Here is the best recipe for you! THE easiest FOOD to made, fried rice!
I intentionally didn’t include a lot of ingredients, and made it as simple as possible.
* This recipe is designed so that anyone can make this fried rice in less than 30 minutes!

for this, I actually have pictures

Ingredients:

-> carrot, onion, and ham.

-> rice

->salt, and soy sauce ( soy sauce is for the color, and salt actually does the salting part)

-> and…some butter!

NOW, here we start!

1) chop the vegetables and ham.

the shape doesn’t really matter, because after all it will get smudged while cooking.

2)put the pan on middle fire, and put the butter, so that it melts.

3) when the butter melts, put in the ham first, because it takes a longer time to be cooked than the vegetables.

4) put the vegetables in.

5) put the rice in.

6) add salt and soy sauce.

7) TADAHH, you should be done with the fried rice

easy, huh?!

Congratulations, South Korea, for being one of the first qualifiers for South Africa World Cup 2010. So far, Netherlands, Australia, and Japan made it. Even though this journey would be hard, I wish Korea makes it to round of 16. Oh, good luck North Korea, who is currently competing for anothet ticket to be qualified with Saudi Arabia. Hope to see you in South Africa !

Yes. I bake. But I cook, too!
Today I would like to introduce one of the most famous Korean food, Duk Bog-Gi!
BUT WITH RAMEN, and Koreans call it RA BOG-GI

Duk refers to Korean rice cake, and Duk Bog-Gi is that rice cake with some spicy sauces, oden and vegetables. Sometimes Koreans add their all time favorite food, RAMEN!

Even if one lives in the states, one can easily buy all these ingredients in a local Korean Store:

1 pack of ricecake.

1 pack of Ramen

1/2 of onion

oden ( put in as much as you want!)

1 franc sausage

1~2 leaves of cabbage

sugar, soy sauce, smashed garlic, pepper

1 tablespoon of go-chu-jang

1 tablespoon of pepper powder

1tablespoon of glutinous rice powder.

WOAH THATS A LONG LIST. but making it is not that hard.

procedure:

1) put two cups of water in a pan, and put sugar, pepper, soy sauce, pepper powder and gochu jang, depending on your taste.

2) Put onion and cabbage until they are cooked.

3) put one tablespoon of glutinous rice powder. This makes the sauce to be not as watery as before.

4) while the sauce is boiling, prepare to cook the ramen. Just put the noodle and cook it.

5) put in the rickcake and oden.

6) put in ramen.

by now, you should have a wonderful Duk-Bog-gi in front of you!

Roh Mu-Hyun: Former Korean President passes away.

May 23th, 2009. The beloved former president of South Korea Roh Mu-Hyun deceased nearby his house in Bong Ha. It is speculated that he jumped off from the rock of owl placed right behind his habitat. All of the civilians of Korea are shocked, and this news was the headline issue all over the world with shock and surprise. Ex-president Roh was under the investigation by the prosecution’s office of Korea with the charge of receiving about 6,000,000 dollars during his presidency. On his will, the ex-president stated that he is tired and sick of all the investigations, and he would like to rest in peace, and left some words to his family. The investigation is automatically closed, and the funeral of Mr. Roh was held as a national funeral, where the places to cherish him were established in many big cities of Korea.

Even though I would love to continue my story about Mr. Roh and what I know about him, but today I am writing this blog to express my feelings about the reactions of Koreans, not about the history of Mr. Roh. During his presidency, the economic recession started to take place in not only Korea but also all around the world. Because he was the president, he was blames for all.There were even voices that he should be impeached. But then now, after his death, the whole country is showing grief toward his death. Even though it is morally correct to show sadness an grief to one’s death, but I don’t understand some of the reactions of Korean. The citizens are the ones that made him want to die, through all the criticisms and attacks through media.

It truly depends on them what they want to do, and how they want to react, but I can’t understand this. One should keep their word, and the action that they did previously. As a citizen ( a young one, but still.) I never criticized him for what he did, because I know that he tried his best, and I truly feel sad about his death. But for the others, who are now pretending that they always showed attention to him and never said anything bad, it is not only ethically wrong, but also contradicting oneself. This shouldn’t happen regarding a death of a former president. One should be able to maintain what one said, to be a good person in general.

Good Bye, Mr. Roh..

parents.
I assume that every parent around the world has love to their children, but then big difference is that the way that they show or give the love is always different. Some parents believe that letting the child to have everything that one wants is the way to show their love, while another believe that raising them morally correct is the responsibility of a parent. Beyond all those different characteristics, Korean parents agree with one thing ; ” I want my child to succeed.” Now, what is this supposed to mean? What can a parent do in order to make sure that their child successes in their life? Actually, is there anything that the parent can do to ensure that? My personal answer would be a no, but a typical korean parent’s answer would definitely be a yes.

Now, what can parents do to ensure one’s life, which is supposed to be impossible? It happens through strict regulations and restrictions over their children’s life. This is only possible in Korea because of its culture. With the system of hakwon (  http://kjennyl11.edublogs.org/2009/04/11/hakwons-a-unique-part-of-a-korean-culture/, if you don’t understand), parents have control over their kids’ life. This is how it works.

Korean public schools end at about 3PM, and usually the students go home, put their bags, and get another bag, which has the materials for one’s hakwon. They stay at hakwon, depending on one’s parents, but usually until 10~11. By doing this, the student has no choice but to study at hakwon, because there is an instructor that teaches one school materials or others, such as English, and make sure that one is paying attention. When the student gets home, once again, one has no choice but to do the homework that was assigned from the hakwon, or else they would be punished.

Even though if a child doesn’t do any things that the parents tell them to do, then there is nothing that one can do. But usually, Korean children are obidient to their parents, because of traditions and cultures of Korea, confucianism, which focuses on respect to elders.

Now the problem becomes, is it ethically correct for one to control another life? or it is acceptable because the parents are doing this because they love their children?

This moral issue will depend on what one thinks, depending what culture one was related to, and it is not ALL Korean parents, it is most of them. For example, my mother gives me a lot of freedom, so I don’t have any obligation to go to any hakwon, but it really depends on my will. If I want a tutor for my spanish, because I WANT to learn spanish, ( not for GPA or college application), then my mom would happily find a tutor for me. I think the one that Korean families need is an active communication among each others, becuase the most important thing is one’s will. One should be granted the freedom to do what one wants to do.

Now, parents, children. If you are reading this, talk. Talk with each other how you feel about what you are going through, and make each other understand that going to good colleges can be possible, without all these hardships and hatred among each other by not doing what they both want to do. Changes can only happen when one attempts to make a change.

I’m back! with another recipe. Because it is finals I didn’t make it for real, but I am uploading the recipe that I used to make this icecream about….6 weeks ago? Sorry for being so late

SO ! today I would like to talk about the recipe to make a chocolate icecream easily at home! Even though it’s not as good as Ben & Jerry’s icecream… well its edible.

So first these are the ingredients you need:

4 egg yolks

240g of chocolate ( any flavor you want, if you want your icecream to be bitter and dark, use dark chocolate. But I highly recommend you do use regular milk chocolate, because the most important thing to do in an icecream to make the flavor is to make it rich, and dark chocolates aren’t the best to use for that matter.)

100g of sugar (Even though I hate sugar too, it becomes really weird without this amount of sugar.)

400g of fresh cream ( you can find these anywhere, in a supermarket! , they usually come out in a form of liquid, just pour 400g of that liquid (which looks like milk) and stir it really fast and you’ll get the fresh cream you are used to!)

300g of milk.

2 tsp of cocoa powder

Now this is the recipe:

1) put the chocolate in a bowl, and boil it so that it melts. Now, don’t just put the chocolate in a pot, but pour water in the pot in put another bowl with chocolate in the pot. When it all melts, put the chocolate aside.

2) stir and fresh cream and store it in the refrigerator until you’ll use them. This is because the cream becomes a liquid again when put in high temperature, so it is the best to store it cold.

3) mix sugar, yolk.

4) put milk and fresh cream into the mixture created in #3. ( dont put in all of them at once!)

5) boil the mixture from #4 in low fire for about 10 minutes. stir in the middle so that the mixture doesn’t stick to your pot.

6) put the chocolate into the mixture, and stir for another 5 minutes.

7) put the mixture from #6 in a box( or somewhere you would like to put the icecream) and put it in a freezer.

after the first 3 hours, stir the icecream.

9) do this every hour for another 3 times. If you stir more, it becomes richer. Without this procedure, your icecream would be so hard to eat.

10) store it for another 4 hours and your CHOCOLATE ICECREAM IS READY.

Now, I really regret not taking a picture of my icecream. Oh, well I’ll make them again during the vacation, and will show you the pictures then

Actually I made this brownie several weeks ago, so I don’t have the pictures at this moment, but I am sure I can find some if I look for them.

So this brownie petit fours, is one of my favorite brownies along with white chocolate brownies, because you can adjust the sweetness depending on the amount of sugar or the chocolate. This recipe that I am going to include and explain is the easy version of it, and just to let you know, there are many more of these in www.hersheys.com. ( except that when you bake it according to what they said, it becomes extremely creamy, chocolately and sweet so that the whole family can’t finish the pie, cake or whatever you are making for a few weeks)

So the following recipe that I will include is about 18~24 pieces of brownies. ( but then again, it really depends how you cut this)

Ingredients:

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Line 9-inch square baking pan with foil; grease foil.

2. Stir together butter, sugar and vanilla in bowl. Add eggs; beat well with spoon. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; gradually add to egg mixture, beating until well blended. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.

3. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until brownie begins to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack; refrigerate about 2 hours.

4. Using edges of foil, lift brownie out of pan. Peel off foil; cut into 1-1/4 inch squares and allow to warm up to room temperature.

5. Melt the chocolate chips and add shortening. When all melted, dip the cut bronwnies and add a chocolate coating. Cool completely for an hour.

After all these procedures, you would get a wonderful brownie that taste better than ever!

Hakwons, many of you might be not familiar with this term, of course, because it’s a Korean word.

Hakwon simply means an academy where one can get tutors from so called the “professionals.”

At first when the idea of Hakwon came to Korea, it was just recognized as a place where one can conviniently find an appropriate private teacher who is a professional on the subject where one needs help in. But then this concept became un obsessive one, it pushed to a point where some hakwons charging millions of wons for twice a week for a month to their students.

How did this situation get this far? Even though there is a system of tutors in the states or other countries, it is not pushed to an extent where parents have to worry about the payments for the hakwon, more than the tuition fees for the school. This happens because of the competition among Korean students, and the prejudice of Korean parents that their child woudln’t get into a good university when their child is not educated in school.

Apparently, there is no way to stop this prejudice nor the competition, unless there is an action taken by the government, or a change among the media. Until then, this cycle of wasting money for a useless competition would continue, consequently leading onto a worse economic recession.

Sunday morning. Everyone is either still tired from all the workloads during the weekdays, or very sleepy.

What you need on those days is a late, and the best brunch, in the so-called Beverly Hills of Korea, Chungdam.

Chungdam-dong is located in Seoul, Korea and it is famous for its high prices in general, whether it is food or clothes or even karaoke! And as always, in places that are expensive, there are people that are rich. I guess international school students are included as the ‘rich’ ones in society now.

Chungdam is usually famous for where celebrities live, and its fanciness.

This is a photo that my friend took when we went to eat brunch one day to Chungdam. From the moment we walked in to the restaurant with our semi-pajama fashion ( its a “brunch,” that’s what everyone does, righ?) we were firstly surprised by its elegance and fanciness, and next by the prices that we saw in the menu. A waffle was over 15,000won. Even though I wouldn’t say that this restaurant was the most expensive one out of all, its food was just okay, and all that made me feel like it was worth it to pay, was the architectural beauty of that place. They made the restaurant to  look very elegant, and “expensive.” This is the problem. The streets, shops and even Starbucks in Chungdam look all elegant and fancy, and they just make me want to spend money! It touched the human instinct of the desires of spending what they have, by provoking them with beautiful neon – signs, to do what we shoudln’t be doing.

It doesn’t mean that everything is Chungdam is expensive. Still the MacDonalds cost the same, and movie tickets are the same. But why do I feel like the MacDonalds in Chungdam is better than the MacDonalds in any other places? It is because of celebrities eating hamburgers right next to me?  What about movie tickets? There is no reason why the movie theaters in Chungdam should be more luxurious and clearner than any other movie theaters, because we pay the same amount of money, we watch the movie. But why do I feel like I would have to be more elegant whenever I go there? Is it the atmosphere? Is it one of the tactics of busnieness owners in Chungdam to make us open out wallet?Everytime I go there, I tend to spend more money compared to the times when I go to other places, such as Gangnam Station. Why is this happening to me? Is it the fanciness that attracts me to buy all the unnecessary clothes and fattening foods? Or is it just my desires to look fancy?

It probably is both. Seriously, who doesn’t want to look rich and fancy? ( Even though that may not be the truth) I would love to actually be one, too. It is this what They are using. The business owners in Chungdam price everything in a high price, despite the fact that they know that it is unreasonable, because they know that people are willing to pay for it, because of their desire to show off, and look good in front of the others.

But one hting to remember, there are really the richest 1% of Korea out there in Chungdam. They have all the money that they can spend whenever they want to, unlike me who go through economic recession every week. Be sure to know, how to distinguish the difference between who is the real 1%, and who is “pretending.” ( like me!)

I have to tell you that I am a huge fan of baseball. But since, I am in Korea, it is true that I tend to pay more attention to the Korean League, compared to MLB. As a tendency of a student, I happen to see more people interested in either soccer or basketball, but I rarely see people who have common interest with me, of liking baseball. But this week, it seems like not only me but almost every Korean is paying attention to Korean baseball. This is all because of… WBC! (World Baseball Classic)

World Baseball Classic, one of the biggest international baseball game, actually it would be the biggest game now because baseball is gone from the Olympics, ( T.T) is hosted by U.S.A. with 16 countries participating. It is first divided in 4 different pools, depending on the geography of each country, and it is done in such way that same teams might have to compete multiple times.

SOUTH Korea( wink wink!) is in Pool A, which is consisted of Chinese Taipei, Japan, China, and South Korea, which is almost done with their games. It has been decided that Korea and Japan would be going to the 2nd round, and there still is another game between Japan and Korea in order to decide their places. Now, it was a hard way for Korea to get here.

March 5th, WBC officially began with the game between China and Japan. The result was 4-0, somewhat expected because Japan has a strong national team, consisted of Major Leaguers, when China is still sort of unstable with their line-ups and tactics. The next game was Korea and Chinese Taipei, and the result wer 9-0. Korea was in the verge of making it a cold game, but still failed to do so. Korea showed their ability during this match, that Korea has a chance of actually winning the championship this year. However, this hope was crashed during the game with Japan.

March 7th, the game that I waited for finally came. OH, there is a history between Korea and Japan regarding baseball. Just to tell you little bit about it, Japan lost 2 games in a row to Korea because of a pitcher named Kwang Hyun Kim, who is one of the best pitchers in Korea. So this game, Japan needed the victory just to regain their pride for being the 1st champion of WBC.

As expected, Kim came out as the first pitcher. Koreans were waiting to see Kim getting everyone out as strikeouts, or at least flyouts, because thats what he has done during the last 2 games.

But, something was wrong. He gave out three hits in a row, making it a full base, and and gave them four balls, allowing one player to come back to home. Now, this should have been the time where the Korean bench knock out Kim from the box, and allowrd another pitcher to do a better job. But because Korean National team trusted in him too much, Kim threw his balls until the mid of 3rd inning, which made 6-0, getting hit by a 3 point homerun.

Just to analyze what happened with Kim, even though his throws weren’t his worst, what happened was that the whole Japanese national team knew his throws very well, through close investigation. So everytime he threw a silder, which is his best ball, Japanese players were able to make a hit.

Nonetheless, there were many other reasons for that loss.

I have to say, Korea did such a bad job in both attack and defense. Korea lost in cold game, by 14-2.

It is pretty shameful. I know, it really is, and the players probably know it themselves.

WBC Korea VS. Japan hightlights 030709

But today, Korea won against China on 14-0, so I guess they at least realized that it was a poor performance that they showed the day before that.

TOMORROW, there is another match between Korea and Japan. Now, I have to watch it. It would be better it Korea wins, but….well whatever. Even if we lose, there must be a reason for it, so that probably just gives incentives for the players to work harder. Okie, I better get back to my works, now. BYE !

P.S There must be some awkward words regarding baseball terms, but I can’t really do anything about it, because I’m only familiar with Korean terms of those words. T_T SORRYYY

edited on 03/11/09

Korea won against Japan 1-0. I believe that Korea should have done better base plays, but its okay because they won in the end. Now, it depends on who wins from Pool C, because we would be facing the 2nd place of Pool C, which is most likely Mexico.

I amd proud of all players, especiall Bong who made such good pitches.

Good job, Korean national players