Gung Hay Fat Choy

Look what we did today...

A friendly Korean church about an hour from us

invited Korean adoptive families to a Lunar New Year Celebration.

They made Bi Bim Bop

and it was so good!

Charlie preferred the oranges.

Reuben slurped three bowls of tofu soup.

Peter enjoyed the main dish.

Oops, too close.

The woman in the brown shirt back there...
She has been waiting to be matched with a Korean child for three years.
She and her husband started the process the same time we did for Charlie.
We feel so blessed to have Charlie home with us.

After lunch we began our instruction on how to properly bow to our ancestors.

Here's Reuben practicing his bowing.

I didn't do any bowing, but it felt awkward and

kind of wrong to be bowing down to anything other than God.

When we were in Korea to adopt Reuben we happened to be there for the Lunar New Year and we saw WooSeok's parents create a shrine/alter to their ancestors and bow to it/them.

It's a piece of their culture that I don't fully understand.

On to a Korean hacky sack competition.

These Koreans are very enthusiastic game-players,

including kids and adults in their sports.

I only hackied the sack two times.

Holder of the hacky sack.

Hold on.

I'm going to look up the Korean name for it...

Jaegi.

But, you should have seen Paul!

He pulled out his secret jaegi skills.

A Korean man said to me, "I bet he's a really good soccer player."

Ha.

Ha, ha, ha.

He might be.  He probably is.

Of course, he would actually have to play soccer in order to find out.

Paul was clearly the best nonKorean jaegi player.

And he was very handsome.

Fun day.

As for the Gung Hay Fat Choy title... when I taught first grade I was handed some curricula and asked to teach about Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year.  It said you're supposed to shout, "gung hay fat choy!" and it means "happy new year!"  Fast forward to that one time when we lived in China... when Lunar New Year came around I confidently called out a hearty gung hay fat choy to my Chinese friends and they had no idea what I was talking about.  Sorry to all those first graders I totally misguided.  I hope that was one of those lessons that nobody remembered.

Dinner

We're making Kim Bop (aka Gim Bop) for dinner.  Want to come over?  You can roll your own.

Ours will have the seaweed wrapper and rice, along with avocado, egg, cucumber, and ham.  Because that's what we have.  And like.

If you care to read about it...

Gimbop is considered one of the most popular and nutritious Korean meal. It consists of rice and strips of vegetables, egg, and meat, rolled in laver (dried seaweed) and sliced. This is a popular snack or lunch with its ingredients being very variable. Popular ones include bulgogi, spinach, pickled radish, and eggs.

At first glance, gimbop often resembles a Japanese maki or a sushi roll. However, there are a few differences between the Japanese sushi roll and the Korean-style gimbop. The main difference is that Japanese sushi rolls are rather minimal in ingredients. Sushi rolls usually consists of just tuna or salmon within the roll whereas gimbop contains a variety of ingredients (vegetables and meat). Also, while the Japanese use raw fish (sashimi) in their sushi rolls, Korean gimbop do not contain any raw fish. Lastly, Japanese sushi is often dipped in wasabi while gimbop usually has sesame oil.

Korean 101: Gim refers to the sheets of dried seaweed, and bop is the Korean word for cooked rice.
 
Recipe Ingredients

• 1 bunch spinach, steamed
• 2 carrots, cut in long thin strips
• 1  yellow pickled radish, cut in long thin strips
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 piece thick sliced ham or Spam, cut in long thin strips and fried
• 1 egg, fried like omelet and cut in long thin strips
• 3 cups of cooked rice
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 package roasted seaweed sheets

Cooking Directions

1. Stir fry carrots with salt and pepper.
2. Mix radish with vinegar and sugar.
3. Mix rice with the sesame seeds and sesame oil.
4. Place one seaweed sheet on a bamboo sheet.  Put rice on half of the sheet and add 2 pieces of spinach, 1 carrot strip, 1 radish strip, 1 ham strip, 1 egg strip on top of rice.  Roll in a log and squeeze tight.  Use some rice to stick the seaweed together to keep it rolled.
5. Place a little sesame oil in your hands and rub it on the seaweed roll.
6. Put a little sesame oil on knife to cut roll.

Yum.

Bulgogi

We have been on a Korean kick lately.

We're learning the language, reading books, and being so bold as to attempt to cook.

Tonight, at Peter's request, we're having bulgogi.  

Yummy marinated steak strips, 

cooked in a skillet with onions, LOTS of garlic and carrot. 

Woo Seok (our exchange student from a few years ago) and his mom came to visit last spring and she showed me how to make a couple dishes - bulgogi one of them.

Here's my interpretation of what she was doing:

Mix in a bowl with your hands:

1 package steak strips, sliced

1 onion, sliced

1-2 green onions, big sliced

1 carrot, matchsticks

whole garlic bulb, minced

2 heaping T sugar

The steak.

Beautiful.

 

The veggies and sesame seeds.

Pour on it:

2-3 T soy sauce

Lots of pepper

2 T sesame oil

2 T sesame seeds

Set for 1/2 hour.

Cook in skillet with a little oil on high.

She didn't measure anything, of course,
so those are estimates.
She kept pouring and tasting and pouring and tasting.
Unfortunately I don't have her experience to gauge how it's supposed to taste.
So we'll just love it how it turns out.

Reuben and I watched this video that shows how make really cute triangle pouches.
It's like Korea's version of a sandwich
made of seaweed for the bread,
rice and tuna for the filling,
and a great triangle mold to shape it.
We're totally going to try these.

(I was confused by the plastic-covered seaweed, but she shows at the end how to cleverly remove it.
It keeps the seaweed crispy!)

Word of the Week

*putakamnida*

It's pronounced like this:

poo-tock-OM-nee-dah

Accent on the 'om'

which is a short o.

It means 'please'
in Korean.

Paul found a really great website

that teaches you whatever language you want to know.

It's online, fun, & free

and we can do it together.

www.byki.com 

as in

Before You Know It,

you'll know a new language.

 

Although, Paul's way ahead of me

and has Turkish and Arabic on his list 

along with Korean.

Smart Guy.

*putakamnida*