Tidbits

I stealthily threw a birthday party for Ken last night. It was small, fun, and there was hardly any mention of 30 being the new 20.

We started the night at our apartment with a pizza party (courtesy of Domino's), followed by an intense game of Catchphrase, and, of course, it all ended at the noraebang where three hours of some serious tune-belting transpired. T'was a great night and I think Ken enjoyed it thoroughly, in spite of himself. Of course, I forgot to take any pictures, so the night went completely undocumented.

I did, however, follow through with my plan to make cupcakes for Ken's party and I remembered to take a picture of the finished product before tossing my camera back to its forgotten corner.

Here's the recipe:

Here's the outcome:

They aren't the most beautiful cupcakes in the world, but they just might be the tastiest! They're definitely the best cupcakes I've ever made and I plan on making them again for any occasion I deem worthy of cupcakes. (Mondays? Fridays? Two-month anniversary of living in Toronto?)

In today's news, I've decided I want to start learning to play the guitar again (I've been learning off and on for about 16 years and sure haven't accomplished much). Of course, I totally forgot to bring my guitar to Toronto with me and it's currently sitting in a closet in my parents' house... in Michigan. But thank goodness for friends who have guitars to spare! My friend, Jared, lent me his little blue guitar that he got for only $20 in Beijing a few years back. (Why didn't I see any $20 guitars when I was there?) It's a cute little thing, but it was in desperate need of a string-change, so I took it upon myself to do the job today. It's now leaning against the bookshelf in our living room with all new strings, two of which I put on backwards and another one I strung too tight (I'm waiting for it to go boinging off the guitar any second now).

Needless to say, I won't be playing it any time soon. And, yes, I'm incredibly annoyed with myself. At least it looks artsy sitting in our living room, right? *groan*

That's all for now. Ken will be arriving shortly with his brothers and a new TV in tow! Here's to more time-wasting!

Ken's Birthday is on Monday...

...and I've been strictly forbidden to do anything too birthday-ish for him. Whereas I've always basked in any limelight that may be given to me on my birthday, Ken just doesn't enjoy birthday shenanigans of any kind. Which I'm slowly learning to accept (even though I love planning birthday surprises).

It should be noted, however, that Ken's anti-birthday sentiment does not mean some noraebang madness won't ensue on or around his birthday this year. No, no. The noraebang is a must for anyone's birthday. (I think Ken agrees... deep down in his heart.)

I figured a birthday cake would be completely out of the question, as it likely falls under the "birthday-ish" category, but I'm thinking maybe birthday cupcakes could be an exception? They're a little more subtle, right? He's reluctantly agreed to indulge me there (but I don't think he will approve of me hauling them to the noraebang--candles and all--for his not birthday-ish outing). So, I'm going with it.

In pursuit of the perfect birthday cupcake recipe, I stumbled upon this gem of a website. I don't know who Ming is, but I think her cupcake ideas might be brilliant (I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say for sure). This is the one I think I've decided on:

But I really can't make up my mind. There are just too many to choose from, and my sweet tooth is telling me I should try all of them. You know... because it is Ken's birthday, after all. 

Pictures of the final outcome will follow (if they aren't too hideous), and maybe I can sneak some birthday noraebang pictures in while I'm at it. And happy, early birthday to Ken! 

The Results of Boredom

Being unemployed is great on so many levels, but it can be pretty awful on just as many other levels. I waste a whole lot of time sleeping (my alarm is set for 10a.m.), poking around on the internet (hence the reason Facebook had to go), totally disregarding calories and/or food allergies (i.e. I'm eating a lot of crap), and overhauling blog layouts that were perfectly functional before I started changing pictures, fonts, and colors. But let's talk about how much fun I'm having in the meantime!

I've been cooking and baking up a storm over the past couple of weeks and I daresay domesticity is growing on me (you'll be able to see it in my waistline all too soon). I've yielded some repulsive results, some good results, and some amazing results--hence the above I'm-eating-a-lot-of-crap statement. My favorite kitchen adventures thus far? I'm glad you asked! Let's start with these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I've made twice already:

These cookies have been a smash hit at parties (or, should I say, a party), and I've proudly taken credit for their deliciousness... even though I didn't take any part in inventing them.

Number two on the favorite-kitchen-adventure list is this salsa fresca recipe that accompanies a pretty yummy huevos rancheros recipe (not pictured because it was too ugly):

We had the above-mentioned combo in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, along with Ken's homemade margaritas that would have been tasty had part of the faulty-tequila cork not fallen into the blender and into the mix.... 

Other favorite goods of late include this coconut red lentil soup we made tonight for dinner (highly recommended):

And, finally, this banana bread recipe that I forgot to take a picture of before demolishing it.

Ken has enjoyed cooking lately, too, and it appears he's finally warming up to my apron that he so hated when I first modeled it for him a few weeks ago:

In other news, Toronto has noraebangs! Remember the private karaoke rooms in Korea I was always raving about? Well, Toronto boasts a fairly large selection of noraebangs in Korea Town. Of course, Ken and I have already paid one of these fine establishments a visit (twice). We went last Friday night with our good friends, Kevin and Meaghan--who also just returned from Korea, and sang our hearts out to the tunes of Mika, Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga, The Beatles, and just about any other artist we recognized in the song books (actually recognizing the songs was of little importance). 

 (We were really excited to be there.)

When we were finished singing and could no longer speak, we headed out and noticed a sign on the noraebang's door that read: "Unlimited singing time for the price of one hour, Monday--Wednesday before 9p.m." Seriously? To an unemployed Ken and Liz, there couldn't be better news! (Unless they actually offered us jobs.) I think it goes without saying that, from here on out, we'll be living at the noraebang.

Birthday & Beef

Story #1: My Birthday Adventures

My birthday this year (January 2nd!) was spent in a freezing cold airport in northern China--waiting for a flight to Seoul--for most of its entirety. It was an exhausting day but, thankfully, I have some dear friends who surprised me with a birthday cake while we were sitting in a Chinese KFC in Dalian, China (a city that turned out to be surprisingly huge, considering I had never even heard of it before... but I suppose it is China).

The cake and surprise were great but, needless to say, my 22nd birthday (ahem!) won't go down in history as my best birthday ever. My most unusual birthday? Perhaps.

Ken, however, redeemed the last birthday of my twenties this past Friday evening. He very kindly called together a group of ten people to have a little belated-birthday party for me, in all of my mopey, nobody-loves-me glory. (I'm a master at feeling sorry for myself!) It started out at my favorite Thai restaurant in Korea for some yummy green curry and ended in my favorite noraebang in Haeundae (my favorite because it comes complete with a view of Haeundae beach, allowing us to serenade the unaware-people going for a stroll along the shoreline). It was the perfect little birthday outing and I wouldn't have wanted to celebrate it any other way! And without further ado, here are some photos of the evening's highlights:

Here is Mel at the Thai restaurant, trying to take apart her "shrimp" plate that she had ordered (she had no idea it would look like this):

Does anyone else find this entree a little terrifying? Kudos to Mel for eating the whole thing (except the legs and eyeballs)!

Now, from here on out, the photos are about to get blurry and grainy. The reason for this being that, once again, we only took video and forgot to take actual pictures that night. Since I've found uploading videos on this blog to be next to impossible, I decided to take a few still-shots from the birthday videos. As I've mentioned before, I'm either really bad at doing this, or getting a clear shot from Ken's video camera is simply impossible (I have a feeling it's probably the former, though). Here we go....

Here are the ladies singing "Mama Mia" at the noraebang:

If we're looking a little too serious about this business, it's because most of us only really knew the chorus of the song.

Here are some of the boys singing "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (a song they take very seriously, as indicated by Ken's delicate grip on the microphone and Kevin's emphatic hand-motions):

Here's my birthday cheese cake, courtesy of Costco, complete with ten candles (very gracious, considering I'm practically old enough to be a 10-year-old's mother--eek!):

An evil-looking picture, no doubt! Here's the only other still-image I could grab of the cake-event, taken while Mel and Gino sang the Korean-version of the "Happy Birthday Song":

Hello, crazy eyes!

And, last but not least, a picture of our impromptu dance party that took place while Ken bellowed out the notes to "The Twist":

Just a teeny bit embarrassing, I'd say! But a whole lot of fun, nevertheless.

And now moving on to our 2nd story: The Bulgogi Adventure

For my birthday, Mel and Gino generously gave me a gift certificate to a new, fancy bulgogi restaurant in Haeundae. Now, bulgogi is a Korean food I like because--hey!--you can't go too wrong with beef, right? Unless, of course, it's raw. Well, last night Ken and I decided to take advantage of my birthday gift, so we meandered on over to Bulgogi Brothers (the name of said restaurant) for an early dinner (which also happened to be the first meal of our pathetically lazy day). After arriving at the restaurant and being seated in a cozy booth in our own little corner, we were surprised to find the entire menu was in Korean! (Duh, we live in Korea, but usually popular restaurants include an English menu around here, so we were ignorantly surprised, nevertheless.) We can both read Korean, but we understand very little, so we decided it would be a safe option to simply order the standard "couple set" and see where that would take us. Guess what? It took us to an enormous tray of raw beef! Some of the beef was meant to be cooked on the grill in front of us, but a fairly large portion of it was not meant to be cooked at all. That's right: We accidentally ordered beef that was meant to be eaten in its raw form! Eww. Now, if I hadn't known the meat was supposed to be eaten like this, I would have given the restaurant some points for presentation:

...but it was meant to be eaten like this, so they lost some points (even though it was our own fault for not learning enough Korean to understand the menu).

Anyway, to make a long story short, we both ignored our gag-reflexes and tried to pretend like eating a raw, freshly-killed-cow was great. Ken ate his entire share of it and I put a large dent in mine (I was quite proud of myself). Truthfully? It didn't taste too bad. It tasted like... beef that happened to be raw. The texture, on the other hand, was a bit repulsive. I was proud of myself for eating as much as I did because I'm extremely sensitive to texture, which makes me a bad candidate for mushroom-eating of any kind. Raw meat? I would rather eat my toenails, thank you very much. But I did it! And here's what I looked like while doing it:

The look of terror on my face isn't even remotely fake. Coincidentally, the sign in the background resembles the exact thought in my head at that very moment.

And here's Ken, not handling it much better than I did:

To be fair to Bulgogi Brothers, the rest of the meat was pretty good (the cooked meat). It was definitely high-quality meat (or maybe I'm just assuming it was, since it was pretty pricey). Here's a not-so-flattering photo of some of our other entrees:

And there you have it. Our bulgogi adventure. To top it all off, it gave us both diarrhea just a few short hours after eating it. Of course, it may have been more psychologically-induced than raw-beef-induced. Regardless, my new New Year's resolution? Become a vegetarian!

Randoms

I was looking through my picture file today and found a few random photos that never made it on to Facebook, Blogger, or Flickr (not that I've used Flickr in ages, anyway). Since I have the day off today (thanks to the Chuseok holiday) and I'm currently sitting in Starbucks and focusing very hard on being nonproductive, I decided to throw some of the pics up here. So let the randomness begin....

The Market:

Ken and I shop at the Haeundae street market as often as we can (you know, supporting local business and agriculture like the good people that we are). I realized the last time we were there how accustomed I've become to seeing things like these on a relatively regular basis, so I had Ken (my personal photographer, apparently) snap a picture of it so we could shock and awe people back home:

Yes, these heads previously belonged to hogs and, yes, you see these at nearly every Korean market place. At least they appeared to be happy about being decapitated. Have I ever eaten the meat of a hog's head? Probably, but it sure didn't look like this on my plate.

We bought nuts and (what we thought was) brown rice at this stand once. Upon cooking the "rice," however, we realized it definitely wasn't what we originally thought it was. It was chewy and tasteless... and we still had no idea what it was. Needless to say, I chickened out and took my brown-rice-business to a grocery store chain (I'm a little ashamed of myself).

The Great Flood of 2009:

A couple of months ago, Korea had it's largest rainfall in over 80 years. Lucky for us, we got the day off due to flooding. Unlucky for the city of Busan, some of their streets ended up looking like this:

Under the water is a street. Over the water is an overpass for walkers and bikers. I'm just guessing, but the water seemed to be about 15 feet deep. Ken took some more pictures of the flooding (and all of the stupid people who insisted on driving their cars through the flood and promptly got stuck), but they apparently didn't make it onto my computer as I can't seem to locate them. Ah well. Moving on....

Norae Bhang:

I've mentioned the norae bhang here before, but for people who don't know what it is, let me just say: it's my number one favorite thing about Korea. A lot of Westerners refer to it as Korean karaoke, which is accurate. But the difference between Korean karaoke and North American karaoke is that it isn't a bar and you get your own private room in which you can bellow away with no one there to boo you off the stage. You can rent rooms of various sizes, but the average "singing room" can accommodate four to eight people and it comes complete with microphones, tambourines, a huge selection of Engrish and Korean songs, and (the best part) a strobe light. Ken and I are big norae bhang nerds, so we frequently go on Friday nights (just the two of us) and sing until we can't sing anymore, which usually takes about three hours.

These three are our favorite norae bhang partners, for obvious reasons. Andrea and Meaghan really get into it, and Kevin is an accomplished tambourine player.

Ken frequently gets annoyed with me for messing up his songs. I've been officially banned from "Phantom of The Opera."

Cooking Adventures:

Here is a picture of a coconut chicken curry we made (adapted from the mango chicken recipe on Elana's Pantry... we couldn't find mangoes, so we had to improvise):

And, yes, we might have the ugliest plates (or bowls... I'm not really sure what this thing is) on the planet. But they were free!

Ken's Hair:

A couple of weeks ago, Ken decided to shave his head. He does it on a fairly regular basis, so this news isn't normally noteworthy. This time, however, he accidentally put the wrong attachment on his razor and didn't realize it until after the first swipe:

And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to look forward to in the future:

Try not to be jealous.

And this concludes my randomness for the day. I feel strangely productive, considering the amount of time I've just wasted.

----------------------------Update!------------------------------

I forgot to include a picture of our '96 Avante piece of crap that GOT HIT TODAY by a Korean lady who apparently wasn't trained to check her rear-view mirror before backing up. Our poor car got crunched as we were following her out of a parking lot this afternoon. Fortunately, the front license plate took the brunt of it and rendered our bumper dent-free. Phew! Anyway, as much as I love the car, this picture is a teensy bit deceiving. It doesn't look nearly this lovely in real life, plus it is currently covered in about a 1/2 inch of crud and has a recently-crushed license plate perched precariously on the front bumper: