December 2006

We’re taking a long break for the holidays, time for some much-needed rest. As we’re not actually in Seoul at the moment, I’ll be ceasing blog updates until we return in January.

Happy holiday wishes to those of you whom I know or have just met in real life, and thanks to those I met online through this blog. It’s been a wild, crazy, but wonderful year.

For now, I’ll leave you with this bit of very sound advice that, of course, I am borrowing from elsewhere. In this case, the good folks at Lifehacker:

Forget the email, the IM, the RSS feeds, the Google searches, what Wikipedia has to say about the origins of Christmas, installing that latest Firefox update or running a defrag. Unplug and enjoy. You made it through another year and you’re wiser, more experienced and best of all - you’re alive. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done, spend some good quality face time with the people you love, and have a very merry happy festive unplugged weekend.

Wishing all of you a peaceful, happy, holiday season.

Yes, these are boxer shorts. Yes, that’s the likeness of the venerable Sejong Daewang on the right there. (Left side of the shorts).

They’re supposed to look like a Korean 10,000W note. It seemed really funny at the time, but I guess it’s not really different than seeing boxers with the Stars and Stripes or imprints of American money.

(From a shopping trip early Saturday to Dongdaemun.)

Today Seoul got its first major snowfall of the season. It’s been snowing off and on for weeks now up in the mountains and some provinces to the north of us, but we’d only gotten flurries before last night. Just before we went to bed, we looked out the window and noticed these huge snowflakes falling almost in sheets of snow from the sky. We woke up to a snow-covered city.

I had the best of intentions, planning to take the camera and go to the nearby park that overlooks a good section of southern Seoul. But I ended up just venturing out briefly to the store and taking a few cheap shots from our window. (You can see them in my Flickr photostream, above.) I’m really not a cold weather person.

It proved to be a good excuse to stay inside and try some new recipes. I managed to do a pretty decent version of dak galbi (닭 갈비) a spicy chicken stir-fry. Thanks to this excellent recipe at My Korean Kitchen. (The food was yummy, but the picture I took turned out blurry so I’m not posting it.) My version wasn’t quite as good as the one at the restaurant in COEX that we regularly go to when we’re craving this. But, it was very good, if I do say so myself. I especially like the flavor from the sesame leaves. When I’ve had this dish before, I noticed that it has a sweeter, deeper flavor—even when it’s made with a lot of spicy gochujang—than a lot of other dishes. I think the sesame leaves are most of what I was tasting.

To go with it, I also followed Sue’s recipe for dubu jolim (simmered tofu, above), and it was delicious. David even ate several pieces, and he doesn’t really like tofu. I do, but I’ve never had it served in a way that still lets it taste like tofu—smooth and kind of slippery, but with flavor. It’s also really simple to make. I think I’ll probably make this again and just serve it with some side dishes and rice for a simple, light meal. I thought we’d have leftovers, but we ended up eating all of it in one sitting. A whole package of tofu.

I mean, we are talking about sautéed bean curd here, so you know the recipe is good!