honor of the occasion, my BYU roommate Trish posted this picture of me opening my mission call:



I was on the phone with my parents in Ohio while opening it. I remember that when it first came I called home and Mom wasn't there, so I had to wait. Oh the torment. Mom talks about how she remembers me reading through it and saying "KOREA??!" It certainly was a life-changing experience. I'm glad to be able to commemorate these occasions, and lucky that my family will indulge my penchant for pictures and Korean food!

Lunar New Year

I made this card to send to some friends in Korea. (Hopefully they won't mind getting it a little late!)

I wanted to get some dduk guk, but with the weather lately I hadn't prepared anything.  Monday was wonderfully sunny and even warm (relatively), which was lovely after all the snow and ice.  So I called Doug, when he was done with his classes, and asked if he'd like to have lunch in Lakewood.  We arranged to meet at Chung Ki Wa.




Doug had chicken bulgogi, and I got my dduk guk for the year.  It was a big bowl with lots of dduk.  Very dense.  I was feeling pretty full afterwards. 

The best part was that while I was driving down I had the thought that we should get some kim (laver seaweed) for Andy to have with his rice.  I figured Doug was closer than I was, so I called his cell phone and asked, "Could you stop by Paldo World and get some more kim?" and he said, "I already did."  Isn't he awesome?

It's the year of the dragon.  My brother Peter is a dragon!  새해복 많이 받으세요!

Honey Pig (꿀 돼지!)

Lunch at Honey Pig in Lakewood!  (It came up as one of the local deals on Amazon, and Doug spotted it and bought it.)

We've been to Honey Pig before but it finally dawned on me that the name is a pun in Korean--꿀 is the word for honey but it's also the sound a pig makes. 



It's one of those places where you cook the meat at your table.  They had these thin little sheets of dduk (rice cake) to wrap stuff in.  I've never seen that before.  It seemed like one of those trendy things--putting the lettuce inside the rice instead of the rice inside the lettuce.  It was good but I think I prefer the old-fashioned way. 



We decided to go while Kate was at school, and I think that was really the best way to handle it.  Andy just sat there and ate pretty steadily the whole time.  Kate would have eaten a few things and been done in five minutes, and spent the rest of the time asking "When can we goooooooo?" 

Honey Pig is the restaurant that used to be Dooriban. We went there several years ago with the Tracys, when Kate was really little. Later we went back and discovered it had changed names (and ownership, probably). Honey Pig seems very particularly geared toward the barbecue. Which is good, but most of the time we go for something else.  (Kimchi jjigae!)  The two places in Lakewood that we usually go to are Chung Ki Wa and O Bok Jip.  맛이 있어요.

귀환 기념 날

I got home from my mission 18 years ago today.  (18 years on the 18th--it's like the golden birthday of my return!)

We've been trying to save money, since Doug doesn't get paid again till October, but I had some money in my PayPal account and I really wanted some naeng myun (or maybe some kimchi jjigae) so we went down to Chung Ki Wa in Lakewood.   In the end the naeng myun  won out.  As Doug pointed out, you can get kimchi jjigae any time, but naeng myun is pretty much only available in the summer.  I had some for coming-home-from-mission-day a couple of years ago (when I got a  much better picture) but I don't think I've had it since then. Did I really go two years without naeng myun?  It was so good.  Cold and tangy, and it even had a piece of bae (Asian pear) in it, which I'm pretty sure I didn't get last time.  Yum.



Everything was fabulous.  My tummy is happy.   I really enjoyed talking to the two ladies who served us (one was from Busan and one was from Mokpo). We should go there more often.

Noodles!

Chuseok has come and gone, along with Canadian Thanksgiving (so what's with us Americans having our harvest holiday at the end of November, anyway?). We've never actually done anything for chuseok. Usually I don't know when it is till it's past. This time I did know, but we still didn't do anything.

We did, however, go out for Korean food for my home-from-mission-day on August 18th. Doug had jap chae and I had naeng myun. Love those cold noodles on a hot day. Yum.






Kate is nowhere close to figuring out chopsticks, but she always has to have her own pair anyway.

Goldfish bread and walnut cookies (and seaweed!)

We've been getting to know our new Korean neighbors. I've had a few conversations with the mom while the kids are playing. My Korean is getting a workout. Some things come out just fine and some things I kind of get stuck on.

A few weeks ago she gave us some kimchi that she'd made, so I made jjigae. (I wasn't sure how it would agree with my nursing baby, but decided to give it a try.) We ate it with kim (roasted laver seaweed), which is, in my opinion, the very best way to eat it. And then we ran out of kim, so we had to go get some more.

We went down to Paldo World in Lakewood. (This was on a Tuesday, almost two weeks ago.) There are a whole bunch of Korean businesses down there on South Tacoma Way. And this sign:



which always makes me laugh, because in English it says "International Business District," but in Korean it says "Korea Town." (I think there are a few Vietnamese Pho places scattered in there, but obviously they don't count.)



Paldo World is a huge grocery store, with some other little stores and a food court around the edges.

I took along my camera because I wanted to get a picture of the goldfish bread and walnut cookie maker.



Here's the place, but there was no one there.



Then I noticed this sign, which says, "Every week on Tuesday, we rest. Thank you." (Why Tuesday is in quotes, I have no idea.) Bad timing on our part!

So I took a picture of this sign instead.

Goldfish bread and walnut cookies are both "street food" in Korea. I always wanted to get a picture of a goldfish bread maker on the street, but I never did. They use these big round irons over a gas flame--squirt the batter in, add some bean paste, close the lid, rotate the iron one stop, do it again--and by the time the fish comes around again, it's all done and ready to come out. A lot of foreigners don't like the red bean paste which is the filling (I heard that some of our missionaries once took a jar of strawberry jam to a goldfish bread maker and asked if he would make them a round with the jam instead of bean paste, and he wouldn't do it). I did like goldfish bread. Especially on a cold day when it's fresh and warm, right out of the iron. (I found some pictures on google--here's a good one.)

Walnut cookies are similar--little walnut-shaped cake things with walnut stuff inside. Chonan, where Doug and I taught English, is famous for walnut cookies. Seems like every place in Korea is famous for some kind of food.

Goldfish bread is boong-o bbang (붕어빵) and walnut cookies are hodo kwaja (호도과자). Which brings me to one of the few Korean jokes that I know. A girl buys a bag of walnut cookies on the street, comes back a few minutes later and complains, "There's no hodo in my hodo kwaja!" and the guy says, "Is there boong-o in boong-o bbang?" Ha.

We got our kim and a few other things, then went home and had jjigae for dinner again.



Here's one of the kim packages. We got a big pack that has twelve of these in it.



Kate couldn't wait for dinner but sat down on the couch with one of the packages and snarfed down the whole thing. And then had some more with rice.

Unfortunately the kimchi seemed to upset Andy's tummy. I guess I'll have to wait before doing that again!

냉면

A few weeks ago I ran across a mention of naeng myun on a blog, and instantly got a craving. Mmmmm... naeng myun....

Literally "cold noodles," this is a Korean summertime food. It's wonderfully refreshing when you've been out running around in the heat and humidity. Oddly, I never had naeng myun while I was on my mission (even though I was there for two summers--go figure). It wasn't until three years later, when I was there on a summer internship for three months right before Doug and I got married, that I had my first taste. We (the other guy from BYU who was also working there, and I) went with the office girls to Everland amusement park on a day off, and afterwards we went out for naeng myun, and I loved it. Doug and I also ate it more than a few times, when we were squeezing in our last-minute sightseeing in the August heat in the weeks before we came home. (Bad timing--I would not recommend August as a good time for running around Korea. Or doing anything outdoors in Korea. Just say no.)



(That's not the greatest picture--there's a nice one here.)

So I was craving naeng myun but it just didn't seem right to eat it unless it was hot outside. So when we finally had a warm day (last Wednesday), we drove down to Lakewood and got some. That is, I got naeng myun, and Doug got some jap chae and shared his rice with Kate.



너무 너무 맛이있어요!

Served in a big cold metal bowl, naeng myun is buckwheat noodles in a tangy broth, with crushed ice, topped with thinly sliced beef, cucumber, daikon radish (muu), and half a hard boiled egg. (Doug doesn't like hard boiled eggs, so he'd always give me his.) It usually has Asian pear (bae) in it too, but I think mine was just muu. They also give you extra vinegar and mustard (with wasabi) to add if you want.



Kate demonstrates her kim sandwich technique. One piece on the bottom, a little rice on it...



...and another piece on top!



Yum!

I've given Kate lots of kim (laver seaweed) with rice pinched up in it, but she came up with the sandwich thing all by herself.

After lunch we went to Fort Steilacoom Park and played for a while. It would have been better to go to the park and get all hot and tired first, and then go have naeng myun, but we did it backwards.

A few days later, we were talking about this meal and Kate said, "Oh! That house looks like I Love Bento! It's Korean!" We'll have to go back again soon.