“What’s for dinner, Mom?” is the first thing my daughter would say to me once in the car when I pick her up from school. On good days I have it all planned out in my head and I’m able to answer her right away. And the day is extra good if she responds back with a “Yay! That sounds yummy, mommy!!” On not so good days, I would respond “How can you be thinking about dinner already?” Anyway, I always used to think that if someone told me what to cook for dinner everyday, it would make my life sooooo much easier. I’m sure many moms out there agree…
Now having done that for quite a number of years, and with my daughter now off to college, I decided that it would be nice to share my know-how of how to make great delicious dinners without having to spend too much time on cooking -as us moms are always short on time. So what kind of food you ask? Even though we are Korean by ethnicity, I cook all sorts of different foods, not just Korean. I just find eating one cuisine day after day, just too boring.
To also understand why I came to love so many different foods, here’s a little more about me and how I grew up –
Born as the youngest daughter of a family of 7, eating and enjoying good food was the biggest common activity my entire family enjoyed together. It was our way of celebrating, caring and simply enjoying life together wherever in the world we may be. So growing up, one of my fondest memory is of my father cooking on top of an outdoor clay oven (this is a traditional Korean oven)- the best ever ,you cannot stop eating until your belly pops, Korean chicken porridge (닭죽) in this humongous Korean iron pot(sot). Another one is of my sisters and I baking fresh apple pie at home using whatever leftover apples we had from our family apple orchard. Something you need to realize is that in the 1970s in Korea, only the very high class hotels had apple pie and it was not something that Koreans even knew about or talked about. So my sisters and I had to bake our own apple pie totally from scratch including the pie crust.
Yes, our family is an odd bunch when it comes to food. It was all because my father was a diplomat and our family lived and visited many different countries as we were growing up. Tunisia, India, Nepal, Hong Kong, Bangkok and US to name a few..
Every place we stayed, we learned to enjoy the local culture and the food and always ended up longing for it once we went back home to Korea. So our family had to get creative and re-create the good foods we enjoyed before.
So this blog is about other all sorts of ethnic foods that my family enjoys (also check out my other blog on Korean food). I will also be posting about my favorite things to have in the pantry (notice my blog url is “pantree.wordpress.com”) that can be used to just enhance flavors instantly or can be used to create instant side dishes to complete your dinner. And hopefully all of this will help my daughter when she will hear her kids say one day… “What’s for dinner Mommy?”.
Well, happy cooking and eating everyone!
What's for dinner, Mom? 