Wednesday, January 29, 2025

soup

Traditionally, the Korean lunar-new-year soup is ddeokguk/떡국, a kind of rice-cake soup. I think ddeokguk is fine but a bit boring, so I made ddeokmanduguk/떡만두국, or rice-cake-and-dumpling soup. It's just a thrown-together concoction of mostly store-bought ingredients: frozen mandu (dumplings), packaged ddeok, packaged seaweed, packaged shredded beef, and mostly bouillon for the broth. I cooked the scrambled eggs and chopped the green onion; that was my little contribution to the meal. So the soup isn't traditional in any sense, but I ate two bowls of it, plus dessert and drinks, so I'm now all carbed up for the next month. I'll have to fast strictly, or do something close to that, tomorrow. Here's hoping I don't die tonight, killed by an excess of carbs.

Happy Lunar New Year! The year can begin in earnest now; Koreans see the lunar new year as the "real" new year. Solar new year (what we Yanks simply call "New Year's") is a Western convention, not a huge, family event.

broth, ddeok, mandu, beef, egg, and scallions

Second bowl:

broth, ddeok, mandu, beef, egg, and scallions, plus quail eggs, kimchi, and seasoned seaweed

Enjoy the day. One more day of holiday for most of the Korean working world, but just more "vacation" for me. I'll continue with Skillshare courses tomorrow. I ought to blog about what I'm learning. Feynman says, rightly, that you should demonstrate your understanding by teaching back what you've learned. Hey, it's in my book. And credited to Feynman!


2 comments:

  1. Soup looks yummy! I like the Lunar New Year better than what they call it here--Chinese New Year. It's a big holiday with schools and government offices closed. Hiking through the tall grasses yesterday, I couldn't help but wonder if "the year of the snake" might be an ominous warning. Just to be safe, I invited the guy behind me to go first...

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  2. Good to see you carrying on the traditions! Can't ring in the new year without some ddeok-guk.

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