Staying the course: cookbook update

If some of you thought that we had given up and the cookbook was never going to be published, we would not blame you. The project has taken years longer than we thought it would take, but we are still working on it. Diane has been organizing a small army of dedicated volunteer testers all over the country. I, guiltily, have not been working on it as steadfastly, and I’ve realized my new job is no longer so new and does not work as an excuse.

But we are truly making progress. Last night, as I took stock of where we are and rewrote the introduction for the 50 millionth time, I realized we’re probably 85% of the way there, at least with regard to the text. There’ll be a lot more work to do with photos and design, and so we still can’t predict when the book will be out, but I’m so relieved to promise that it will happen.

열심히 하겠습니다! (We will do our very best!)

The photo isn’t really relevant, but I think it’s pretty awesome. It’s from a sign at one end of a short trail on the mountain behind my parents’ apartment in Seoul. You can see that if you take Course A, you will burn 300 calories, which is a little less than one serving of French fries or one hamburger. If you take Course B, though, you will only burn 75 calories, which is equivalent to one canned coffee. I hope there will something equivalent to a giant serving of delicious French fries for me at the end of this project.

Ack, it’s been three weeks since my last post!

I recently realized how much work I have to do to get this cookbook written and I started to spend more time panicking than blogging. So I am going to take a tip from a good friend of mine and take stock of what I’ve done this year.

Since March, I’ve cooked 21 Korean Sunday dinners and worked on 98 recipes.  Each dinner included anywhere from 6-12 people.  In total, I’ve fed about 69 different people, many of whom have come multiple times.  I’ve made new friends, people who I met simply because they were willing to come eat at a stranger’s house.  (There are a surprising number of you out there.)  I’m not as close to having well-developed versions of recipes as I’d like, but I’ve made a lot of progress.  This isn’t even counting the number of dishes Diane’s cooked, the number of people she’s fed.  I think we might actually finish this book.  Not this year, but next!

I’ve been working on writing up my notes from our incredible trip to Korea in September-October, but it’s been hard to find time between the cooking, the recipe-revising, the other job, and life.  But I hope to get something up soon, and in the meantime, here is a somewhat unattractive photo of the galbi–jim (braised short ribs with chestnuts, jujubes, and shitake mushrooms) I made last night.  I used Diane’s great-aunt’s recipe — she soaks the ribs in Coca-Cola for 3 hours to “draw out the blood” and she doesn’t use sesame oil and sesame seeds, which is almost as shocking and scandalous as the use of soda.

It was delicious.  I was proud.  Onwards.

Plotting out our route south

We leave on Sunday morning.

Diane and I are determined to find some mountains to climb in between meals.  In the past six days, Diane has gained 4 pounds.  I, luckily, have no idea how much I weighed to begin with.  It is much harder and more painful to spend your days eating than I’d ever imagined.  I know, cry me a river.  But I’ve never eaten so purposefully in my life.  That means no matter how full I am, I can’t turn down a meal because it’s a learning opportunity.

The last time I came even close to feeling this way was in San Sebastian, at the end of my time in Spain, when I decided to eat my way through my surplus money.  I really miss feeling hungry.