Sunnie in California

As we get older, it seems like more and more of the things we do in our lives are because of added responsibilities. Life just gets busy and we don’t realize it. It’s hard to get together with all your friends and just live a little. Thank goodness for this new excuse we had to get together…Ji sun’s bachelorette! Thanks for a great excuse Ji Sunnie! With 5 lovely ladies flying in from VA and 4 lovely ladies transplanted in Los Angeles, it was an outrageous 4 day rager!
Most of the girls arrived Wednesday morning. I drew some childish posters 2 days before to welcome their arrival. I was just too excited for a weekend with my girls. I can’t really divulge any happenings of string of events or post any pictures, but I will say that it was a trip to remember.
Although this was a celebration of our dear friend jisun’s upcoming marriage, it was more of a celebration of our friendships. There was a lot of reminiscing and of thinking back on how we have all been blessed by the other. At one point, in the car with jisun, we talked about all the fights we’ve had in the past. All the crazy fights we’ve had with each of our friends. And how blessed we are that everyone is so forgiving to make the friendship stronger instead of tearing it up. I did have to apologize in the car to jisun...5 years later...for making her upset on TWO occasions that I was oblivious to! Oooops. I must be stupid.

But back to the happier situation...some non blackmail pictures for your enjoyment!











The corn. Oh the corn. I will share one story. About the corn. I was sitting next to Hye Young. There was dead silence. All you can hear is chompchompchomp. And then I heard a big boom and a big ‘GASP’. I look over and the poor corn was in the sand only 1/5th eaten and a very shocked and sad look on the girl’s face. And my reaction? I just laughed uncontrollably. Oh the corn.





The saddest moment of the whole trip...goodbye



But Ji sun stayed a few more days!!! And like i said..if you visit, you better clean as payment!



In San Diego at La Jolla.




As my final note on this post: Congratulations Jisun. May your marriage be blessed with an abundance of love, honesty, loyalty, humility, and servanthood.

**Till our next reunion the day of the ceremony. Toodles girls! See you on gmail!

Mom's Kfood Recipes

Annie Made yukehjang this week. She followed a recipe online which told her to put gochujang in it. (red pepper paste). I don't think you are supposed to put gochujang in any kind of soup. The only reason I say this is because one time I asked my mom if I put gochujang in this soup I was making and she just laughed at me. A Lot.

I told Annie not to follow online recipes for Kfood and just ask Mom.

I don't know how I learned to cook korean food. I just watched mom and after I left home when I craved mom's cooking I would call and ask how to make something. As a side note, there is no such thing as measuring in Korean Food. You just pour stuff in. I think this goes for all asian food. My roommate in Italy was Thai and she always made good food. She did the same thing as me, pour stuff in and then taste.

This is probably why I can't bake or cook american food. Too much measuring. I just recently found out that the measuring cups for powdered ingredients and liquid ingredients are different! You can't interchange the measuring cup for liquids and powders. WHAT? No wonder why my baking is horrible.

So here are some of Mom's recipes. Annie said I should blog them. Some are straight from Mom's emails and some are from my memory of what she told me.

*the red pepper she is talking about is gochu garu. Korean hot red pepper powder.

Yukehjang:
1) Put meat with water in the pot with Med. Temp (first 10 min. Med-high). until the meat gets soft.
take the meat out, and make them like a shredded beef. Don't throw out the broth marinate with Soy sauce(2 spoon) , sesame seed,and garlic
2) Need to cut in 5 cm each for green scalion (? Pa ), and put in the boiling water for 3 minutes. Take them out, and drain the water.
3) Make the redpepper sauce: put redpepper and sesame oil into the fry pan, and mix it.
4) Put 1) ,2),and 3) into the broth.
5) add Sogogi Dasida, and salt.

Chicken Legs in soy sauce:
Put chicken legs in the pot, and pour water to just cover the chicken. boil it with med-high temperature.
Add Oinion , Potato, Carrot when it starts boiling.
When the chicken is cooked , and the water should be about 1/4 from the start. (If too much water, get rid of some)
Put soy souce same amount of water or less, Add sugar, garlic, black pepper, sesame seed, and red pepper.
Boil them one more time.

Gutjuhri (a type of kimchi):
Clean and pull apart cabbage
soak in salt for a few hours
wash it off
add red pepper powder, sesame oil, and sugar.

Soondubu:
Cut up kimchi and fry with pork pieces with sesame oil
Add tofu (the very soft silken kind). No need to cut the tofu. break it up lightly as you mix it in with the meat and kimchi
Add red pepper powder
Boil
Add dashida if it needs more flavor
no water! the water will come out of the tofu

Kimchi Jjigae:
Boil kimchi with the kimchi juice in water.
Make sure water is double the amount of kimchi so it boils out
Add more red pepper powder if you want it spicier
add butter (this is key!)
Add spam, canned tuna, or pork. you can also add some tofu.
Add dashida if you want some more flavor
Done!

Omoorice:
In a pan add diced onions, corn, peas, spam, potatoes
Add rice
Add loads of ketchup
some salt and pepper
Fry an egg to put on top
put more ketchup on top of the egg
DONE!

Samgaetang (korean style chicken soup):
Stuff a small hen with sweet rice and garlic
Boil in water for a long time.
you can add garlic, ginger, and daechoo in the water.
(I don't know what daechoo is in english. dried red thing)
add salt for taste
DONE!

ENJOY MOM'S KFOOD!

Steel Cut Oatmeal

source

Have you ever tried Steel Cut Oatmeal? Does the name constitute how the texture is supposed to be? How it should taste? Maybe like steel? Well here's a great LOL story for you. This is my own version of the story. I was not present for breakfast. I just LOLed for 10 mins after hearing the story on the way to church. It's funnier if you hear it in person and if you know HY. But I had to share this story anyway.

Lisette came to visit this past weekend. She crashed at Hye Young's all weekend. For breakfast Hye young made Lisette her usual breakfast, steel cut oatmeal while Lisette was getting ready. Hye young proceeds to pour her oats into a bowl, boil her water, pour her water into the bowl, give a quick stir, and served it to Lisette.

HY: Here Lisette. It's not that good, kind of hard, but it's healthy.
Lis: (taking one bite and spitting it out) BLAH. What is this?
HY: I just put fruit in it to cover the hard texture and taste. and i've tried many different brands to see what was best.
Lis: What? How did you cook this?
HY: Like I alwasy do, add some hot water.
Lis: What? Let me see the box
HY: In the cabinet
Lis: (getting the box from the cabinet) OH MY GOSH HYE YOUNG! You're supposed to cook it for THIRTY MINUTES on the stove or TEN minutes in the microwave!
HY: WHAT? I've been eating it like this ALL YEAR

HY's final revelation for this sunday morning: "This new way to cook oatmeal has CHANGED MY LIFE!"

My comments: So WHO cooks oatmeal with just a pouring of hot water? You have to microwave even instant oatmeal! Leave it to HY to think rock hard oatmeal is a real food and continue to eat it day in and day out because it is healthy.

I met Santa Clause

I went to Jin's Patisserie to get some macaroons for some friends for Christmas. I got there right when they opened. There was another customer there with me. He was very Venice looking. Dressed pretty grungy with long curly grey hair and a santa belly. He was buying many boxes of their delicious french chocolates. We had a short conversation about the chocolates and how I never had them. He ended handing me a whole box and said Merry Christmas! A 25 dollar box of chocolate. Who does that?

So I wanted to wish my Santa Clause a happy new year and many blessings for 2010. Time to pay it forward.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

First LA Birthday Celebration!

In the words of Sai: "you are only 28 +2 days"

First I want to thank everyone for a really wonderful birthday. I love birthdays. Everyone should look forward to birthdays. As selfish as it sounds, with all the craziness in every day life, it's so nice to have people pamper you on your birthday. It's just one day out of the year where you are the star of your life. I got so many packages in the mail throughout the week from friends back east and a weekend full of fun fun and more fun. So thank you thank you thank you.

The weekend started off with a nice dinner in ktown of shabu shabu with some of my new small group friends. We celebrated December Birthdays. It was great food, great company, and great conversation. Then we ended the night with a little bit of rockband!

I was a rockstar on my birthday! Presenting...the Chive5!

Then on saturday evening HY, Annie, Linn, and Insun took my to dinner at the Yard near the promenade. I chose this restaurant because it's walking distance and Top Chef contestant CJ is the chef! Yum. But, if you're hungry don't go here. I suggest going for happy hour only.

Thanks for spending time with me!

I wore my boots with thick socks thinking it would be chilly. Turned out it was 70 degrees and I thought I was going to faint from all the heat building up in my body. I was forced to take off my shoes and socks in the restaurant.

Then us 4 girls headed over to the Terrace Theater in Long beach to watch the Nutcracker!

The little angel kiddies were SO cute. The flying big angels were SO freaky.

I chose to watch this Nutcracker because Ade, Melissa, and Jason from SYTYCD were in the ballet! So exciting. They were really good. This is the only good shot of one of the SYTYCD stars Ade.

Then we headed over to Gaam in ktown. Gaam...Our LA ARA.

With my Virginia family right here in LA.

My OC hotties who came all the way to ktown to celebrate with me.

Thanks everyone for making my first birthday in LA a memorable one! See you on your special day!

HELLO TWENY NINE

Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday Dear Me. Happy Birthday to Me.

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Sungsill's message. Probably her balcony.

Jungeun's house

Mari's house

Rebecca's house

I was so happy in my delirious state with a big smile on my face. Thinking about snow on my birthday and how it made me so happy. Then I looked out my window and it was 70 degrees. POOP!

But I can't be sad on my birthday. Especially when you hear this!

(More people sent singing VMs but this was the first one. Thanks for your beautiful voices. kaka)

And I got to read THIS from my old roomie and dear friend Annie.

Last night a few friends bbmed me pictures of the start of the blizzard in VA. I was having a wonderful birthday dinner with small group people, where many are from VA and passed around the pictures. Everyone was so excited.

Miriam going somewhere

Mari's front yard. I have parked in that spot so many times

So waking up this morning to awesome snow pictures and then being so disappointed at the sunny weather I almost got up and went to big bear to see snow and go tubing. I was 99% ready to just get in the car and go. But then Hye Young called. She said we need to go to the beautiful beach in Malibu instead. Ok FINNEEE.

Happy Birthday to Me again!

Thank you all for the best wishes! I love you so much!

GOODBYE TWENTY EIGHT

age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number

Today is my last day being 28 years old according to the western calendar.  Since my birthday is so close to new years it has always represented a closing of one chapter and opening of another.  A year older and a new year.  I've had a big transition in my life.  And I thought it appropriate to reflect on this past year. 

28 Most Memorable Moments of being 28

1.  Of course I have to start off with my 28th birthday party.  It was my last birthday living in Nova and it was probably the most memorable one.  After a great dinner at heebeen we went off to ARA, annandale's very own korean cheers, where you will always see your "sam, woody, and norm." The next day the girls surprised me by taking me to Dr. Fish for a pedicure. Yes, Dr. Fish.  I think it is so memorable because it was the first time I was ever surprised. 
2.  I did it!  PRK!  (painful corrective eye surgery).  Poor Dina stayed with me while I was drugged out in bed in the most physical pain I think I've ever had in my life.  (But who actually remembers physical pain.) 
3.  Obama's Inaguration!  Right smack in the middle of DC.  Peace Love and Happiness

4.  I've had so many goodbye parties my friends tell me they will never throw me one again.  But sure enough, they did and this was one of the craziest at John's MTV cribs. 
5.   HELLO LOS ANGELES!  Dragging my huge suitcases up the stairs at Oakwood apts in Marina Del Rey to check in for my month long temporary stay.  It was the Italy train station stairs all over again.  Blah!
6.  Driving around LA half blind because of my PRK.  It's amazing how helpless you feel when you lose one of your senses. 
7. Having total painful indigestion problems from who knows what
8.  Living with Annie and Linn for 5 months.  Always coming home to a clean house and dinner on the table.
9.  Miriam's Bachelorette in Las Vegas and still being sick and Jisun trying to "sohn ddah" and slapping my back.  Hahahaha. Have to laugh at that
10.  Miriam's outrageously fun wedding back in Virginia.  Who knew JMU and Tech could get along.

11.  BBQs at Kevin's house and trying on military gear
12.  Annie's beautiful wedding in Hawaii

13.  Seeing an errupting volcano

14.  Swimming with dolphins in the open water

15.   Taking Sora to the dog beaches many times and watching him have so much fun.  And him trying to fight coyotes and then running away.

16.  Kim Gun Mo concert where I saw mom go crazy

17.  First awesome bonfire at hungtington beach which Mike invited us to

18.  All those fun trips to San Diego visiting Susan and Dorothy and SORA of course

19.  First trip to Disneyland as an adult with Dina. Oh those caramel apples

20.  Sharon getting married

21.  Bike riding at venice beach

22.  Sailing at the Marina with Jackie

23.  My mom buying 1000 polos in Fashion District just because she's a korean ajuma that can't help buying "sale" things

24.  Michael Jackson Karaoke night with HY, Ruth, and Brian

25.  Gtown cupcakes at my front door

26.  Spectrum with HY stalking JMU guy

27.  Enormous amount of visitors!  Mari, Lisette, Sungsill, Dina, Michi, Miriam, Jun, Jungeun, Newt, John

28.  And the most memorable for this year is...the crazy talks, venting sessions, brunchcapades, and church hopping with Hye Young.

So thanks for a great year twenty eight.  Goodbye forever.