(Flowers from my honey)
When is your birthday, Sue? Triple one, that’s the date I was born.
It can confuse people with November 1st, but still, pronouncing triple one sounds kind of cool. 
It was very noisy from the early morning today. It was still dark outside but the strong smell of sesame oil woke me up. My two little sisters were up to something (they have been staying with us for two weeks now), making me some birthday soup.
What is birthday soup?
- So called brown seaweed soup (miyeok-guk) is the birth day soup in Korea. However people eat it on normal days as well.
Why do people have it on a birthday?
- Brown seaweed soup was actually consumed by a woman who delivered a child. Because it helps to clean blood vessels and to produce milk, it has abundant iodine to reduce the swollen body and calcium to help build strong bones, which are all important for both mother and child.
- It is symbolic to have on a birthday, because while a baby’s mother has this soup, the baby also eats it through the milk. Though, my theory is to remind people about their mother’s hard work for delivering them and say thank you to their mother on their birthday. So on your birthday, you should say thank you to your mother.
This is a picture of the brown seaweed soup (Miyeok-guk) my sisters made for me.
I don’t know what she added to season it, but it would probably be some salt. The obvious ingredients are brown seaweed, some beef cuts, and sesame oil. It was delicious yet the sesame oil overpowered the overall taste. I hope my sister doesn’t read this post. Because I said it was very good. Sister, the thought is what counts!!
My sisters are self claimed night elves. They’ve been baking cookies, cakes and helping me cooking meals while they are staying with us.
Chocolate cake from the night elves (they used a prepackaged mix)
(My territory)
Today is my blogging off day. I went outside to take some pictures of the snow we had last night.
All the snow was taken by greedy kids from this apartment complex, not leaving us any good clean snow, they enjoyed their playing. (meany brutes)
(Snow on a golf course, obviously no one managed to get it and have fun)
(Some trees are still green)
Look at this pretty little sushi, but like some movies or fairy tales that have a pretty woman that always turn out to be the evil one, I needed to be more careful when I tasted this sushi. The sushi tried to harm and threaten my life. It was my fault of course, because I am the one who made it. I just wanted to enjoy a relaxing solo lunch, but it didn’t quite work out like that.
Generally I love the taste of wasabi (Japanese horseradish). While I was squeezing the wasabi tube, I didn’t realized that I was squeezing it too much. I made 10 pieces of sushi and after taking some pictures, I tried the first piece. It was good but not excellent (I didn’t put any effort in this food because I wasn’t sharing it with anyone else). Then I tried the second piece and it started to burn my mouth and nose straightaway. I somehow managed to cope and then tried the third piece, then the pretty sushi’s evil plan was revealed.
My eyes and nose started to water and I could barely open my eyes. It was so painful but I continued to try the next pieces of sushi, because I had to complete my mission, which was finishing the sushi without wasting them. The forth and fifth were the worst of all. I couldn’t even swallow them. I had to spit them out and drank lots and lots of water.
Though the first thing I cared was the caviar. You know how expensive those eggs are. (US $7.40 for 250g) I was crying out, Oh~ my precious caviar~rrr. I was so sad, because I had to abandon those precious caviar, not because my favourite sushi was hurting me to much.
So my conclusion is; I am not going to post a recipe for this dish, to protect you from potential suicide, and don’t be a fool for beauty. 
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I can’t believe that the holiday is over already. Back to blogging after having a couple of days of break is kind of weird and feels unnatural. I got rusty very quickly.
I got an interesting present for Christmas from some Canadian friends, so I would like to show what I got. These are some pictures of the present. Including Brown seaweed, Dried kelp, Seasoned laver, Unseasoned laver etc.
Don’t misunderstand that Koreans give these as a present for Christmas, but maybe they do for Chinese New years day or Chuseok.
They participated in a 5 Km marathon and these are what they won as a participation prize, but they didn’t know what to do with these massive seaweed sets so they gave them to us.
I found that seaweed is something that isn’t popular to westerners, even less popular than tofu, unless they are vegetarian or health cautious people. By the way, Korean laver is really popular in Japan. The reason? I don’t know.
So from now on, if I seem to cook to too much seaweedy food, don’t blame me.
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Hello everyone,
It is Christmas weekend and I am getting ready to celebrate. Are you?
Christmas in Korea is more like a couple’s celebration day instead of a family day, so it is quite hard to find Christmas spirit here in Korea.
For example, Michael asked one of his student:
M) What are you going to do on Christmas?
S) Nothing, play computer games and watch TV
M) What are you going to eat on Christmas?
S) Rice and Kimchi.
M) What do you eat on a normal day?
S) Rice and Kimchi.
I invited my sisters over to our house and we are going to do some baking and games (probably play monopoly, we all are monopoly geeks) and watch some movies (a couple of Christmas movies and the Lord of the ring series and star wars series. We are huge fans of those fantasy movies.)
I really hope you have good time with your family and friends and I will see you next week.
Merry Christmas
