January 1, 2010

Happy New Year: your house smells like mackerel

Jrex and I have one day a year where we truly are 'cross-cultural'. For New Year's Day we do Korean for breakfast: a dumpling soup called mandu dok gukk, and then for dinner, I go German and do pork chops layered in the crockpot with saurkraut, onions and granny smith apples. Mom was excited by our tradition and wanted to make the breakfast for us. She added in a few traditional elements of her own, so I woke to the smell of pan-fried mackerel smoke.

Now, I like fish. I'm just not awake enough to eat it first thing in the morning. It's very traditional for Koreans, but even mandu gukk was a stretch for me when we started our tradition (Jrex rolls his eyes at me, but I'm fairly addicted to cereal for breakfast). I let them fish away without my help and enjoyed my soup breakfast.

I ended up picking up Lovey and Dovey from the airport this afternoon. We invited them over for dinner. They came and graced us with a bottle of Dom Perignon they'd received as a wedding gift. What a wonderful way to toast the New Year: good friends, good alcohol, good food.

May this year be full of fresh starts and may our lives bear fruit.

3 comments:

Aimee said...

Sounds really nice! But I'm with you on breakfast! :-)

Hilary and Mike said...

Love it, and your pork chops sound great. Feliz año nuevo and looking forward to much fruit!

Mama Nabi said...

What, you don't like your house smelling fishy first thing in the morning? :-)

No, I agree - I prefer the smell of donuts... or pancakes... ooh, french toast. Now I'm hungry...