Hi there! It's been quite a long time since I wrote the first letter. I really wanted to write in time, but I had to study for my English test, TOEIC. Have you ever heard about this test? Anyway, I did the test last Sunday. I haven't got the result, but I'm pretty confident. haha. While I studied for this test, I thought this would be a good theme to write on this blog; Korea being obsessed with English! However, it's not today's theme. Today I want to introduce some athentic Korean food we eat on traditional holidays like New Year's day. Asian New Year's day was on January 26. I made some food with my mom at home for the holiday and suddenly this idea came to me; Take photoes of these foods for the blog!

Asian New Year's day is different from Western's. Traditionally we use the Calendar based on the Moon. We call it as "Yin" Callendar comparing to "Yang" Callendar(means Gregoric Callendar). Some people call this as "Chinese Calendar".(For more information; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar) Anyway, Korea follows the Gregorian Callendar for daily life, but for traditional holidays and sometimes for birthdays, we use Yin Callendar.

One funny thing about Korean tradition related to New Year's day is we consider we become one year older at that day, not at our own birthday. It doesn't matter when you were born. Everyone gets one more year old at the same moment. Isn't it weird? I think it's kind of unfair, because I was born in December! haha.

At New Year's day, we eat the special food, "Tugguk", which means rice cake soup. We think when we eat "Tugguk", we gain one more year old. I think this came from the language practice; When we get older, we say "I eat one more year old". We use the verb "eat", so it became related to the food for New Year's day. It's just my guess.

New Year's day fllowing Yin Calendar is one of the two biggest holidays in Korea. The other is Korean Thanks giving day. These are the days for family gathering. People go to their home to see their family, usually their parents, because many people living in cities were from little town, and on special holidays they go visit their parents. Cooking the foods is really important part of the holiday tradition. It often becomes a controversial issue, because cooking is considered as women's responsibility, especailly the wives. Traditionally, wives go visit their husband's family, not their own one. While men prepare the traditional ceremony dedicated to the ancestors, women cook all the foods and wash the dishes all by themselves. Comparing to the cooking, preparing the ceremony is so simple. It's the most important day for family gathering, but at the same time, it's the time when husband and wife fight and argue a lot. This tradition is getting more attention and became a public issue. Some men emerged, who help their wives cook and wash the dishes. Some husbands and wives decided to visit each one's family in turn. But these are still few.

Luckily(?) I'm still single, and my mom and I don't have many people to come or visit, so we made some food for ourselves. It needs quite an effort, but it's always fun and exciting. (Because it's just for two people! In some cases, people cook for more than 20 people. Imagine the amount of the food!)

If everyone can participate in cooking altogether, cooking could be really fun and good opportunity to work on something together as a family. You can learn some special knowledge from mothers about how to cook well.

The photoes I'm going to show you here, are the procedure of making "Mandu". There are similar foods in China. In Korean style, we put KimChi in it with many other ingredients like tofu, bean sprouts, pork, onion, and other spices. My family eat "Mandu" with "Tugguk", but not everyone does. My mom said it's local tradition around Seoul.

Hmm. I wanted to show you several photoes, but I think I can upload only one, here because of the constraint of this site. I'll link this address for you to see other photoes. Visit here, also ; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17180&id=1343647724&l=e5434

Let your eyes feel the taste! :D