OMG, what a busy days I’m having!!! >.<;;
Finally posting some story on my blog again!! Hopefully you guys are still around! lol
I don’t even know if I still remember all the stories from my last vacation last month, but I’ll try my best!
Ok, Vacation #8 story is about Korean Thanksgiving day we call “추석 Chu Seok”. We count the date of Chuseok every year by moon, so every year it’s different day. Sometimes it’s on September, sometimes it’s on October, and LUCKY ME, this year was on October when I was visiting my family!!!
♬ ♪♬ ♪♬ ♪ WOOT~HOOT~!! ♪♬ ♪♬ ♬ ♪
We finally got together for the 2nd biggest Korean holiday(The biggest one is lunar new year), and I could tell how happy my mom was. She was in a such a great mood, having a big precious smile on her face, which is makes me up to sky happy. Just tears me up right now thinking about her smile that morning. I miss her so much, SO MUCH!! I need to call her today. hehe.
Anyways, Korean holiday’s morning starts with cooking LOTS LOTS LOTS of food as other countries big holiday. Well, it’s been already crazy with grocery shopping and preparing for the big holiday a couple days before. lol But everyone looking forward to enjoy the most delicious and precious day! 🙂
This is the morning while we were cooking (or mom’s cooking and my sister and I just helping her out! lol).
I have no idea how long mom’s been awake, but she has done lots of cooking process before me and my sister showed up in kitchen.
You can see on top left, Korean flat form shaped “kind of” meat balls, which is hidden spicy chili inside, so delicious! On top right my sister making Korean Chuseok rice cake, called by “송편 Song Pyeon”. Sorry for the bright light on that side. Bottom left is mung bean pancake batter.
This is final mung bean pancake batter looks like. Mom added kimchi, gosari(bracken), mung bean sprouts, green onion and season with salt and pepper. She adds meat(mostly pork, she seasons with soy, garlic, sesame oil) later. Of course you can mix it into better, but when it comes to a special meal like Chuseok, she doesn’t mind to put a more effort and love. ♥♥
Ahhhhhhhhh… isn’t it look so delicious?!?!?! OMG, I just ate lunch but I can eat a dozen of that right now!!!!
☆★☆★☆★☆TAAARRRAAAAAANNN~!!☆★☆★☆★☆
Looks ridiculous!!! AMAZING!!!
Dip in a soy and vinegar sauce, Ah! It’s heavenly!
This is “동그랑땡, Dong Gue Rang Ddang”
It’s simply ground meat and vegetables. One of Korean “Jeon” (Korean pan fry or pancakes) My mom likes to add tofu for a light body, lots of garlic, green onion and spicy chili(such as Serrano pepper). Believe or not it really needs that spicy kick, other than that, it will be blend. We coat with flour and then egg, pan fry it until golden brown. No bread crumb needed. And that’s the basic coat for any kinds of Korean Jeon instead pancake type jeon(pancakes don’t need coat!).
I made some “고추전 Go Chu Jeon”. Gochu means pepper in Korean and Gochujeon is pan fried stuffed peppers. There is a couple different way to stuff the pepper(depending the area and family), but to me it taste same….. lol
Oh yeah! 송편!! Song Pyeon!!!
Songpyeon is steamed rice cake, with pine needles. I know you probably wondering why we put pine needles in a food, right?
There is a couple reasons for using pine needles.
First, it keeps Songpyeons separated and not sticking together.
Second, it gives really nice flavor that you can get only from pine needles.
Third, most important reason, long time ago when refrigerator wasn’t existing, Korean people figured out that pine needles will be naturally preserve the rice cake, because rice cake goes bad easily in 1 day. How smart!
We can’t have Chuseok without Songpyeon. It’s like turkey or pumpkin pie for America’s Thanksgiving.
We filled up with brown sugar and sesame seeds mixture, which is our family’s all time favorite! But there are many different kinds of sweet or semi sweet fillings.
Yeah, toss that babies in sesame oil, mama! lololol
It’s so chewy(I don’t know why but Korean people LOVE chewy texture more than anything else! lol) out side and sweet filling inside… Ah, SO GOOD!!
Obviously we made so much food for the Korean holiday and after this morning cooking, I simply attempted eat and cooking all same time, and forgot about taking pictures…… And of course we had lots of guests too, so it was a little hectic. Well, at least I got these pictures from morning! I’m glad I could share at least these with you guys. Next time I will be better! lol I guess I need a cameraman so while I’m keep cooking and eating, someone will be keep recording or taking pictures! lol
I know it’s a little late, but I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!
Let’s get ready for Christmas!!!
YAY~!!
♪ ♬ ♪♬ ♬ ♪ ♬ ♪♬ ♪ ♬ ♪
♥ To be Continued ♥