This past week, Koreans celebrated the Lunar New Year (also known as the Chinese New Year). And for the first time so did we, along with two other couples who are also adopting little boys from Korea!
(In case you didn't notice, the couple to our right is the one you read about in this post. And yes, the foster brothers are wearing matching jackets in their photos!)
The Lunar New Year is a very important holiday in Korea. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert about it (and anyone who knows more about the holiday than I do, feel free to correct me or add any other interesting tidbits in the comments section), but I did learn at least one thing. Much like turkey is the traditional entree served during Thanksgiving in America, Koreans celebrate the New Year with a traditional soup, which I managed to make quite successfully... at least, I think it was successful... I have nothing to compare it to, but it sure tasted good!
I started out cooking the beef brisket with garlic and scallions (which I learned are simply green onions... scallions sounds cooler though!). This also created the broth.
Then, the meat was taken out, shredded, and mixed with secret spices (secret unless you read the recipe, I guess).
Next, I added the dumplings to the broth and finally the rice cakes (also with secret spices).
Mix it all together, and you get something that looks pretty much like the picture on the website (minus the seaweed... I skipped the seaweed!).
I absolutely cannot wait until next year's Lunar New Year... mostly because there should be some little munchkins here to celebrate it with!!!
Sorry the font seems obnoxiously big... it was either that or too small, imo. Blogger can be annoying sometimes!
ReplyDeleteLooks perfect. Don't count out seaweed! Its actually very good. You should try the dried out seaweed paper strip things....London LOVES them. Troy hates them and I think they are ok LOL. But I loved seaweed in my soups while there.
ReplyDeleteYour "this post" link isn't working, but the others are. :) Thats so great you already have a little parents group going!!!
The only thing that I really learned while over there (was in China for the new year)...was you need a Billion fireworks to properly celebrate! LOL At midnight in the pitch black you could see every street/person standing everything because of the amount of fireworks going off...they lit up the entire town! It was actually a little scary! LOL
Thanks, Angela, i fixed the link! And actually, I did have seaweed on hand, and some people tried it. It smelled pretty pungent!
ReplyDeleteI did not care for the seaweed, but it was still great! :)
ReplyDelete