Revisting

It's been a year since the last blog posting.  As hard as I tried, I was unable to stick to a Korean diet for a full year.  Going back to the questions I asked my mother, she says that she has non-Korean food once a week.  Once a week?


It's not to say that I can't do it but regardless of how I fared in this discussion, I still wanted to share what my mom had to say about it all.  Here is the rest of the Q&A:

4.  How many times a week do you eat non-Korean food?

May be once week -spagetti, pasta mixed with beaf and veggies

5.  What is your favorite food memory?

Since I was the only girl I used to walk to the local market for the food shopping almost everyday. I was about eight years old. Remember, we did not have refridgerator. Everything were organic and fresh from the near by farm to think of it.  

When we were children, my mom gave us one sheet of 김. We put all of our rice and spread on it and put som kimchi and rolled it. It was fun doing that but we were given only one 김 each so we put so much 밥 so hard to roll it. But it was fun and it was special day

Curry Rice - only time a year  - mom made a curry rice and it was a special food for us. We bought one carrot and small amount of peas to make the dish and  it was Delicious and no other my friends knew what curry was at that time.

김밥- On Picnic Day

Until High School all school had a picnic on spring and autumn. Then my mom woke early morning to make 김밥. It takes about two hours to make rice and all the vegetable. Again I went to the market to buy veggies and the carrots (expensive item so again, I buy only one). We all sat and waited until mom finished making it and tasted them.

6.  Do you think the American diet has affected the growth of me and Jamie?

Yes, definitely. I tried to keep Korean diet for you  because I knew that American diet will be problem. I tried not to keep too much food at home. I barely used butter or any type of cream.

7. When I grew up - All kinds of vegetable were available - 시금치(spinach) 가지( egg plant), 오이 (cucumber), 감자 (yam), 양배추 (cabbage), 콩나물 (mung beans).

Fish were plenty. So we grew up with fish, beans, and veggies, 밥 (rice), 김 (nori). Thank God,  He gave us beans so we made 두부 (tofu), 된장 (daeng-jang) and 공나물 (mung beans) with it and so we could grow without eating much meat.

PS.

I came to US on Oct 27, 1972. I am so glad we came to this country and so thankful about it.  I got married with 아빠 on Jan 12, 1974. Yes, it has been long time and we are good friend and companion.

Love,

엄마  

Ladies who lunch

I, like many others, have to eat lunch in the middle of the workday, away from my home, and there's a lot of temptation out there--the biggest of which is right outside our front door.  A cute, mom and pop sandwich shop (literally owned by a mom and a pop) is right across the street from my office and they sell the most amazing soups, falafel wraps, specials of the day, and the best chicken caesar salad one could ever hope for. I like to grab a paper across the street and pop my head in to see the daily specials, which are usually some sort of tribute to Americana fare--my favorite and my vice.  The garde manger cook, Aldo, says hi and I say hi back.  He knows my vices, my orders, and my name because I go there a lot and that's the kind of place JB's is. 

Being dedicated to this new way of eating (notice how I am abstaining from using the word diet), I shop for lunch a lot less and haven't eaten at JB's since September.  And, at $8 a meal, I know it's for the better in more ways than one.

Korean food is nutrient dense and it's essentially more bang for your buck. Preparing it at home makes it that much more affordable to get through life, so bringing in the lunch from home is a daily must.  To get an idea of what Korean food is all about, I typed into Google "Korean Food 101" and found an eponymous blog that was pretty helpful. Also helpful is this terminology guide. Check them out!

Going back to the questions I asked my mom when I started this blog, here's how she answered question 3.

What do you typically eat during the week?

1. 보리밥, 현미밥
2. 된장찌개 (두부, 호박, 파, 양파), 김치 찌개
3. 닭 볶음 (닭, 감자, 간장으로 볶은것)
4. 돼지고기 볶음
5. 상추, 김
6. 생선 구이
Weekend lunch - 비빔 국수, 냉면, 짜장면, 짬뽕

--

1. Rice mixed with barley or brown rice

2. Deung jang jigae (tofu, squash, spring onion, onion) or kimchee jigae
3. Chicken fried rice (chicken, potato, sauteed with soy sauce)
4. Pork fried rice
5. Lettuce, nori
6. Grilled fish (mackerel, croaker - pan fry or grill with salt)

Weekend Lunch (spicy mixed cold noodles, cold buckwheat noodles, black bean noodles, spicy seafood noodles).

I realize that my mom's pattern is to eat rice during the week and noodles on the weekend. It makes sense--rice travels well and loves the microwave. She can make a large pot of rice that can be easily stored in the fridge or freezer and portioned out ahead of time for easy distribution.

Noodles, however, are finicky and require extra prep as well as extra steps to store them properly. As much as I love noodles, I have been using our new rice cooker to our advantage to eat more rice during the week.  

Fried rice is easy and goes a long way. But if we have meat, kimchee and other ban chans from the Korean grocery store, I can have an awesome lunch with a lot of variety. Here's a Sunday lunch Rion and I recently had. Deung jang jigae, short ribs, rice (using the last of the white rice), kimchee, anchovies, pickled seaweed, and black turtle beans.

And the leftovers? To the office Monday morning, of course.

Rice Rice Baby

It's been awhile and a lot has happened!

Rion's sister had a baby boy, my mother came for a visit, and the San Francisco Giants won the World Series!  It's been a good month but now it's back to the blog.

My mother surprised me and Rion with how well prepared she was for this visit.  She was on a mission--to save us from white rice and educate us on the many other grains that we should eat.  This was a coup for Rion, who has been trying to get me off white rice since we met.  I insisted that since that's what I ate as a child, that's what we should eat now.  My mom says that this is my dad's fault.  I guess he was the big fan of white rice in my household growing up, which is why it was what we ate.  I can't say that I blame him but after tasting the other options out there, I'm happy to let go of this childhood memory in the name of good health.

We started experimenting with black rice, sweet rice, whole barley, and brown rice.  We are using black turtle beans in the mix as well and have come up with some solid results.  The reason our rice is looking so good is that my mom also graced us with a new pressure rice cooker, which really makes the rice puff to a smoother texture than it normally would in our old, regular cooker.

Thanks, Umma!

To prepare a good mix, I am using 1 cup of brown rice with 1 cup of either the sweet, black, or barley.  The half and half mixture colors the whole pot of rice but it's a pretty, earthy, dark purple.  All of these grains are found at Rainbow Grocery, in organic and in bulk.  The result is a delicious pot of rice that is so tasty, it could be eaten on its own--and I just can't say that about plain white rice.

Now there's no turning back.

Say Kim Cheese!

Pizza perils


When I was a kid, we ordered pizza very rarely. I mostly got to eat it at friends' birthday parties or on Halloween (I suspect that this was because the day was a wash for my mom with all the candy we were going to eat anyway). My mom recalls one year when the pizza delivery guy came to our door and I screamed, "PIZZA PIIZA PIZZA PIZZA...!" so loudly that it scared her more than any costume that came to our house. I remember my mom having major stomach issues after the pizza and soda and wondered if that would happen to me too.


---


It's not easy watching an SF Giants game while our friends chow down on Goat Hill pizza. Rion and I went to a spot up near my office, Bloom's, Thursday night to watch Game 1 of the NLDS against the Braves. The smell of the melted cheese over fresh California vegetables with an Anchor Steam to wash it all down is enough to drive anyone away from a carefully crafted diet.  I guess the best way to beat the pizza is to trump it with equally delicious food, which is why I had already ordered our dinner from the Vietnamese place we love, Sunflower.


I did want that pizza but not more than the garlic noodles and 5 spice chicken. When we were deciding what to have Saturday night for dinner, I didn't even think about the old foods we used to have as an option. So far, so good.


More answers from Momma Sench


So to pick up from the Q&A I set up between me and my mom, here's what she had to say about question #2.


2. How old were you when you had your first ice cream? Egg? Cheese?


Real ice cream, cheese - not until I came to the States in 1972. I was shocked when I had a ice cream at McDonald's for the first time by the size. Only at the bakery shop we could have real ice cream and it was very expensive in Korea 1970s. Popsicle, ice cake we called, which was made of frozen water artificialy flavored and colored was popular among children when I grew up.


Eggs - once a week, meat - once a month - they were expensive. Other foods that I did not have until I came to this country - banana, orange juice, milk, chocolate, butter, any can/frozen food.


I did not know what pizza or spaghetti was.


Ah, ignorance is bliss.

NEWS FLASH--MOMMA SENCH COMING to SF!

Last week I received this email from my mom:

Mich,

I've been thingking about making a trip to see you since I heard about your

all-korean-food project. I want to support you and help you. I found a

affordable fare so I wonder if we should plan the trip  if it is OK with you

guys. We can make ban chan together during the weekind to have more ideas.

The short answer: YES!  Of course I am excited for my mom to visit me and Rion in San Francisco.  We arranged for her to come on November 4, 2010 and stay through the weekend.  I am hoping to take her to the farmer's market, the Korean grocery store, and then do some of my favorite dishes on camera. (The long answer includes an improbable game 7 in San Francisco, which is of course not a real reason for my mom not to visit.)

Though my mom cooked for me and Jamie growing up, my dad was always the "chef."  He worked in and owned  restaurants but gave it up after I was born.  Stress and ulcers prevented him from being in the kitchen.  Surprising how alike we are.

Nowadays, my dad is the sole cook in my parent's house.  My mom says that 35 years of marriage is paying off and that it's my dad's turn to take care of some of the household duties, which he has done on his own.  When we spoke on the phone, she said that she is going to have to brush up on some recipes because it's been years since she's made dinner!  Wow. 

But then I reminded her that she makes the absolute best bibim gook soo, which of course she didn't deny.

Korean breakfasts and other questions to my mom

I asked my mom a few questions to get the ball rolling. She was kind enough to do it over email, which ensures that all the Korean is correct (my spelling is less than stellar) and also helps to roll through a bunch of questions that can otherwise lead to long (and mostly lovely) stories.

Here's what I asked her:

1.  What did you eat for breakfast in Korea?

2.  How old were you when you had your first ice cream?  Egg?  Cheese?

3.  What do you typically eat during the week?

4.  How many times a week do you eat non-Korean food?

5.  What is your favorite food memory?

6.  Do you think the American diet has affected the growth of me and Jamie?

7.  Oh, and when did you come to the US?  Was it 1972?  You and Oppa got married in 1974, right?  I think so but it's been a long time since you told me.

Because each answer deserves a blog in its own right, I am going to go through the answers one at a time starting with breakfast.

1.  What did you eat for breakfast in Korea?

밥, 국(콩나물, 무, 시금치, 된장, 두부) 김치

In case you need a translation, she says that she ate rice, soup (bean sprout, white radish, spinach, tofu), and kimchee.

Where's the part about a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich?  Rion and I are thrilled about our new Korean diet but breakfast is so hard to give up.  "American" breakfasts are our favorite meals.  Ri makes a quiche or fritatta at the beginning of the week, usually Sundays, which we eat piece by piece every morning throughout the week.  It's quick and easy to divy and nuke for a minute while we groggily trudge through our morning routines.  Losing the quick, easy, and delicious option is a tough thing to let go of.  

Rion lamented this past weekend about losing the American breakfast to our Korean diet and the only fix I could think of was to make the most delicious soup on Sunday morning (usually reserved for our buttermilk and fresh fruit pancakes with bacon) to prove that a Korean breakfast can be tasty, quick, and prepped ahead of time for our week.  I poached two eggs in the broth to add some protein and added rice for some carbs.  The end result was a delicious, creamy, soup that definitely sated our needs.  

The poached egg took the place of butter and the soup's salty enough to be tasty that early in the morning.  

Check out my korean breakfast soup recipe.

Sench and Rion’s Korean Breakfast Soup (version1)

4 qts. water

1 tbsp. soy bean paste

1 tbsp. soy sauce

1 tbsp. anchovy powder

1/2 onion (literally cut an onion in half from top to end)

2 cups raw chopped spinach

1 handful of cremini mushrooms, sliced

eggs

rice

salt and pepper to taste

Boil together the water, soy bean paste, soy sauce, anchovy powder, and the half onion.  The onion is for the stock only and not pleasant to eat first thing in the morning for us.  Salt the soup to taste and add more soy sauce if you would like an extra umame flavor.  Cook rice ahead of time and store in the fridge with the soup after it cools.  

When you are ready for breakfast, pour out two portions of soup into a hot pot and bring it to a boil.  If you don’t have a hot pot, a smaller pot is okay.  Once the soup boils add the mushrooms and the spinach.  Crack two eggs directly into the soup and poach them for about 4 minutes or desired doneness.  

Simply ladle the soup and the eggs over rice.  I like to season the eggs before serving.  Enjoy!

Ban Chan

My mother came to the Washington, DC area from Seoul, Korea in the mid-1970's with the proverbial $50 in her pocket and a dream to be an American. She married my dad in 1974 and had my older sister Jamie in 1976 and I soon followed in 1979.  My mother, who goes by her American name Anne (she named herself after the character Anne Shirley) wanted us girls to be as American as possible.  She denied us the humiliating experience of new teachers and peers butchering our Korean names by giving us only American names, Jamie and Michelle, as well as all the American birthday parties, traditional Christmases and Thanksgiving dinners.

But we weren't the same as the other kids.  We had two refrigerators, one in the basement filled with jars of preserved pickled delicacies, a language gap between generations that widened as we got older, Korean school on Friday afternoons while our friends got to go home and play, and of course, a face that didn't match those of our classmates in Northern Virginia, where we grew up. 

Still, my mother did a great job and Jamie and I are definitely Americans.  Through and through with a love of Redskins football, ham and cheese sandwiches, and a humor based on the wit of four women on TV who lived together in Miami during their golden years.  But what have we sacrificed to get here? 

On my mother's first visit out to San Francisco, where my partner Rion (like Orion without the O) live, she said to me as I stared into a full-length mirror, "Yeah, I used to weigh that much--when I was pregnant with you."  It stung but I know what she meant.  One thing is for sure--my sister and I are a lot bigger than our parents.  Okay, not A LOT bigger but there is a difference in our sizes and statures.  In fact, there is a significant difference among most of the second generation Koreans I know and their parents.  We were all raised on milk, bread, cheese, eggs, and plenty of meat like most Americans I know.  This new diet, one that was completely unavailable to our previous generation, has changed us.  For better or worse, it has made us big, strong, and itchy.  Yeah, itchy.  I bet my eczema is related to the wheat and milk that I can't get enough of.  And I'm sure there are more people like me out there. 

So can I go back?  Can I eat the food I know I am genetically predisposed to eating?  Can I be Korean for a year?  Well, I am going to try.  For a year straight, I will attempt to eat nothing but a Korean diet.  I am allowing myself to stray into other Asian cuisines--Indian, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese--but mostly will do my best to adhere to the Korean diet.  At the very least, to stay away from dairy and see if I feel different, if my skin clears up, and learn more about the place my mother left 35 years ago.