The Fowler Family Blog

which is easy ignored when eating Swedish Pancakes…  Some of you have tasted my mom’s excellent Swedish Pancakes that can be described as being very similar to Crepes.  (They are NOT crepes my mom’s voice echos from Ohio, they are VERY DIFFERENT from crepes.) 

I finally made them tonight for dinner since Ryan has been begging me to make them for weeks. 

Ryan ate FOUR of them and I ate FIVE, yes FIVE!  I figure that at least one of them would be going straight to Cormac so I should induldge. 

Thank you dad for giving me the recipe!  They were wonderful!

Bill mentioned that he LOVED cinnamon rolls, so I decided to make my mom’s “famous” ones.  She made two batches while she was visiting us and we were already craving them again.  I had to take a picture to show how delicious they looked.  Yummy!

I was thrilled to receive this care package. Kristi and the family sent me a really sweet card and a few of my favorite foods from Trader Joe’s. I’ve already eaten some of the Pirate’s Booty. Yummy!

We decided to give homemade gifts to our friends on base and since they all rave about my salsa (wow, I’m sooooo humble- I have to attribute the secret recipe to my daddy), we came up with the idea of putting it in jars. After I made the salsa Ryan ended up doing all of the work putting it in the jars and pasturizing it.

Despite the warning that we gave people about it being our first experience at jarring, The CSO and his wife Edna said that it was delicious Oh, and Chaps and his family liked it too.

Last Sunday we decided to go along on a road trip with Tolu (first mistake;-) and a few other people from base. We were going to go to Osan Air Base which is about 4.5 hours from here. Ryan said that the night before he “had a bad feeling” about going, but didn’t say anything. The sheer fact of having to leave at 5 am might have been reason enough.

So after being on the road for about 2 hours, snow starting falling. We saw 4 car accidents in a row- a bus, larger than ours was on it’s side. This wasn’t about to slow Tolu down. She kept truckin’ through. We all kept saying, “TOLU SLOW DOWN!”.

When we finally got to the base, it was “closed”. Um, how can a military base be closed due to weather? After a few phone calls and frantic questions to strangers, we found out that another gate was open, but only to foot traffic. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of traipsing around in the ice, so as soon as we got there, we decided to eat lunch at a place the guard recommended- Bobby’s Tacos. They were actually wonderful and we were thrilled to have Mexican food.

Right after lunch we found our way to the train station and headed back home. Two trains, and a taxi ride later, we were finally home. (There was no way we were going to risk our lives riding back to Chinhae with “speed demon” Tolu)…

Gas money to ride with Tolu $40 (and risking your life)

Lunch $15

Train $30 per person

Taxi $20

Best Taco’s in South Korea PRICELESS…

They were the BEST $120 tacos we have ever had!

 

 

 

 

Last Saturday Ryan and I attended a Korean cooking class on base.  It was a lot of fun.  We made Bibimbap, which is a popular Korean dish The word literally means “mixed rice” or “mixed meal.”

Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with sauteed and seasoned vegetables, beef, a fried egg, and gochujang (chile pepper paste). The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating.

Vegetables commonly used in bibimbap include julienned cucumber, zucchini, carrot, mu (white radish), mushrooms, doraji (bellflower root), and laver, as well as spinach, soybean sprouts, and gosari (bracken fern stems). Dubu (tofu), either plain or sauteed, or a leaf of lettuce may be added, or beef may be substituted with chicken or seafood. Many areas of Korea typically serve a vegetarian version of the dish which may well be the more traditional alternative.

A variation of this dish, dolsot bibimbap (돌솥 비빔밥, “dolsot” meaning “stone pot”), is served in a heated stone bowl, in which a raw egg is cooked against the sides of the bowl. Before the rice is placed in the bowl, the bottom of the bowl is coated with sesame oil, making the layer of the rice touching the bowl golden brown and crispy.

Bibimbap is first mentioned in written records around 1800, as 부븸밥 (bubuimbap).

First the chef cooked the Bibimbap and then we made our own.

Yummy Vegetables

Wow-Ryan is cooking!

The finished product

 

This is an example of a typical Korean meal- lots of veggies