We visited my grandma to celebrate her 88th birthday. Whoa man, 88 is pretty damn old! A variety of korean foods in fancy aluminum pans. I forget where my mom picked this food up from, but it was actually pretty damn good. Later that night, we trekked to my aunt’s house for some more food. She had these freakishly ginormous shrimp. She didn’t realize that she didn’t have any normal tempura batter, so she ended up having to use this spicy chicken batter. These were so big she could only fry up a few at a time. There’s my hand for scale. They really were pretty much as big as my hand. I don’t have the biggest hands, but they’re quite normal sized. These shrimp were huge. The chicken batter ended up being fine. It’s hard to screw up fat giant shrimp being fried in a hot vat of grease. We would be terrible koreans if we didn’t bbq some meat. We would have grilled outside but it was storming something terrible, so we had to resort to using an indoor grill. In addition to meat and shrimp, we also had some spicy fish soup.

What’s better than a chipotle burrito? Well, lots of things. But really, what’s better is a free chipotle burrito! While digging through all the mail that had accumulated from my trip, I found a random free coupon. And man, it totally worked. I definitely enjoy me some free burritos!

Christmas is usually held at my aunt’s house in delaware, but we had a change of plans this year. It was at my mom’s house, yes, where I grew up. No ham or turkey here folks, just good old-fashioned korean fare.
The spread. Ain’t it beautiful?

My aunt fried up some shrimp tempura. Ok, so that’s not korean, it’s japanese, but hey, it’s still tasty. How do these shrimp not curl up when fried? It’s a secret. And now I know the secret!
Mrs. K made us a batch of these little pancakes. Not typical of what we would normally eat, as these were made up with ground mung beans, cabbage, and some other stuff. Quite mild, yet delicious.
What’s this weird gelatenous stuff on this plate? It’s muk. I’m not sure what kind of muk, whether it’s made from acorn starch, or buckwheat starch, or mung bean starch, but it’s some kind of korean muk. It’s jello-esque in texture, but still not. Hard to describe. The muk itself essentially has no flavor. So you have to adulterate with something. Here, my mom has just doused with some sort of soy sauce based nonsense, green onions, and eventually, after this photo was taken, some crushed up nori sheets. I know it’s a strange concept, but I dig this stuff.
Grilled squid on the left, and some kind of grilled long skinny fish on the right. Both marinated with some spicy shizz.
A close up of the squid. Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s painstakingly scored in both horizontal and vertical directions. Why? I have no idea. I think it has to do with how it always curls when cooked, but it’s also because it looks so bad ass.
Some spicy pork ribs.
My aunt made some galbi jim, or korean braised short ribs. A family holiday gathering certainly isn’t worth anything if it doens’t involve stuffing your face with good homemade eats.