New Beginnings in November

(View of Middlesex Fells, Massachusetts) 

I've thought about restarting my blog many times over the years, especially when I try new food that is astoundingly good or make something that I didn't know how to before. However, I always get hung up on how long it has been since I last posted. After much consultation and debate, I am going to attempt to start writing again. I hope to continue to provide everyone with a sense of wonder for places they have yet to go or exist in routinely. Further, I think by discussing some of the cooking that occurs at home with my friends and family, I can offer a way for people to bring some of these places and sensations to where they are. I might not update frequently, but let's hope it takes less time than 4 years.

(Subarashii Toro Don at Mr. Tuna in Portland, Maine)

To start, let's catch up. Since my last post, many things have happened. I moved to Japan briefly to study abroad in Kyoto, which led me to dive further into the locality of cuisine. I spent a lot of time appreciating how when I travelled across Japan, each region is known for certain ingredients which do well there - a sentiment that it feels harder to find in a globalized world which can have every ingredient at its fingertips whenever it wants. I was also gifted with the experience of my host mom cooking for me and teaching me how to cook, which has let me share my love of okonomiyaki with many. I hope to share some of these loose recipes and travels here, which will hopefully be expanded on in a future trip to Japan.

(Okayama Korakuen in Okayama, Japan)

While I was studying in Kyoto, the now routine aspect of our lives, Covid-19, caused the closure of the in-person aspect of my program. This led to me returning back to Oklahoma until my senior year of undergrad in Boston. It also provided a chance for me to seriously expand my cooking skills. I tested out (mostly) vegan lasagna using a tofu ricotta, the aforementioned okonomiyaki, pajeon (Korean green onion pancakes), and jjimdak (Korean braised chicken). This served as the launching pad that I continued to grow from after graduating in Boston in the Spring of 2021.

(Cinco de Mayo preparations in 2020, including homemade salsas, in Oklahoma)

That is not to say there was not a lot of cooking or trying foods in my senior year at Boston University, in fact it was quite the opposite. I found my favorite Thai restaurant in Boston (Sugar and Spice) and my favorite Vietnamese restaurant (Ba Le Restaurant). These became staples I visited even after I no longer lived in Boston and only came to visit friends. Further, senior year was when I cooked my first turkey for Thanksgiving with my friends on the Cape (it was not a whole turkey, but details... details...). It also began the lifelong experimentation of recreating the makgeolli smoothies from Makgeolli Salon Beer (막걸리싸롱) in Sinchon. There have been many iterations, but strawberry is still certainly the best. We'll just have to make it a couple more times to find out...

(Thanksgiving 2020 at Cape Cod, Massachusetts)

After leaving Boston, I returned to Oklahoma to start my Masters program at the Australian National University remotely due to ongoing border closures. It was certainly a weird time, not least of all due to becoming nocturnal in order to attend my classes that often started at 10pm CST for me. This meant that while I was not up in the morning (I was heading to bed around 6am), I was normally on dinner duty. It served as a break from my ongoing studying and paper writing, as well as a way to see other members of the household. This let me continue to test out new recipes and improve upon ones that had become classics, like shakshouka: which allowed us to use ingredients from our own garden (eggs, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and peppers). 

(Shakshouka in Oklahoma)

(Brownie cookies and gingerbread men in Oklahoma)

When I had time during the semester or after it was over, I spent time traveling, and visiting friends. That way we could see each other on normal sleep schedules in New York or Seattle. As the holidays progressed, family and friends got together in order to orchestrate one of the biggest cookie bakes in recent history. We had brownie cookies, chocolate chip with hazelnuts, gingerbread, sugar cookies, thumbprints with raspberry jam, to name a few. It was a proper test run of the future bakers coalition. And then, after we had baked goods until we could eat them no longer, everyone left. Even me.

(Chirashi bowl at Rondo in Seattle, Washington)

(Ca Phe Trung and Ca Phe La Dua at Hello Em cafe in Seattle, Washington)

The borders had finally opened up, which meant it was off to Australia for me. Frankly, the adjustment was unlike any other. Canberra, the capital and where ANU is located, is small, especially after living in Boston, Seoul, or Kyoto. It's a small city, but it's one that is still packed with lots of flavor and adventure. I met many new friends and met some in person for the first time. We learned all the good spots, I'm looking right at you, La Baguette by R&M at the School of Art and Design. We also did a lot of home cooking, I'm sure some people at Lena thought the communal kitchen was just where we lived. I'll always treasure trying my hand at kimbap, without any of the correct tools to roll it. Not having the correct tools was honestly the theme of the year. Could we make flan in a pie tin with no measuring implements? Yes. It was phenomenal for the eyeballing everything but the eggs.

(Rabbokki in Canberra, Australia)

(Chocolate mousse cake, salad, tart slice, and smoked salmon sandwich from La Baguette in Canberra, Australia)

(Garlic bread, hojicha latte, and black sesame basque cheesecake from Tori's in Melbourne, Australia)

These cooking experiences in Lena, coupled with a course I took on creativity and research methods led me to looking at cooking as a research method. While this might seem overly obvious to some of you who know me, it was something that at the time, I hadn't really considered. It allowed me to bring together my love for food and my interest in using it as a method of communication for understanding people. It's a way that many people come together, which is something I explored in my paper submission for an international conference held in Korea at Yonsei University.

(Pumpkin pie sans measurement in Canberra, Australia)

Since then, I have continued to pursue food as my number one hobby. Cooking food and eating it, together with people I enjoy, has only gotten to be a bigger part of my life. Now that I have graduated from my Masters and am living in Lynn, most of my time spent with friends is around food. We travel to New York or Portland and eat our way through multiple places. We have a saying: we have to eat at at least four places a day. It's often many more than that, but we're sharing and need to try everything – who knows when we'll get to be there again. Or we spend time at one of our apartments trying to bake key lime pie, make mapo tofu fries (life-changing, will bring you to a higher plane of existence, I swear), or pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

(Olive oil orange cake with pomegranates, creme fraiche, and rosemary in Oklahoma)

(Mezze and dips at Au Za'atar in New York)

That brings us to the present. There's clearly a lot of places and foods to share with all of you. I hope you'll enjoy reading along as I share the places I go next and the food that I make. Maybe some of the loose recipes will make you feel like you're there too or will bring you out of your cooking comfort zone. Or perhaps you'll furiously star all the restaurants and cafes for your own travels. At the very least, the pictures and the words might give you a bit of a break.

(Monmouth, Maine)

I'll update soon! Thanks.