Lunar New Year food recap

Here are some eats from my Lunar New Year hols in Cheonan.


Someone gifted us with a purdy box set of Korean traditional snacks. Korea's version of a box of chocolates. Thank goodness it wasn't a box of spam.


Toast for breakfast with fresh fruit, carrots, and avocado!


Avocado is so ridiculously expensive in Korea, these little morsels were indeed precious. I remember back in Ivory Coast, there were several avocado trees around my boarding school compound and we'd climb them and pluck fresh avocados! We'd just slice then open, sprinkle with some salt and pepper and spoon the creamy goodness it into our mouths. Yum.


My mom and I also got busy putting together homemade vegan mandu. Recipe here. Over several meals, the mandu got cooked in various dishes, using all sorts of methods, such as...


steaming....


... boiling in 두부전골 (type of tofu soup, except the tofu is hidden underneath all the veggies and mandu)...


... fried euuup...


... and last but not least, cooked in a big pot of vegan tteok-guk, which is absolutely essential on Lunar New Years. Mandu tteok-guk all the wayy!

And here are some pics of the banch' lineup, made by either my mom or aunt:

fresh sea vegetable salad


peanut jorim


spinach banchan


kimchi


sauteed white radish banchan and sea vegetable salad


bean sprout banchan


Finally, to add a little 'western' flair to the holiday, for one meal, we roasted up some veggies including pumpkin, potatoes, onions, red bell peppers, enoki mushrooms, and carrots. Everything got tossed together with olive oil, agave syrup, balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, dijon mustard, dried basil, oregano, parsley, and salt and pepper. The best part about roasting veggies is you can just leave it to cook in the oven while you focus on cooking the other dishes, and in the end, you have an amazingly flavorful, colorful dish. So good~

Aiights. That was a super speedy recap. Hope everyone had a good holiday~~ Ta ta!