This is one of the various types of Korean soybean paste soup using spinach. Soybean paste is a very important ingredient in Korean cuisine. Except for the saltiness, there is some research that shows health benefits from soybean paste. You can adjust the amount of soybean paste for your dish depending on your taste or for your health. This is very easy to make, and of course it is delicious. So it’s good soup for your daily Korean meal.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• SiGeumChi (시금치) = Spinach
• DeonJang (된장) = Soybean Paste

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This is a simple version of a Korean zucchini fritter. Typically, we cover sliced zucchini pieces with some flour, and then dip them into an egg mixture before frying them. However, today I will just dip the zucchini into a flour batter. You can eat these delicious zucchini fritters plain, but dipping them in a little soy sauce mixture makes them tasty even better. It is good for a lunch box, party appetizer, or as a side-dish for normal meals. If you are a vegetarian, you can skip the egg and add a little bit of more water to the batter.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• ShinBal (신발) = Shoes
• YangMal (양말) = Socks

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This Korean style fruit salad is an another old fashioned food. It is made from different kinds of fruit, hard boiled quail eggs, crab sticks, and peanuts, all mixed with mayonnaise. Does it sounds weird or interesting to you? =P I guess, when mayonnaise was introduced to Korea, this salad was one of the uses for it.
In Korea, when somebody moves to a new house, they invite family or friends to their new house and have a meal together. I remember doing that. I went to those kind of parties with my parents many times. Almost every party had this salad. My mom also made it whenever we had a party at our house. As a kid, it was one of my favorite menu items for the meal. The fun part of eating this salad was digging to find the best parts – the pieces of crab or the eggs. (Oops, that does not sound like good table manners, but my excuse is that I was a kid. ㅋㅋㅋ)
Nowadays, there are many different kinds of fancy salad dressings from the Western world in Korea, so this old fashioned fruit salad is not as common as it was before. However, many people include me still miss this old fashioned salad every now and then. The sweetness from mixed fruits, slight saltiness from the crab sticks, nuttiness from the peanuts, and the egg flavor mixed together with mayonnaise – yummy~~~ Anyway, I was very excited to make this dish and share the recipe with you, because it is delicious and it can be a unique dish to try. I ate and ate after I made it. It was still as delicious as I remembered. @.@ Hehe, I hope you like it too.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• Gwail (과일) = Fruit
• TtangKong (땅콩) = Peanuts

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Korean fish-sausage jeon (소세지 부침) is one of the most popular lunch box side-dishes from the old days. When sausage was introduced to Koreans for the first time, it was big hit, and since then Koreans started to make their own fish sausage like this. Later, we started eating ham, and ham replaced fish sausage in different kinds of Korean food such as kimbap, salad, jeon, etc. Slowly this fish sausage became less popular and is an old fashioned food now. Sometimes I miss this dish. It brings back my school day memories, and it still tastes good to me. So today, I will share this recipe with you.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• SoSaeJi (소세지) = Sausage
• Ham (햄) = Ham
  

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Seasoned and roasted dried seaweed (김구이=GimGui) is a very common dried seaweed side-dish for both meals and lunch boxes in Korea. You can buy this type of side-dish in a Korean or Asian store. However if you can only buy normal dried seaweed, you can do the seasoning and roasting easily at home. It is not only cheaper, but it is also tastier making it that way. So, what kind of dried seaweed you will need for this? You might be familiar with the dried seaweed that is used for kimbap or sushi. You can use that kind of dried seaweed for this side-dish, but typically normal dried seaweed for gimgui is a little thinner than the dried seaweed for kimbap. Lightly seasoned and roasted dried seaweed tastes great with fresh rice.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• Gim (김) = Dried Seaweed
• SoGeum (소금) = Salt

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