The first fruits of my labor!

I love to talk about "checking on the babies!"  It's what I call my little baby tomatoes in my rooftop garden!  Today, when I came back from the store, I asked Aaron if he'd checked on "the babies yet today?" He responded, "Yea, look on your kitchen counter!"

Ahhhhhhh....

And since you're all wondering ***, it was delicious! 



Having a garden is fantastic!  I'm dying for the day when I can go up there and pick basketfulls of fresh veggies!

Kimchi Jjigae!

Last night, I made my very first batch of Kimchi Jjigae-김치찌개, a traditional stew made of kimchi, tofu, onions, traditional Korean sauces, rice, cooking wine (or regular wine!), garlic, and dried peppers!  It's super spicy and super delicious and Aaron and I are addicted to it!  We went out to dinner twice this week just to eat some! 

Here are all the ingredients you'd need!

And here's what it looks like when it's all finished and ready to devour!

All I know is... when I move back to the US, one of the requirements for cities I land in will be whether or not the town has a Korean restaurant, or a supermarket with a Korean section! 

I just simply can't live without Korean food... period!

Ice Cream in 5 minutes!

Last week, Ok, Aaron and I were all at dinner together and Aaron proceeded to tell us that he was going to teach his students how to make ice cream for English summer camp!  That's all fine and dandy, but when he said he was going to make it in 5 minutes with 2 plastic bags, we thought he was crazy!

So, last night, I put his recipe to the test!  Here's how it went!

Pour 1 cup of milk into a small ziplock bag.

Put three spoon fulls of cocoa powder in with the milk (only if you want chocolate ice cream)...

... and 3 spoon fulls of sugar!

 

Then, with your fingers, mix the three ingredients together!  Make sure the cocoa powder is not clumpy!

Then, fill a bigger ziplock bag with ice!

Pour about a 1/2 cup of salt over the ice!

Put the milk, cocoa powder, sugar mix ziplock bag inside the ziplock bag full of ice...

Set your timer for 5 minutes...

...and find a strong guy to shake the bag until the timer runs out! Make sure he puts on some gloves so his hands don't freeze off!

When the timer "dings" you should have something that resembles this!

Pour it into a pretty bowl and commence eating!

Don't be fooled by the presentation, this chocolate ice cream was delicious and literally took less than 10 minutes!

Next ice cream flavor to attempt... Raspberry!  I'll let you know how it goes!

Beautiful day in the farmland!

Yesterday, Aaron and I took Scoot over, across the river, to Gimhae, our neighboring city to the west, to check out the spring harvest! It's so nice to get out of Busan and see beautiful, fresh veggies, growing as far as the eye can see!  I didn't exactly get to see stuff like this as a child growing up in Orange County!  Although, if I remember correctly, I think there were tomato fields across from my house before a Marriot was built.  Sad....

I had no idea onions grew such interesting flowers!

 The fields were filled with growing onions, rice seedlings, peppers, tomatoes and cabbage! We had so much fun romnping through the fields... No one seemed to mind either!  I think the farmers thought it was cool that foreigners were interested in getting an upclose view of their harvest!

We played with the farm puppies and scooted through narrow pathways to find our little pieces of heaven in the countryside!

 While I don't have a picture of it, the cabbage fields were absolutely filled with white butterflies!  I'd never seen anything like it before!  There were thousands of them, flying free! 

It wasn't until I moved to Korea that I realized rice didn't have to be grown by soaking the seeds in 6 inches of water!  Turns out, we do that in Asia, and some other parts of the world, to keep weeds from growing and bugs from eating at the seedlings!  Here's a typical S. Korean farmhouse with a small garden of cabbage and rows and rows of rice paddies!

In Korea, when warmer spring weather comes, the farmers buy or grow rice seedlings, like these...

They then transplant them (usually by hand) into freshly flooded paddy fields in May. Aaron and I found this golf cart looking mobile on one of the farms, with the keys still in the ignition!  We're not quite sure what it does, but from the back, it looks as if it plants the rice seedlings, one by one, in rows of 5!  Pretty fancy!

We stopped in at a local country market for some drinks, and relaxed on the front porch before heading back into the city!  It was the perfect Saturday getaway!  It also made me even more excited about my own little rooftop garden!  I'm happy to report that one of my baby tomatoes is FINALLY turning red!  :)

My English Family!

Last night, my co-teacher Monica invited Okk, Me, and Aaron to an amazing dinner on the river at an expensive duck restaurant in the middle of nowhere!  It took almost an hour to get there, but we were all pleasantly surprised when we sat down and saw all the amazing food set on our table!  

Not to mention, the restaurant was awesome and looked like a ginormous mushroom...

 

and was set right on the river where we had a stunning view of the sunset! 

One of my favorite things about this place was the fact that they grew almost all of the food they serve right there on the premises!  You can even take a stroll through their garden after dinner if you'd like!

... and there is absolutely no shortage of fermented kimchi here!

It wasn't until we were leaving the restaurant and driving back to Busan that I coined our group "My English family!"  Because, well, that's just kinda what it felt like!  I'm so glad I have co-workers who adore me as much as I adore them, and who want to include Aaron in everything we do together!  Cheers to my English family of 4!  We're small, but we have a lot of fun together!