Food for Chuseok (Thanksgiving Day)

Last week from Friday to Sunday, we celebrated Chuseok (Thanksgiving Day) here in Korea. I should've taken some pictures of the food that we made but I couldn't get chance to do it because of my in laws. I don't think it's allow to take pictures while everyone was busy in the kitchen. Like what I always do, I was in charge again with the dishes and was an assistant of my sister in law. Of course I can cook but I'm afraid to make mistakes so I just let my sister in law do it and helped her in cutting or washing some vegetables and ingredients that she needed.

Like what most people prepare every Chuseok, we made some "jeon" or fried dishes like mushrooms with meat, fish fillet, shrimps, oysters, etc.. We also cooked different kinds of "namul" (vegetables, spouts). Also toran guk (taro soup) is always in the list every Chuseok. We also steamed some fish. Luckily, we didn't have to make daejigalbi. My mother in law just bought some pork (oh gyeopsal, thicker than samgyopsal) and beef (seogogi) and made barbecue at night. We're also lucky because we don't make soeng pyeon (a half-moon-shaped rice cake stuffed with beans or sesame seeds and sugar or honey and flavored with pine needles) on Chuseok. My mother in law just buy some in the supermarket.

Chuseok today is not too hard for us because we didn't prepare lots of things like what we always did on the past Chuseok.

Cucumber for side dish

This is one of the easiest food to prepare when you are thinking of Korean side dishes. Did I mention that Koreans eat lots of side dishes every meals? So this one of them. You don't have to do lots of things. Just peel off the cucumber and cut the way you want it but I usually do it horizontally. I serve it with gochujang or chilli pepper paste because my hubby likes it with gochujang rather than bean paste which others prefer to eat with.

Enjoy the cucumber side dish the way you like it.

Are eggs good for our health?

Are eggs good for our health? What can eggs give to our body? Cholesterol? Strength? Pimples? Smelly Fart? Anything else? Whatever! I just wanna say that I love eggs. Do you? I don't know when it started but I eat at least 3 eggs everyday. My mother in law told me that I have to serve eggs every meal because it can give us strength the whole day at work. Does it make sense? Even whe she won't say that, I really like fried eggs specially in the morning. Oooppsss... Pardon me! I don't have breakfast because I get up late but eating in the afternoon is like having breakfast.

I can eat 3 fried eggs and sunny side up is my favorite. I also bring egg sandwich to work. I just toast bread, spread jam and put an egg. Very simple isn't it? But I have noticed that my pimples appeared since I started to eat lots of eggs. Do my pimples have connection with the eggs? Well then, I hope I can slow down with eggs.

Oh, by the way. I usually buy a tray of eggs every weekend. A tray has 30 eggs and me and my hubby can eat them in a week. Are we egg-lovers?

Can kimchi cure flu?

My niece who doesn't like spicy food has started to eat kimchi. Her mom told her that kimchi is good to avoid getting influenza or H1N1. I don't know if that makes sense but you know Korea is famous for its kimchi not only because of it's unique smell, savour and taste but also because it's healthy. It's good for our health so koreans believe that it can cure SARS. You already heard that, didn't you? puhaha...Now that the flu which is another pandemic disease is now hitting korea, where there are thousands of koreans who have the flu and there are hundreds of people who get the disease everyday, people are worried about it. So again, koreans think that kimchi is one of the solutions for this problem. If it can cure SARS, it can also do a special role in curing the flu. What do you think?

Cheese and King-Sized Pork Cutlet

We came from work and I was so lazy to prepare lunch. You know when you're hungry everything is delicious specially if you see some pictures of pork cutlet. I saw an advertisement posted in front of our apartment so I took it and ordered two pork cutlets. One cheese pork cutlet for me and wang (king size) pork cutlet for my hubby. The packed and the texture impressed us when we opened it.



The first bite was okay but after eating several times, the meat is getting strange. Or maybe we were just hungry so we couldn't get the real taste of the pork cutlet but when our stomachs started to fill up, the taste was so strange. My cheese pork cutlet was bitter, I guessed the cheese was fake (I saw on tv that some restaurants are using fake cheese) and my hubby's wang donkas (king-sized pork cutlet) smells strange. The pork smells like stinky socks. Yuck~

When we started to taste and smell the strange things so threw it away. We'll never order in that restaurant. If I like the food in the restaurant, I always keep the business card but that pork cutlet restaurant, well, you know what I did.

Donghae Dried Squids

I went to the supermarket and saw this dried squid for sale. They are buy one take one so I bought one. They are one of my hubby's favorite korean snacks. Dried squids are what drinkers favorite finger food because they are best with beer or soju (korean alcohol). They are more delicious with mayonnaise or gochujang (red pepper paste). My hubby asked both mayonnaise and gochujang when he eats dried squid. But I prefer to eat them with mayonnaise.

These dried squids are from donghae which is famous for nice beaches so Donghae is also famous with dried squids. The squids are softer, tastier but not salty. They are much more delicious than any other squids that I have tasted.

Bossam

Another ordered food that we had for dinner. We were tired of ordering chicken so we tried bossam.


Bossam is eaten with delicious kimchi. You have to wrap the meat with the kimchi and some vegetables like garlic, chilli, etc.. The kimchi is crunchy and sweeter than the normal kimchi.

The bossam came with noodles, soup, cola, korean pizza (puchinggae) and some vegetables.