belated and somewhat lame Lunar New Year's soup

Traditionally, for the lunar new year, Koreans eat ddeokguk (rice-cake soup—example here).  I find ddeokguk somewhat boring, so I always spring for the alternative:  ddeok manduguk, which is basically ddeokguk plus mandu (i.e., gyoza, dumplings*).

In that spirit, I made some ddeok manduguk yesterday as a belated way to celebrate the lunar new year (the official Seollal was on Friday the 12th):

I went cheap and used ground beef, but hey—I liked the result.

Very little of the above is homemade, I confess.  The mandu (which were the wrong kind, but they were on sale, so whatever) were premade and frozen; the ddeok (elliptical rice cakes) were premade and sold in a huge plastic, vacuum-sealed bag; the beef was pre-ground; the broth was powdered chicken bouillon from a can.  The overall quality was mediocre, but it made for good comfort food.  I ate two big bowls.  No regrets.

So that's how I celebrated Lunar New Year on Valentine's Day.

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*I actually can't stand the name "potsticker."  It sounds incredibly ugly to me, which is why I didn't include it, above, as a synonym.  The term sucks all the sexy out of the situation, like when a guy refers to women's tits as "funbags," or when he refers to a woman's lovely, curvaceous ass as a "pooper."  Ick.  Have some respect, fellas.  Tits and ass!