Kimchi Mamas

Diary of a Foodie in Korea

We were channel-surfing this afternoon when we came across an episode of Diary of a Foodie shot in Korea. The photography is gorgeous, and the segments cover North Korean cooking, oak mushrooms, and traditional royal cuisine. Warning: don't watch this on an empty stomach!

Photo Credit: Gourmet

--Weigook Saram

Kimchi Mamas Meet Up #2

Mark your calendars for THE social event of the year.

The Kimchi Mamas Bay Area Meet Up #2

Where: Secret Garden, Santa Clara

When: Saturday, November 14th

Time: 6 PM

There will probably be non-obligatory no rae banging (karaoke) after the gluttony.

If you'd like to join the fun, please add yourself to km-meet-up at googlegroups dot com.

Yes, us Bay Area girls have ALL the fun. (Sorry Angie!)

- Mary

Figs

Last time my mother-in-law was here, I was not quite myself.

I had been living with my mom for about a year by then and she was literally driving me crazy.  Her constant nagging and criticizing to her taking over the house and putting everything where she wanted, etc... was slowly chipping away at my sanity.

So, when my MIL was visiting, I was not the perfect hostess that I would have otherwise been.  (Who am I kidding, I would NEVER be the perfect hostess.)  But yeah, the last LAST time she was here, she seemed to like me enough and I think she had a good time even though the jet lag and plane ride was taxing on her frail health.  

The main reason my MIL visited this time was because my mom was going to Korea for about a month so my MIL came to watch and bond with her only grandchild.  It was kind of like an excuse for her to visit... we could have put him in daycare or something but I think it was around his dol (1 year b-day) too so yeah, she came for about 2 months (it ended up being 2 months because my mom stayed in Korea for longer than expected and then even when she came back, my MIL stayed longer.)

How to Make (Pretend) Gimbap

Yesterday my daughter and I went to a children's museum in Irvine, where we made "sushi" with construction paper. I thought it would be fun to adapt the project to make pretend gimbap. My daughter was able do most of the work by herself, and we already had everything we needed around the house.

 

You Need

a toilet paper tube

toilet paper

green, brown, yellow, and orange construction paper

glue

rice

 

Adult Work

Cut the tube into gimbap-sized lengths (about two inches.)

Cut a strip of green construction paper to wrap around the tube.

Cut green, brown, and yellow paper into small squares.

 

Kid Work

Glue the green paper around the tube.

Crumple toilet paper and stuff it in the tube. Glue rice on top.

Glue the tiny pieces of construction paper on top of the rice.

 

--Weigook Saram

California Rolls

I thought I'd share my recipe for california rolls with ya'll.

Ingredients:

1 lb of shredded imitation crab meat (or the frozen kind from the Korean store is OK too)

1 large english cucumber

2 avocados (ripe)

1 tsp pepper

1 cut mayo

ghim sheets (nori)

soy sauce

cock sauce (sriracha)

cooked rice

Kimchi Without the Kimchi

Photo Credit L.A. Times

The L.A. Times reports that Kim Soon-ja of South Korea has invented odorless, freeze-dried kimchi.  I'm no fan of kimchi breath or kimchi-flavored butter, but odorless kimchi sounds like an oxymoron to me. I'll stick to the stinky stuff, thank you.

In other food news, it turns out my daughter's addiction to dried seaweed is actually a good thing. If it were up to her, she would eat nothing but rice and gim at every meal. According to this article from Yahoo Health, seaweed is full of potassium and calcium. Who knew?

--Weigook Saram

This is why I love Kimchi Mamas

An email I got today:

Mary, This is Caroline in San Francisco, the one who borrowed The Crossings DVD from you.

Just checked Kimchimamas and saw that you had your baby -- congratulations!!! You must be exhausted -- may I do the Korean thing and bring you some mi-yuk-guk? I remember being totally overwhelmed when my son was born, and that's when my mom was alive and my in-laws were around to help out. Let me know if it's OK for me to drop by with some soup. I'd be happy to do it. :) Caroline

Not to call her out or make her embarrassed but this totally touched me in more ways that she will ever know and I just want to thank you Caroline from the bottom of my heart.

I love my kimchi mamas.

T.T (those are tears of happiness)

-Mary

Another pic since we all love pictures.

Yup ghi

There are a few words in Korean that are very hard to translate. For me, yup-ghi is one of them. Other words I would include in this category are:

shi won ha da

can mean: it tastes good (like the feeling you get when you eat hangover soup), can also mean it feels cool like when you take a cold shower during a hot summer. you would also say this when you feel a breeze while sitting under the cool shade of a tree in the summer.

mut it da

can mean: cool, hip, awesome, fantastic.  i usually use this term to describe a very admirable (in both looks and character) person that is also very cool (think James Dean)... like that doctor Daniel Henny (sp?) played in My Lovely Samsoon (a popular Korean drama).. he was mut it suh.

goh soh had da

can mean: nutty in flavor, rich in flavor.  Like sesame oil is go so hae... or my mom said once that California rolls had a goh so han flavor that she couldn't pinpoint. One could describe the flavor of soy bean noodles as goh soh ha da. (you know, the white noodles with white sauce like in this picture:

The Konnecting Power of Korean Komfort Food

It’s official: I am engaged.

Though the engagement wasn’t a total surprise, the proposal was . . . and really it was THE perfect proposal for us.  (A motorcycle ride – two bikes: his and mine, a Texas Hill Country river, grand cypress trees, the most beautiful engagement ring and the most loving, patient, caring, handsome man I know on one knee.)  * Swoon *

Comfort Food

When Cadence finally started eating solids other than Cheerios, it was Korean food that she learned to love first.  To this day, she devours my mom's chigaes (soup/stew), and when all else fails, she seldom says no to rice and kim (nori).  Although she still shies away from the spicy foods, I'm amused at how she never tires of chigae with rice.  That has always been my comfort food and something I just don't get tired of.

After we immigrated to the U.S. when I was almost 6, my mother didn't cook Korean food exclusively.  She would try new "American" recipes, and when she found something she could make, she'd make it constantly for a couple weeks.  Pepper steak, corned beef hash, reuben sandwiches, and polish sausage with sauerkraut were the most frequently served non-Korean dishes that I can recall.  I suppose I could mention the fried SPAM sandwiches, but for some reason, I would have to categorize that under Korean food.

Despite my mom's forays into "Western" cuisine, I still loved Korean food the best and would often eat chigae or guk (soup) and rice for breakfast before school.  Quite honestly, anything beyond a sandwich, or to be more specific, anything that required the use of a fork and knife, made me nervous to eat in public well into adulthood. 

When I was in the 8th grade, I went to an awards banquet for our school district at a hotel with my mom.  I think this was the first time I ate at a sit-down cloth napkin type of affair.  I had no idea what to do, and I remember feeling my cheeks flush.  I looked to my mother for guidance, but immediately realized she was as lost as I was with the fancy tablecloth and napkins and multiple utensils.  Somehow, we got through the meal by copying what the others at the table were doing, but I never forgot that feeling of "otherness."

I've been doing a web-based read-along of Brené Brown's book on shame resilience for women called I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power.  As I've been reading the book and looking through the online discussions on Brené's blog, I've been thinking about what my personal shame triggers are, and I realized that a big one is this feeling of being "other," of not knowing proper etiquette, of not understanding certain idioms, this fear of doing something "improper." 

Brené's book points out that talking about our personal experiences of shame is helpful in working through our shame, and that the antidote to shame is empathy.  I know there's a lot more to my "shame baggage" than merely not knowing which fork to use and when or the fact that I'd rather eat chigae and rice (and yes, kimchi) for breakfast than pancakes or waffles.  Nevertheless, it's a start...

- Sarah-Ji