I Hate My Brother!

I have a thirteen-year-old brother who sometimes makes matters grow bigger. “I will have a bazaar in my next class,” said my brother. I was quiet and wondered why he is informing to me. Am I going to be involved? I became defensive. “I want to have my shop “Handmade” and I will sell things that I made by myself, and I want to sell cookies. But I don’t know how to bake cookies.” Here we go again. He wants me to help him AGAIN! I didn’t want to be involved in crazy situation so I said “no”, but he didn’t give up. He started to whine in his goose honking voice (his voice is recently breaking) and I couldn’t bear it, so I ordered him in serious tone in little bit annoyed, “Go and buy thy ingredients”. He immediately ran out to buy ingredients joyfully.

We started to make butter cookie dough. We just followed recipe and measured ingredients so it wasn’t hard. No, I should say ‘I finished’ making cookie dough, since he was playing mobile phone game all the time. I wondered why he said ‘help me’ if he do anything. He should have said ‘please do it for me’ instead. Anyway, after he stamped cookie dough in round shape, I started to bake cookies. He wanted me to show how to bake, so I put on cookie dough on frying pan (since we don’t have oven, it is hard to bake cookies. That’s why I refused his request at first). I put a lid on frying pan and waited until it baked well. I showed him what is baked well and told him that since this frying pan can’t conduct heat evenly, you should pay attention to every cookie and flip them frequently.

I thought that my job is finished, but it wasn’t. He kept shouted “Sis! Help me out! I think it’s burnt! Check this out!” while I’m reading a book in my room. Then I read the book next to the frying pan and checked whether cookies are baked enough while he played mobile game. Though it is fun to bake cookies, I felt weird because it looked like as if he is totally making me to do his own job. Plus, the worse thing is, he just didn’t recognize it is cunning behavior, so I couldn’t scold him about that because he couldn’t understand what it means, then I pressed down my anger and tried to think ‘he is kid, you can’t be mad at kid, that’s immature behavior’. After that, he left mess that he made, so I should clean the kitchen. I know it is not a behavior of grown-up, but I hate my brother!

Spring Greens

   Do you ever feel sleepy even though you slept soundly last night, in spring?
Maybe spring fever causes someone becomes sleepy and in semi conscious condition(it is called "춘곤증" in Korean). Scientists researched that spring fever emerges because of the change of length of day and night. Night becomes shorter than winter, so it causes people feel sleepy in day time. However, those scientists who researched the reason, seems like didn't find the solution for spring fever.
  In Korea, many people suffer from listless feeling of spring fever, too, and Koreans have their own solution. We eat spring greens to get rid of those feelings.
  In spring, you can see many Koreans squatting on the road side and picking wild herbs. They are not playing house, are preparing side dishes.
  There are many wild herbs in Korea, everywhere. In spring, fresh green sprouts shoot up on the flowerbeds, on the road sides, on the mountain dirts...literally everywhere! We pick those sprouts and season them. Those seasoned vegetable are called "나물(Na-mul)" in Korean and seasoned vegetables usually have aromatic, bitter taste(especially when you taste 봄나물(seasoned spring greens) they'll taste bitter). Those bitter taste makes people feel awake and helps to get out of sleepy condition.
  Also I was dozing oftenly in class this spring, but after I eat sesoned spring greens, it seems like that they keep me up. Especially, eating seasoned ixeris dentata(씀바귀) in every meal really helped me. In Korean, ixeris dentata have a meaning of 'bitter' in its Korean name. I feel I'm adapting to changed day times and I'm wide awake!

memorial service and gangjeong

   Last Saturday, my family and relatives gathered to have memorial service. If I remember correct, this ritual takes place once in 6 months and because of this, we should prepare food like fruit, Korean vegetable pancake(jeon, in Korean.), and gangjeong, which is a snack I am currently into.

 (image of gangjeon. Its source is : http://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?cid=200000000&docId=1086396&mobile&categoryId=200000399)

   Gangjeong is not a type of gang, of course, it is a kind of traditional crunchy snack of Korea. It is made up of starch syrup and fried sesame or seeds so it tastes sweet and aromatic. It is usually rectangle-shaped(some of it is round-shaped), colorful, and sticky. Plus, I can taste it only in traditional holiday, because most of stores do not sell it in common days.
  
   I felt regretful about this fact and thought that if supermarkets sold gangjeong commonly, I would buy it almost every day. However, it seems like it wouldn't be come true soon, so I tried searching the word "gangjeong" because of this regretful feeling. After I looked through the result of searching, I found a blog posting, which was saying 'how to make gangjeong'. I clicked it and read through the recipe. I was little bit surprised because it was easier than I expected. It looked like I could make it so easily and simply if I wanted to. Since its calories are quite high(I saw the information about calories under the recipe. How wicked!), I thought that I couldn't make it so often, but I was glad to have recipe. It means that I could have gangjeong if I have enough ingredients at any time. In addition, it is profane and immature to 'look forward to' memorial service to have gangjeong!