My friend Jess...

My friend Jess is awesome...  let me count the ways!  She's creative, beautiful, smart, compassionate, fun, adventurous, inventive, funny, authentic, devoted, inspirational, and just plain awesome!  How could you not love her?

 

With that said, I think she's actually become even more awesome in the last 10 minutes, if that's even possible!  

Why you ask?

Because I just received a package from her, and inside was a copy of her very first official cookbook, a longtime dream of hers!  I'm so proud of her!  Her and a friend/co-worker named Danielle created, wrote, designed, photographed, and published their very own cookbook full of healthy and sometimes even vegan foods!  It's going to be a quarterly, 

and I have the 1st one - Fall/Autumn, entitled SHARE.  

You can buy it here on etsy!

It's full of healthy and yummy recipes... a mix of Asian, Spanish, and all around health foods.  I'm especially looking forward to making Arroz De Leche, which Jess has made a bunch of times for me for breakfast!

I am so proud of her, and can not wait to cook up some of her special recipes!

Congratulations on making your dreams come true Jess!

Practice makes perfect!

As I stated in my last post, http://www.pinterest.com/ has completely inspired me to get creative again and shut my computer down in exchange for some creating... in this case; baking!  This was my 3rd baking adventure in the last 2 weeks, and finally, I got it right!  As they say, "practice makes perfect!"  I found a recipe for delicious looking red velvet and cream cheese cupcakes and absolutely HAD to make them I.M.M.E.D.I.A.T.E.L.Y!

1 hour later and 2 trips to the store for more ingredients, they were complete!  All 5 of them!  haha!  The recipe only makes 8-9 regular sized cupcakes, but since my holders are ginat sized, I only made 5... One isn't pictured because it was already settling into my tummy!

They may not look perfect in appearance, but close your eyes and take one bite and you'll agree that they're the most moist, creamy, delicious cupcakes you've ever tasted... and from SCRATCH! 

I was determined to conquer baking and I think I just might have done it with these red velvet delights!

Recipe credits go to Lick the Bowl Good!!

I love us!

To be honest, I've been feeling abnormally bored l in the last couple weeks.  I haven't been inspired to get up and go hiking, explore the city, check out new restaurants, or sip on coffee at hip coffee shops.  Ever get in one of those funks?  I will say though, thanks to http://www.pinterest.com/, I've been slowly being bitten by the creative bug and have been inspired to create once again!  Hallelujiah!  I found this darling sign on pinterest, courtesy, originally, of lovelylittlesnippets!  Darling, right?!  I loved the phrase, loved the look, and knew I could replicate it!

So, I did!

I went to Daiso, Korea's equivalent of the Dollar General back home and picked up a wooden tray ($1.00), which I flipped upside down and painted on the underneath side.  Since Korea's art supplies are limited, I had to get creative and resourceful!  With that said, I bought a white paint board marker ($1.00), 1 small tube of avocado green paint ($1.00), and an eyeshadow brush ($1.00) to double as my paintbrush!  Like I said, you have to be resourceful around here! 

For a grand total of $4.00, I happen to love how my little DIY sign turned out.

And lucky for me, I actually do happen to love us, so it works out quite nicely! (wink, wink) 

Dinner Party

Last night Okk, Craig, Aaron, and our friend Brian came over for a little dinner party at my place!  Aaron played iron chef and whipped up 9 of his delicious pasta muffins!  They're seriously the greatest dinner party idea!  I, on the other hand was the appetizer and dessert chef!  I made yummy pesto and cheese french bread and these cinnamon rolls, FROM SCRATCH! The dough didn't rise like it should have, but the finger lickin' cinnamon and butter filling made up for it's denseness!   I'll definitely give them a try again one day.

(photos taken with my phone)

Craig brought Apples to Apples, so after dinner, we broke it out and played it twice!  We all love that game!  Okk had never played, but won by a landslide the first game!  Sometimes she would throw down cards she didn't even understand the meaning of and they would end up being the perfect play on words, or REALLY funny, which typically always got her card chosen as the winner! 

It was such a fun little party! :)
 Wish I could do it everyday... minus the washing the dishes by hand part!  Oh how I miss having a dishwasher (and a full size oven, 4 burners, and a microwave!)  I'm just saying!

Lunchtime!

I'll start by saying, I brought my iphone to lunch today to snap some pictures of what lunchtime is like around my school.  I picked it up and snapped a picture of my plate.  Okk laughed and said, "Chelsey!  That's not interesting.  Why are you taking that picture?!"  I'll let you decide if you think it's interesting or not!  I, for one, do! :)

So, there are 2 lunch shifts in my school's cafeteria.  The first is for 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders.  The second is for 4th, 5th and 6th graders.  I go to both, depending on the day!  Today was the 2nd lunch:

When we get to the cafeteria, we stand in this long line of students.

Sometimes we cut to the front of the line, because we're teachers and WE CAN!  

It's here that we're greeted by the cooks who dish up our food onto metal trays.  

It's always kimchi, a type of meat or fish, a vegetable, rice, and soup.... 

E.V.E.R.Y.D.A.Y.

Some kids like it while others don't!   Unfortunately they don't have a choice!  ...and every morsel should be eaten before they can get up from the table!

Here it is folks... today's lunch!  Eeekkk...  

Top left: Duk Bokgi (rice cakes, small bird eggs, and fried fish powder in red sauce) YUK!

Middle: Hard beans mixed with pecans in a brown sugary sauce.  Strange, but edible! 

Top right: It's where the kimchi goes.  The teachers have their own bowl of kimchi that tastes better than the students, and I hadn't dished up yet... hence the empty bowl.

Bottom left: Sticky white rice with yellow seeds.  Goes right to the thighs!  Ugh!

Bottom right: Soup with tiny mushrooms, green onions and garlic. Today's saving grace!

American teachers, be happy you're not a Korean teacher!  

Teachers here HAVE TO SIT AND EAT LUNCH WITH THEIR CLASSROOM STUDENTS!

  Heyran (front left) is one of the 5th grade teachers at my school.

When you're all finished, you bring your tray here where you dump any last pieces of food into this metal funnel. Then you stack your tray, throw your spoon in a bowl, and place your chopsticks in the buckets.

Then it's off to the barley water station where you fill up a metal cup with hot barely water, swish it around in your mouth to loosen the food stuck in your teeth, swallow and stack your cup in the bin.

...and that's how it's done over here at good ol'e Dae Gyo Elementary School!