giving thanks

Korean Thanksgiving (추석) break ends tonight.

This Chuseok was special in many ways because:
1. There was unimaginable amount of rain--a record breaker near a century.
2. Due to two deadly storms from earlier this month, prices for pretty much all edible Kindom Plantae skyrocketed. (e.g., we bought one binding of spinach for eight folds of its price in August).
My grandma says she's never seen vegetables this expensive in her memory of 70 years.
3. Fruits are supposed to be "party-in-my-mouth" good around this time, but many were rather bland. Why? Refer to the first sentence of #2.
4. First generation of smart phone applications for tracking highway traffic.


This Chuseok was special to me in many ways because:
1. This was one of the very rare occasions that I spend it with my family in Korea.
2. I didn't go in lab for 1.5 weeks (explanation: two weekends+Holiday break+1 vacation day+2 school days).
3. I monitored every step of making songpyeon (rice cake that highlights the Holiday; turkey-equivalent). Therefore, I was very attached to every one of them and they are my babies.


See? These little cuties are chestnuts. One of the best gifts of the Fall's got to be the opportunities to "harvest" chestnuts that you never planted.(-_-) I spent an hour at the 성주mountains searching every corner under the chestnut trees and got a bag full of nuts and two legs full of mosquitoe bites.

Sometimes, they are just blatantly out in the open world, yelling, "take me!"

And look at our busy cameo ;)

Then, our cute little chestnusts are steamed and mixed with brown sugar to become the 속, the inner part of songpyeon. (The outer part is the sticky rice cake).

The final draft below...

Who's inside?

Familiar faces :)

끄덕끄덕.
Thumbs up!