Green Day

A trip the town of Hwasun today, again to visit Lucy's Auntie, Sook-ja. Lucy's Mum, Mi-ja, was there too, helping out her sister who unfortunately fell and broke her arm last week.

The two women are very much from the more old-fashioned, traditional vein of Koreans, so spending time at home with them is usually on a par with having your very own pair of hyperactive servants. On average, they asked me if I was hungry every five seconds, and Lucy later informed me that when I took a nap on the sofa they had a long discussion about whether it was best for my health to let me sleep, or to wake me up and give me food.
Lucy is persistently asked by her Mum if she is looking after me properly, feeding me well and generally taking care of me. It's quite the different world from what we're used to in the west, and it's an attitude that seems to be changing quickly with much of Korea's younger generation.

Sook-ja's arm injury is especially bad as she lives to keep busy and loves preparing a variety of great Korean foods each day. Lucy's Mum is much the same, and so every time we meet we come away with bags, jars and boxes jam-packed with all manner of delicious concotions.
Above are some rice cakes prepared by Sook-Ja, along with a glass of her home-made grape juice. Korean grapes are dark purple, with a large stone inside and thick skin that isn't eaten. I can't stand them or the store-bought juice, yet somehow this home-made stuff is sheer liquid joy . The grapes are slowly boiled all day, and then the mixture is wrapped in cloth and the juice sqeezed out. The result is a thick liquid that is incredibly sweet, despite no sugar being added - and of course we got our own bottle to take home with us.

The strange looking green things are songpyeon, just one of the many varieties of Korean rice cake, or deok. Deok are served in all manner of ways, both sweet and savoury, and the songpyeon above were at one time Korea's answer to candy. They are slowly being relegated to the role of 'traditional' food however, now consumed by some only on holidays where Korean traditions and foods are still upheld. They're now often store-bought too, much to the horror of the older generation, who still prepare their own from scratch.

Songpyeon are made by mixing rice powder with boiling water to create a kind of dough. Small dough parcels are then filled with a mixture of ground sesame seeds and brown sugar (sweet bean paste or honey syrup can also be used). They are then steamed over layers of pine needles - the needles stop them sticking together as well as giving them a faint pine flavour.

The finished product is pretty tasty, but also a bit of an acquired taste with some foreigners. The sticky, incredibly dense texture is quite unusual, and whilst I usually find them delicious I can only handle a couple in one sitting.
The main time they're consumed in Korea is on the harvest festival of Chuseok, and hopefully enough mothers can pass on their knowledge so future generations can continue in the home-made tradition.