Tried & (soon-to-be) True Recipe: Galbi Jjim

Happy Saturday!

Today was a super sweet day because this was one of the only days in the past month or so that Eugene and I were able to be at home together for the majority of the day. Usually either one of us is gone all day because of school and/or work so we rarely get to spend more than one full hour together, so today was a real treat. Most of the day was spent studying, cleaning and seeing family but it was just nice to be at home.

Today I accomplished one of my March goals: I made Galbi Jjim! (Korean Braised Beef)

I've been wanting to try this dish for a long time, but never got around to it. Last week, I asked a few sisters at my church to share their crock pot secrets/recipes, and my friend HMC shared her recipe for Galbi Jjim and I was immediately inspired! I tweaked her recipe and adapted a few others I found online, and went for it today! It was pretty good. I think I messed up with the marinade somewhere so I wouldn't suggest this recipe to anyone quite yet, but here is Galbi Jjim Recipe Round One.

I went to Ranch 99 to gather my supplies since we don't have a Korean market ANYWHERE here. (So sad!) You should've seen me in the meat line with all those loud, fearless chinese ladies. I got cut by like 5 chinese ladies and it ended up taking more than 10 minutes to get my short ribs for this recipe. I gotta learn me some chinese..The best thing about this recipe is that 1) there are not a whole lot of ingredients 2) it's in a slow cooker so you just toss it all in, turn it on, and serve. It's amazing!

First you gather your ingredients. That's gotta be the biggest portobello mushroom ever.

I chopped my vegetables, layered it in the crock pot, and threw the meat on top. I scored the meat with my fork to help it marinate more evenly. I made the marinade and poured it over to cover the meat.

5 hours of slow cooking resulted in this: Hot, steamy, juicy meat fallin' off the bones galbi jjim! A little salty and a little too much juice -- but it was pretty good!

I served it with a simple korean salad and chopped kimchi. Yum!

A few things I will do differently next time:

• I'm gonna soak the meat in water for a longer period of time to get some more of the fat off before throwing it in. There is so much fat/lard on this piece of meat, I was trying to scoop it off before serving it and the fat on my spoon solidified in minutes. Yack! 
• I might even boil the meat a little bit to get the fat off!
• I'm gonna try boiling the hard vegetables (carrots and potatoes) slightly and lay the vegetables over the meat. I put these vegetables on the bottom of my crock pot because I figured it would require the most heat to cook through, but because the marinade hung out mostly in the bottom of the pot, it made my vegetables pretty salty.
• I'm gonna try putting less marinade. After I added the marinade, I kept adding more water to try and cover all the vegetables and meat because I was afraid the meat wouldn't cook through... and then I added more soy sauce because I was afraid it would turn out too bland. And then I lost count of how much water/soysauce I was putting in there and it ended up being too salty in the end. Lesson learned! Just let it dry out a little! It'll be juicy anyway, I assure you!

I have another batch of the short ribs left so I'll try it again after a week or so!
After my clogged arteries get cleared up a bit :)

If anyone has any tips for me, please let me know!!! I'm open to suggestions... I have much to learn :)

Give thanks - a Saturday to spend with Eugene, days off to recover after a long week of work, sleeping in, quiet time to read, Cafe Roule, encouraging conversations with Tammy, reminders that our God is sovereign over ever season

Lessons on death, dying and life in Christ.

My heart is heavy tonight.

For the past two days, I took care of a terminally ill patient at work. A few days before arriving to the Emergency Room-- she had been volunteering at hospitals, driving her little Prius around to have brunch with her girlfriends and would go to the theaters to catch a movie with her grandchildren. In a split second, her life was changed forever. Last week, she was an independent individual-- doing her taxes, gardening her plants, making lunch for herself. This week, her family had to undergo the painstaking task of deciding whether to prolong her life or let her go in peace. I grew a deep love and sense of brokenness for this family in the few days I've spent with them. I held their hand as they finally made the decision to stop aggressive interventions to save her life. I walked them through the process of dying and the priority of comfort, and pain-relief during this time. I heard their stories. I was broken for them. In a million pieces.. broken.

Our lives are so fragile.

Thoughts and experiences of death and dying help us to see things with sober eyes. We are reminded yet again of the brevity of life, the fragility of the human body and the temporality of the physical. Death is inevitable. It is forthcoming for all of us and no one is exempt. With human power, medical research and modern technology, we can only postpone death but never prevent it from happening. Most people find thoughts of death to be morbid and dark and scary. However, I think that remembering that our lives are short and that our days are numbered help us to live our day to day life with greater wisdom. When we see our lives for what they really are, that argument you had with such and such becomes a small ordeal -- the few dollars you got ripped off from property management companies become insignificant -- and the amount of money you have, the grades on your chemistry exam, the size of your house, your reputation -- it all becomes no big thang. Thinking about death is necessary. The most difficult thing about death is that we have absolutely no control over it. There is no telling that we will wake up tomorrow, or that a boulder will not fall on our head in 5 seconds to crush our brains (okay, maybe not a boulder.) No matter how much we fear death, we can't do anything to prevent it. 

In the bible, God teaches us that we are ALL dead in our sins. Even as living, breathing people, the deepest parts of our souls are rotten dead in our sins. As dead people, we had no ability to even know we were dead, to realize the helplessness and depravity of our "dead-ness". We couldn't ask to be saved because we didn't realize we needed to be saved! Yet, God in His mercy provided a way for us to be saved from the death we were blindly enslaved to. Jesus died to pay for the sins we could not pay, and God rose Him back to life to demonstrate his power over sin and death. A victory which is now ours. He not only resuscitated us from our death, but gave us new life -- a life that we could now live abundantly forever. Though death is forthcoming for me, I do not fear death. I know that the power of death has been disarmed by the resurrection of my Savior. Physical death only serves as a shadow of the reality of our condition before we are saved. It reminds me that life without Christ is life without purpose or true, lasting hope. It reminds me that if death is inevitable and forthcoming for everyone, that I need to live with a greater sense of urgency to share this message of eternal life! 

God has given us new life.. let us live it abundantly.

Let's give lots of hugs. Let's love relentlessly and unconditionally. Let's preach the gospel with all our hearts and with every ounce of strength and opportunity God provides so that those around us may find true life and experience the joy and hope of knowing Christ as their Savior too.

Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel..

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:1-7

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

         But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57

My ambitious March goals

I've been really slacking on my monthly goals this year. January and February were busy with moving/packing/unpacking/leasing/etc, but now that the majority of the moving drama is over-- it's time to get back to business. I always want to be cooking more, cleaning more, crafting more, sewing more, organizing more, etc... but I realize I'm the type of person that needs a plan. I thrive on strategies, agendas and to-do lists. I know these are a lot of goals, and some of them are quite ambitious seeing that we are already through the first week of the month. Please wish me luck anyways. :)

Here are my goals for March 2013:

1) Learn at least ONE sentence in sign language. (I was inspired by a deaf patient I had a few weeks ago!)
2) Make Galbi Jjim in my slow cooker. Yum!
3) Hem my super long scrub pants with my sewing machine
4) One week with NO spicy food. (OMG, I'm mentally preparing for this now..)
5) Finish a book (I still want to read at least 12 books in 2013!)

Give Thanks: a great day of work, peppermint white mocha to warm me up after a night of horrible sleep (or lack of sleep), free food, reminders that everything we have is a gift of grace-- totally unmerited, undeserved gifts of grace

Everyday Life in February (I can't believe it's already March!)

Man, February flew by sooooo fast. The month started off with a trip to NorCal for Berean's church plant, I precepted Amanda at work this entire month (Hi, Amanda!), we leased out our Irvine apartment and we're still unpacking here in SGV. Eugene and I are still adjusting to him being in Pharmacy school-- I'm learning to cope/adjust to him never being home and he's learning how to give attention to a needy wife in the midst of his busy, busy schedule. :o) It was a busy month, and I can't believe it's already March!

Here's what last month looked like:

I've been driving to LA a lot more often since we've moved out here, and it's been nice! Even though I still loathe LA traffic and crazy drivers and narrow lanes with faded white lines that probably need to be painted -- it's been a blessing living closer to my parents. :)

Whenever I drive home from LA, my GPS always routes me through random highways to help me beat traffic. Can't beat this view though!

Being in SGV means that we eat more Chinese food than we ever had in our whole lives-- which also means that our hot teas come with huge bottles of condensed milk. Yay

This is one of our favorite late night go-to hot spots. Because most of our date nights are after 8 or 9PM, we were so happy to find a place open til midnight!

Korean BBQ is always and forever going to be my top favorite foods. 

Walking in the grove is so therapeutic. We saw Lindsay Lohan's mom with some paparrazi this day.

I took a short weekend trip to Norcal for Berean Peninsula's first service EVER! It was a sweet weekend of great fellowship, superbowl fun and LOTS of good food. One of the highlights was being able to spend time with this guy :)

My mom took a trip to Korea/Australia this month so I drove to LA a few times to see my dad and sister. We ate gamjatang for dinner, and it was my first time! It was so yummy!

This needed a close up, but unfortunately it came out a bit blurry. Looks beautiful anyway :)

Our furniture came in early last month and we've been settling in ever since.

My first hang out in SGV! So thankful that I have friends who live out here so I can try new things with them. Can't wait for all of you to be on summer break so I can hang out with you guys more!

It was Cat's birthday this past month so of course we had to celebrate after small group! I bought a princess hat from Target so that she could feel special. :) 

This is our 3rd month here but we're still unpacking. This was actually TODAY and I'm still not done. le sigh.. slow and steady wins the race.

Even though this post is about February, I have to share about what I did today! I built my very own bookcase. Even though it was from Ikea and probably any college freshman could do it-- It was VERY heavy and it was very tiring. The most exciting part was putting my books back on my shelf... in alphabetical order (by author) hehe

 February was a busy month! Hopefully we get to rest a little now that all the leasing/moving stuff is over. Cheers to a joyful month of March!

Give Thanks - a day off to catch up on chores, chicken pho, netflix to entertain me while folding mountains of laundry, sleep before another day of work