Our Adventure in Making Kimchi!

In November Zak and I took a trip with our neighbors to make Kimchi in Seoul. The winter months are typically when kimchi is prepared and ready to be fermented. We took this trip with a group called WINK, it is a tour group based primarily out of Seoul that has trips available with English translators. This was the second trip I had done with them and I am overall satisfied with this organization aside from being a bit expensive for the quality of the tours. 

It was a cold and rainy day and we ended up waiting about an hour for our bus out of Seoul to where we were making the kimchi but the rain eventually subsided and makgeolli appeared just in time for us to enjoy the experience! It is hard for some people to get past the fermented aspect of kimchi but if you give it a chance you just might fall in love with this sour spicy cabbage like I have. 

The act of making kimchi is easier than I had previously thought. All you need is a salted cabbage and ingredients such as, salt, ginger, garlic, powdered red pepper, sugar and radish. Just rub your mixture of choice onto each cabbage leaf section, let it sit at room temperature for at least 48hrs and there you have it... home made kimchi! (Caveat: Kimchi must be prepared while under the influence of Korean rice wine)

(this is me keeping a look-out for the old Korean woman who pops up just to remind you that you are doing it allllll wrong)

If you want some live action checkout our youtube video:

We were lucky to have a great photographer with our group who has kindly allowed us to share his photos, if you are interested in visiting his blog it can be found here: Kimchibytes

Thanks for reading xxx

2013 Update!

Happy new year to you!! The end of 2012 went by in a blink for us and the whirl wind of the holidays have come and gone. We have a few bits of exciting news to share with you all! First things first, I have finally finally completed my bachelors degree and certification. It has been a very long 5 1/2 years trying to get my degree done with all of the adventures and moves we have had during that time period. But I am so relieved to be done! And now as equally as exciting, we are moving to Germany in the summer! Up until the last couple of months we thought we would be staying in Korea for at least another two years but things come up and opportunities presented themselves and we are very much looking forward to moving to the EU. I am in the process of renewing my EU passport and still can't believe we are getting the opportunity to live near all of my family in Europe! 

I am also looking forward to being able to blog more now that I have lots of free time between learning to speak German and my new project, cooking through our cook books! I thought it would be fun to blog some of the recipes that I encounter and find interesting. Currently I have just started cooking through Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0" I figured this would be a good place to start since it discusses various cooking techniques.

 Aside from my cooking adventures we plan to visit and share some of our favorite places in South Korea that we will miss when we leave. I still can't believe we will be leaving the ROK in less than six months! We have knocked a few things off of our bucket list recently that I will blog for you all in the coming days. Until then, I leave you with my lesson in searing from last night:

I cooked with the pan I fear the most, the cast iron skillet. I don't know why I have feared it and left it in the bottom of the cabinet but now I see its true purpose, to sear! I got a cheap cut of skirt steak, brought it to room temperature (very important!), and rubbed it with some peanut oil, salt and pepper. I then heated my skillet over high heat for about 3 minutes, set the steak on the hot pan for another 3 minutes without messing with it (also..very important!) and flipped for another 3 minutes. Once you have seared both sides, let it rest on a rack for no less than 5 minutes, slice and voila! Perfect skirt steak and so easy! 

I chose to pair my steak with a simple salad of arugula, red onion, cherry tomatoes and bleu cheese. I feel that this salad paired really well with the vinaigrette that I mixed up which included:

1/3c Olive Oil

2tb Red Wine Vinegar

1tb Dijon Mustard

1/2tsp Honey

1/4tsp Worcestershire

A piece of advice with searing however is to have your exhaust fan ready because your kitchen will get smokey and if it doesn't, well.. you must be doing something wrong! Don't be intimidated by the smoke but use your judgement to decide whether it is "yeahhh im searin' now" smoke or "oh shit I think I might burn the house down" smoke. 

Let me know your favorite dish to use skirt steak in or if you try this salad! You won't be disappointed! :) 

Thanks for reading, be back with more soon!

xxx

Cruisin' in the Caribbean

Writing these posts and seeing all of our pictures really gives me the traveling bug again and it has only been 3 months since our vacation o.O

After Ohio we flew back to Florida, which I hardly remember because of too many cocktails.. well except for the part when I realized we were sitting next to the local weather man.. that was, interesting. I still don't understand how I got starstruck by a weather man on the local news but we will blame that on the cranberry vodkas. *Anyways* we were at my parents house for a night or two to drop Pip off since they were watching her for us while we went on the cruise. 

Before the cruise we managed to squeeze two days in at Universal Orlando before heading to Ft Lauderdale. Being a Florida resident sure does come in handy down in south Florida where they like to rip off tourists. We were able to get a pretty sweet deal staying at one of the on site hotels with a two day pass to the parks. A perk of staying at the on-site hotel is that you can enter the theme park early..which we did..and it was aweeeesome!

Harry Potter!

We then traveled from Orlando to Ft Lauderdale to catch the cruise ship. The ship we went on is currently the largest ship in the world, Royal Caribbean's "Allure of the Seas".  Here we are ready to hit the seas:

Our first port was Nassau, Bahamas. We don't typically go for the overpriced 'tour' packages while on cruises and instead prefer to tour on our own. We were only in Nassau for about half the day so we decided  to go to Junkanoo Beach which was about a 15 minute walk from the dock.

After the Bahamas we cruised to St Thomas! If you ever needed new diamond jewelry here is where to find it! One of the jewelry capitals of the world. I had a ring that we purchased on the ship re-sized here for only about $20 and it was done within two hours. I had this done at Diamonds International and they were very credible, I was a little reluctant allowing them to take my new ring but trusted in the fact that they had a good reputation and it paid off. After shopping around and waiting for my ring we negotiated with a taxi bus driver to take us around the island and drop us off to snorkel at Sapphire Beach.

Our last stop on this itinerary was by far our favorite, St Maarten. We did do a tour from the ship on this island as well as going on our own adventure after. The tour we did was called "Sea Trek" and it was such a fun experience, albeit short for the price. I was actually very reluctant to do this because I am a bit claustrophobic and wasn't completely comfortable to rely on this mechanism to supply me oxygen on the sea floor. But alas, I managed to suck it up and do it and I am glad I did!

After our Sea Trek adventure we hopped in a cab to see the low flying planes over the famous Maho Beach! Words can't even begin to describe experiencing this, what a sight! 

Here is a video I was able to get of a plane coming in for landing:

And now for some random photos aboard the ship:

As always, thank you so much for reading!!! xxx

A continuation of the summer..in the fall...

I know.. wow where did the time go?! From my last post until now I can tell you exactly what I have been doing, paper after paper after financial analysis after financial analysis. The last semester of my degree is kicking my butt! Thankfully I only have about 3 weeks left and the worst is now behind me. So back to what we were talking about, our awesome summer vacation!

After leaving Florida Zak, Pip and I made a stop in Atlanta where Zak spent most of his childhood/teenage years growing up. I love Atlanta and really enjoy visiting our family there especially because there is a Chick Fil A on every corner! While we were there for a few short days we were able to catch a Braves game.. they lost but who cares, we were in America drinking American beer watching American baseball!!

After Georgia we stopped in North Carolina to see some more of Zak's family and his friend Tyler was totally awesome and made a trip down from Virginia to visit us while we were there! Anytime we visit the Charlotte area it isn't complete without a trip to the Whitewater Center, where people seeking a thrill can ride rapids while the Olympic trials aren't in town! 

From North Carolina we flew to Ohio, where Zak was born and where we were married back in 2009! We had such a great time visiting everyone in Ohio and loved seeing all of our family! 

Zak and our nephew Alex at the Cincinnati Zoo

Ok so it was really hot at the Zoo (it must have been at least 100F!) and there were kids everywhere.. don't judge us for having a beer at 10am, ok? Or was it the turtle you were looking at?

And a trip to Ohio is not complete without mexican food and debauchery with all of the cousins! 

Zak and Emily!

Jackie (my sister in law) and her boyfriend Chris

Zak's awesome cousins! :)

So we did it, we managed to visit all of our family from the south to the north and had an incredible time... next blog will continue on to the 'vacation' part of our vacation!!

Thanks for reading

xxx

What a Summer!

Hello hello!! We have been to the other side of the world and back since my last post so I owe it to you all to fill you in on what we were up to. :)

I am from the Florida Gulf Coast so of course we got some beach time in!

My sister and I

And a trip to the beach is not complete without a little tropical storm action ;)

Pip came with us too, we didn't want to leave her in Korea for 2 months so we carried her on the plane and she did great!! (Although I am sure some of the people on a 5am flight we had would beg to differ as Pip and another dog on the airplane got into a heated discussion about whose territory it was)

Zak's family also came down from Georgia and we stayed at a beach house with them off of 30A for a week and it was such an amazing week to spend with my in laws. Well, aside from me falling down a flight of stairs and getting a concussion.

Here is the better part of our week at the beach house:

Since this vacation was two months long, I will have to break it up into segments.. we will slowly be making our way to the state we were married in, Ohio!

Thanks for reading xxx