Convergent Journey

A cuppa tea and a camera

Posts from the ‘Foodie’ category

Milestones: My Blog and I Turn a Year Older

By on September 2, 2012

It’s been a year since I started blogging, and in that time I’ve:

  • had 1,000 cups of tea (give or take a few);
  • posted at least once a week in all but 4 of the past 52 weeks;
  • written 142 posts about my year abroad;
  • taken 13 trips around Europe;
  • and, hopefully, been interesting enough to merit the 20K+ views I’ve earned.

The question now is… What next?

Answer: I’m not sure myself. I graduated from the LSE in July, traveled around Switzerland, roadtripped with the fam to Cape Cod, caught up with friends in New York, and finally made it to the Bay area. I am quite happily funemployed at present, applying to jobs, cooking and baking and making milkshakes, watering B’s garden, doing yoga, going biking and hiking and generally trying to enjoy this as much as I possibly can. Unemployment can be incredibly stressful, so I’m just focusing on the fact that once I have a job, I won’t have what is currently my one commodity: time.

That is, in addition to time, I am incredibly blessed to have the absolutely immense generosity of friends: R&B I can’t thank you enough; A&N you two are so thoughtful; L&K and A thanks for welcoming me to SF; E thankyousosomuch for trusting me with your car! (Besides that one time I almost left-turned into the left lane because England got me all mixed up, I’m happy to report there have been no mishaps.)

Next question.. What happens to the blog?

Again, not quite sure, but I’m determined to keep it up. In many ways, blogging has made me push myself harder than I would otherwise. Today, for instance, I was exhausted after hosting an epic 10-hour-long birthday party yesterday, so I was tempted to stay home while my friends went hiking. But I told myself that there might be some good photos along that hike, so I dragged myself off the couch. And I’m so glad I did.

Question three… Did you say, “epic 10-hour-long bday party”?

Why, yes! One of the things I miss most about London is afternoon tea. So for my birthday, I invited friends over for tea, scones with jam and clotted cream, and cucumber sandwiches. All of it was homemade except for the jam, and even homegrown thanks to B’s vegetable garden!

A made fresh-picked cucumber and basil sandwiches. I did my best to make scones using A(b)’s grandmother’s recipe, but converting grams and millilitres to cups is always tricky. Mostly played this by ear.

The scones turned out okay, whew! I also made clotted cream using this recipe, but I went easy on the sour cream as it’s a bit overpowering.

I invited the girls to come over at 2pm, as tea is kind of a dainty affair; the boys would join at 4pm for board games. Umm we ran out of scones and sandwiches so I put out some chips and beer for the guys:

Puhahaha. Guys, if you’re reading this… sorry. We totally underestimated how much food we would need!

From 4pm until 12.30am, we played:

  • 4-7pm. Pictionary-phone, which is just about my favorite party game ever. It’s a combination of pictionary and telephone. How it works: each person holds a stack of cards, which go around the circle simultaneously (so everyone is writing or drawing at the same time). The first person writes a word or phrase, and the next person draws it; s/he then passes the drawing to the next person, who has to write down what s/he thinks the drawing depicts; who passes it on to the next person, and so on. It’s outrageous. Here’s one round:

 

“Thank you” is depicted through ways a person might give thanks…

The next person guesses the different scenarios represent “yes, no or maybe,” which elicits a pretty reasonable drawing…

Which then becomes multiple choice questions…. which then becomes.. sperm?!?! I was the last person in this round, so I had to look at the above drawing and figure out what it meant. My guess:

  • 7-10pm. Mafia. Ready, vote!

  • 10-12.30am. Four on a couch. Trying to think of another game to play, I only remembered the title of this game, and the fact that I had played it once in college. The only thing I remembered about the game at all was having an absolute riot. But I’m so glad it occurred to me, because once we figured out how to play, we again had an absolute riot!

In sum? I’ll keep blogging, if you’ll keep reading. Thanks for traveling with me thus far!

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Related posts:

Milestones: Rediscovering My Inner Introvert
Milestones

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Dutch Breakfast with a Twist

By on April 23, 2012

Broodje hagelslag is a slice of bread slathered in butter and covered with chocolate sprinkles. But these aren’t just the plasticky chocolate sprinkles you eat on a cupcake. This is pure, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate.

You only live once, right? So for breakfast this morning I figured, why use butter when I can use Nutella to stick those sprinkles to my bread?


Step 1. Get a slice of bread. Maybe wheat bread if you want a few healthy points ;)
Step 2. Slather on a thin-to-generous layer of Nutella, as desired.
Step 3. Gather the chocolate in your hand and sprinkle a layer over the Nutella.


Step 4. Chomp chomp chomp. Yummmm. :]

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Weekly Roundup No. 3

By on November 25, 2011

In this week’s roundup: food, frozen yogurt, running and the outdoors! Practically a lifestyle blog today. Of note: finally, something good to be said for British cuisine!

1. Deliciousness of the week

Two delicious meals (and a dessert) this week! On Tuesday, T treated me to dinner at the Malaysian canteen – it’s an unofficial eatery, tucked away on a rather random residential street. A sign outside says “Malaysians only.” My my! I felt very special, and kinda sneaky. Nasi lemak, yum :)

And as I said in my last post, I went out to dinner on Thanksgiving, again with T and her friends from church. The poor unsuspecting folk, I did make them all do the “What are you thankful for” icebreaker, and they were good-spirited enough to go along with it.

We had dinner at a Korean place called Koba. I was confused by the name of the restaurant—it sounds more Japanese to me! But apparently their specialty is Korean BBQ, hence… Ko(rean)…. ba(rbeque). Now, as I’ve mentioned before, it is against my principles to have to PAY for kimchi and the lettuce in which to wrap your BBQ beef. But it was Thanksgiving after all, and I decided to let it go just this once. And it was delicious. Still wrong, but delicious. Granted, there were three types of kimchi, and they were arranged so beautifully: cucumber kimchi criss-crossed like a log house, cabbage kimchi piled high like Jenga, and kkakdugi like a tower. But there is still no excuse. A tiny bit of nicely arranged kimchi should not cost $8!!!! THAT’S RIGHT. I PAID EIGHT DOLLARS FOR A TEENY WAD OF KIMCHI. Whew. I didn’t realize that I had internalized this anger.

Anyway, it was delicious and wonderful (the haemool pajun was also very good). In the end it didn’t come out to be exorbitantly expensive, though in the States we’d have gotten bigger portions. (Come to think of it though, portions are always smaller here—and in the rest of the world. Only in America do restaurants try to take all your money and make you obese.)

Afterwards, we went to a frozen yogurt place called Yog, and… friends and foodies… Pinkberry and Red Mango may have started this trend, but they’ve got NOTHING on British frozen yogurt. The yogurt here, first of all, is so much better than it is in the States. It would only naturally follow that the frozen yogurt here is also umpteen times better. As you may have picked up from this blog, there are precious few things in British cuisine that I rave about. But the pomegranate frozen yogurt at Yog was, hands down, the best I’ve ever had.

2. Autumn in Hyde Park

I’ve been going on a jogging route through the park that’s approximately 3.5 miles around. From Lancaster Gate, along the Serpentine, to Hyde Park Corner, then along the south side of the park past the Princess Di memorial fountain to the Prince Albert memorial, then north to Lancaster Gate. Whereas in the gym I probably wouldn’t last for 3.5 miles of treadmill boredom, in the park I just can’t get enough. The swans, the trees, the flowers! The baby strollers, the dogs running free in the fields! Seriously, every time I see unbridled doggie joy I just think, that is how a dog’s life is meant to be.

It’s just so lovely and wonderful that I took my phone along today and snapped photos along the way. Some of them are warped because I took them while running…

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A Korean American in London

By on November 12, 2011

1. S(e)oul Food

My friend A kindly let me use her kitchen to cohost a Korean food night last night. Bibimbap!! Oh Korean food, how I’ve missed you. As they say, to Koreans, a meal isn’t a meal unless it comes with rice.

It felt nice to be cooking again, too. There’s something wholesome about it, especially after eating cafeteria food and prepackaged sandwiches for two months.

bibimbap groceries

The bag of groceries on the left is a handful of staple items I had to buy from the Korean market (e.g. red pepper paste 고추장 and kimchi 김치). The bag on the right is overflowing with all the fresh ingredients (veggies, meat, eggs) from Sainsbury’s. And guess what? The bag on the left cost four times as much. In dollar terms, it was about $35 just to buy I don’t even remember what. Korean food is so expensive here!

Eating out doesn’t satisfy the Korean food craving, either. About a month ago, I went to one of the Korean restaurants near Tottenham Court Road. While it wasn’t too expensive, there wasn’t much of it (I’ve never even seen such a small jjigae bowl before! It was the size of what they usually serve steamed egg in when they give it to you as “service”). It didn’t taste very good, either. There’s another Korean restaurant that people say is pretty good near campus, but they charge you for the banchan! I am staunchly against this in principle. You order Korean BBQ, and you have to pay for the lettuce?! No no no. This is very wrong.

When I go to New York in January, I’m eating in K-town every day. In fact, every meal. Including breakfast!

2. “But where are you from from?”

Conversations often go like this:

Student: Where are you from?
Me: New York.
Student: No, I mean, where are you from from?
Me: America?
Student: Hm, I mean, where are your parents from?
Me: Korea.
Student: So where in Korea are you from?
Me: I was born in the States, so… New York?

It’s not like I’m trying to dissociate myself from my Korean heritage. I embrace my identity as a Korean American. When I was little, I struggled with it because my white classmates made fun of me for being Asian, while my Korean friends considered me “whitewashed.” I neatly solved this dilemma by telling people I was “100% Korean and 100% American, so I’m 200% of a person.” Hahaha.

But what I’m not comfortable with is being pigeonholed because of the way I look. The alternate route that conversations take is this:

Student: Where are you from?
Me: New York.
Student: No, I mean, where are you from from?
Me: America?
Student: Hm, I mean, where are your parents from?
Me: Korea.
Student: NoOOOoOooo. You look Chinese!
Me: Well, I’m not…

To clarify, most people I meet accept “I’m from the States” for an answer; these conversations happen most often with Chinese students. I can understand the impulse to establish some commonality if a Chinese student far from home takes me for one of his/her own, but honestly, I think I’m going to prepare a 30-second lecture on hyphenated identities and just cut to the chase.

Or maybe I’ll give them the line my cheeky eight-year-old self came up with on being 200% of a person. Hahahaha. I’d love to see the looks I get on that one.

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