What is Tteokguk?

Tteokguk, tteok meaning rice cake and guk meaning soup in Korean, is a traditional Korean rice cake soup dish. It’s a custom to serve tteokguk on Korean (Lunar) New Year Day, but it’s a popular dish that is available throughout the year in a lot of Korean restaurants.

The restaurant version usually has more popular add-ons such as mandu. Tteokguk is not one of the most popular dishes for non-Koreans, but I’ve found it’s pretty often requested by non-Koreans who even don’t like rice cake that much.

The dish is made of a tasty beef stock with slices of tteok (rice cake), thin strips of cooked eggs, ground tofu, ground beef, and dried seaweed for seasoning.

Meaning of tteokguk on seollal in Korea

Having tteokguk on seollal is specially meaningful in a couple of aspects: first, family wants to wish the best luck and health for the forthcoming year with the food made of rice - the most significant food in Korea - and second, they celebrate that they get one year older.

In Korea, a baby becomes one year old when they are born. And he or she gets one year older when a new year starts - yes, I feel bad for the babies who are born on December 31. Maybe Koreans want to count in the nine or ten months when the baby must stay in their mom’s womb. Why would you ignore those long days?

Maybe it’s because Koreans tend to increase counting upon its beginning point rather than its ending point. When you run a track, you start to count when you start, not when you finish the first loop. Maybe Koreans want to simplify when they calculate ages. They do calculate the exact age on official documents, but generally, Koreans round up based on how many years calculated from their birth year.

Anyhow, Koreans have interestingly combined eating tteokguk and getting a year older - if you don’t eat tteokguk on the new year’s day, you don’t grow a year. I assume that many Koreans, many elder Koreans, would stop eating tteokguk if aging were such a simple matter, but sadly I believe the tradition started because they didn’t have enough food back then, especially in winter and they didn’t want their kids to have more than one serving.

My Mom’s Tteokguk

To me, tteokguk on seollal means not only about the dish itself, but about the whole preparation that my family shared. I’m pretty sure many Koreans have this kind of remembrance.

These days Koreans can easily get ready-to-go tteokguk tteok from any local groceries. They put tteock in water for a few hours to soften them before we cook, but that’s it. No additional preparation is needed. How convenient!

It takes at least three or four long steps for my mom to make the best tteokguk for seollal. First, she buys the best kind of rice, washes it and brings it to a rice-mill. It’s usually very crowded during the holidays, so my mom waits for it to be done for a couple of hours at least.

Then, mom comes back with these steamy long thin rounded rice cakes - garae tteok .

- Garae Tteok

We all taste the steamy warm garea tteok at least half of a piece. Honestly, it doesn’t have a lot of taste. It’s not sweet or anything. But somehow I never want to miss tasting the fresh garae tteok. It must be because garae tteok is so fresh and warm, and it’s the traditional food for seollal. All of my family love it.

After enjoying its bland taste, we all separate them - they can be very sticky - and put one by one on a flat area. It takes a good couple of days for them to fully dry. I mean, it should turn hard, not only dry.

When they are hard, we all get together and start to slice them up. It’s a sort of tedious and tiring job, but we all enjoy it. We take the turns because we usually have only a couple of knives and cutting boards. We watch TV shows about seollal or just talk about this and that while cutting them.

It’s just a lot of fun. And mom’s tteokguk is so delicious. Someday, I can make such tteockguk!

This year, I had tteokguk in a small restaurant “Green House” in the valley with my husband. I certainly don’t miss growing one year older, but I miss being in Korea with my Korean family during the seollal holiday.

Um, yummy!

I bet galbi and bulgogi are the top two dishes that are the most popular among non-Koreans and possibly Koreans. But when you have a chance to go to a Korean all-you-can-eat-meat lunch or dinner next time, I’d recommend chadolbagi.

Chadolbagi is a part of beef brisket that is bright, hard and fatty. Koreans usually make Shabu-shabu or pyunyuk (slices of boiled meat) dish, or barbecue it. In many Korean all-you-can-eat-meat places, they serve chadolbagi, thinly sliced and unmarinated.

The reason that chadolbagi is very popular among Koreans and probably non-Koreans is because of its delicate savory taste - actually, I can’t find the best word to describe the taste. Koreans say ‘gosohada’. It’s fattier than other parts of beef, yet it’s sliced thinly enough that each slice won’t have too much fat. Because it’s sliced thinly, chadolbagi cooks very fast. It makes sense that it’s usually served first in Korean all-you-can-eat-beef restaurants.

So why break them in such thin slices? Because they look fancier, or because they have a cutting machine?

Chadolbagi can be very tough when it’s cooked non-sliced or thick-sliced. It can be greasy too because chadolbagi itself contains more fat than other parts of beef. If you’re a regular of a Korean all you can eat meat restaurant, a kind waiter or waitress might bring you a thicker chadolbaegi slice to test when asked… (but you might not want to ring the bell for this favor only!)

The name comes from its look. Chadol in Korean means quartz or silicates and bagi is a noun of a verb ‘bakhida’, meaning ‘be stuck in’. Chadolbagi describes white fat is stuck in the red flesh as if chadol is stuck in the earth.

In Korea, beef is relatively more expensive than pork. It’s still common that Koreans satisfy their hunger for chadolbaegi with samgyupsal (samgyeopsal), thin slices of pork.

Recommended Korean all-you-can-eat restaurants in Koreatown, Los Angles coming soon. =)

- All of sudden, chadol reminds me of small round gravel. 차돌 만지고 싶다!

What I love about jajangmyun is rich black sauce, fully fried onions and other vegetables, and chewy noodles. Simply that’s everything that jajangmyun is about. I remember being quietly crazy about jajangmyun when I was a kid. My uncle actually ran a Korean style Chinese restaurant, junggukjip, in my hometown Kumi, S. Korea where their main dishes are jjajangmyeon and jjamppong. He himself made noodles from scratch and to me, they were the best noodles.

My family never abused the fact that we could have jajangmyun for free any time we wanted and luckily never had too much jajangmyun there. Jajangmyeon is one of the dishes that I never want to get tired of, so I’m grateful that I started to enjoy it early but never had too much at my uncle’s.

- Some Koreans add red Korean pepper powder on Jjajangmyun.

Jajangmyun (짜장면, also spelled Jajangmyeon, jjajangmyeon or jjajangmyun) is a Korean noodle dish topped with thick black sauce made of black soybean paste, chunjang. It’s believed that the dish, derived from Chinese dish zhajiang mian, was first introduced to Koreans in the late 19th century in Incheon, one of the main port cities of S. Korea. It became very popular among Koreans especially after the Korean War because it’s very easy to make and yet it’s tasty - it was people’s food. Even though jajangmyun originated from a Chinese dish, it took on its own identity, developing its own taste, especially in the sauce. Oh, it’s slightly less greasy, at least, to me.

After 50-minute jogging, I had instant jjajangmyun for dinner last night. As much as I love to have it in an authentic Korean style Chinese restaurant, I just don’t have a lot of opportunities. It’s mainly because I haven’t found a great restaurant, junggukjip in Koreatown, Los Angeles yet.

I usually satisfy my urge with semi-instant jajangmyeon, jjapageti or jjajjaroni. Instant jajangmyeon is less healthy and less tasty, but if you want quick and easy-to-make one, these are the ones that you want to try. Out of those two, jjapageti is generally preferred.

There is a couple of - kind of major - drawbacks about instant jajangmyeon. One, this small jajangmyeon package has about 500 calories, and two, even with such high calories, it doesn’t have a lot of nutrients. To me, it’s almost categorized as a comfort food.

When I have this instant jajangmyun, I do one of these two things not to feel guilty about it. Either I run or jog at least 30 minutes before I eat this, or I have lots of vegetables before having jjajangmyeon. Of course, all these rules are not followed when I have real jjagjangmyun in a good Chinese restaurant.

It’s already December 16th, leaving us only fifteen days more in 2008. I’ve started to think about how my 2008 has been.

In regard to health, I feel I’ve got weaker this year. It’s got harder for me to run long distance and it’s got more painful after I do it. These days I run very slowly, run less, do alternative cardio workouts or don’t exercise at all!

I’ve run less and less after my knees started to bother since last month. It’s not like I ran a half marathon. I just ran 45 to 50 minutes and I felt discomfort on my knees. It wasn’t really painful, but uncomfortable enough to make me ponder over what was wrong and what I need to do to avoid this knee discomfort.

I’ve listed what I need to do to reduce / remove my knee issue and run long distance better.

Stretching

I’ve neglected to stretch even when I am aware how important it is to do before and after running.

Knee
Stand upright and lift your right leg in a 90 degree and extend it forward slowly. Keep the toes pointing upwards. Repeat this a few times.

We can do stretching exercise anytime and anywhere, even at work. Also, we don’t necessarily need to stand up for this. If preferred, sit on a chair and do the same thing.

Hamstring
If possible, lie on your back, keep your back flat, and pull one leg toward your head with your hands. Hold behind your thigh, not behind your knee joint.

Quadriceps
Stand and touch one hand on wall, a tree or other solid object for balance. Grasp one foot behind you and pull it to your rear end.

Lower back

1. Cobra Stretch
Lie on your stomach, place your hands shoulder-width apart. Gently lift your body off the floor on your hands extending your back.

2. Child’s Pose
Sick back on your heels and move your arms over your head.

Rules of Stretching Exercises

• All stretches should be done slowly and smoothly to avoid sudden movements.
• Hold the stretches for 15-20 seconds. Don’t bounce while stretching.
• Stretch only as far as you feel comfortable. Avoid over-stretching.
• Keep your balance.

Glucosamine and Chondroitin

Will Glucosamine cure it? Or at least be helpful?

It’s controversial if glucosamine works or not for runners’ knee pain or more importantly, if it’s a good idea for runners to take glucosamine. There were medical studies about this, but it’s hard to tell how accurate and objective they were because most of them were funded by the supplement manufacturers and criticized due to shortage of participants, and short duration. Some doctors even ask a question if knee pain (osteoarthritis) is caused by running.

Despite this uncertainty, I’ve decided to give it a shot, mainly because the overall opinion is positive among runners.

The regulation in the US over the glucosamine supplements is weak. It’s recommended to go with big-brand names and well-reviewed companies. I’m sure there are many products that are reliable, but I’ve found these three products trustworthy to try.

Food that are good for joints and bones

Both glucosamine and chondroitin are naturally produced in the human body and extensively found in joint cartilage. I believe the natural glucosamine and chondroitin produced in the body must be
absorbed into the body much better than supplements.

So I will do my best to include these foods into my daily diet. They are known to be good for

Soybean

Rich in calcium, Vitamin E
Have lots of tofu or add soybeans when you make brown rice.

Pepper

Rich in vitamin C and B6

Banana

Rich in potassium and folic acid

Shrimp

Rich in vitamin D, C, B12, and omega-3 fatty acids

Green Tea

Rich in vitamin C, and anti-oxidants to ease joint pains

Carp

Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, potassium, and calcium

Cheese

Rich in calcium, vitamin B6, and folic acid