Wheat Belly Weekend, Pt. 1

Jun 13, 2014

Reposted…

I drove up to Arlington last Thursday to pick up my sister for our Wheat Belly Weekend in New York City. There were alarming reports of tornadoes all the way there, but we would not, could not be deterred from our sisters’ weekend! Together, we drove on chatting and chortling for five hours straight. We cackled so hard we had to suck on cough drops to soothe our sore throats. (I’ll be writing about some of those funny stories soon)! Finally, we reached my second sister’s house in New Jersey, where we would spend the night.

I got to briefly hang out with my adorable niece and nephews:

It’s taken me many years, but I finally figured out how to get kids to pose for a picture…

Let them do this first:

Get it out of your system, boys!

I experimented a little with my brand new macro lens, a Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8L IS USM. I have no idea what I’m doing…

…but I’m having fun figuring it out!

We took the train to Penn Station from my sister’s house the next morning. As we made our way out of the station we were hit with the best smell of all:

“Mmmmmm….I smell carbs!”

We walked a couple blocks to Koreatown:

We stopped at Kangsuh for lunch, where I had my favorite Korean comfort food dduk gook:

After lunch, we went to get our hair done at Hydy Hair Salon on the second floor of this building. It was like a Korean version of the “Barbershop”/”Beauty Shop” movies! I got tsk tsked for the gross mismanagement of my hair by Hydy herself. She valiantly tried to set me straight, but in the end kept lifting locks of my hair with an air of dissatisfaction and saying, “I tried my best!” Which is exactly what you want to hear after a hair appointment.

We stayed in Koreatown for dinner. I was lured over to a restaurant across the street by their poster advertising Dduk boki. Dduk boki is typical Korean street vendor food that looks like this:

Carbalicious!

It’s got dense, chewy rice sticks that look like halved cheese sticks swimming in a red-hot and spicy sauce made out of fermented chili pepper paste. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but our “small portions” were actually enormous! By the time we left, there was a line out the door

Back at the hotel we collapsed in a carb-induced stupor…perfect for watching a movie in bed!

View from our window

Tomorrow: Wheat Belly Weekend, Pt. 2

Wheat Belly Sisters

Wheat Belly Sisters

Jun 12, 2014

Reposted…

In his current incarnation as a paleo adherent and owner of two CrossFit gyms, my brother has transformed himself into a rock solid mass of rippling lean muscle and sinew. Once the wearer of “husky” size clothing, he now refers to his more humanly-proportioned former self (the one we, his older sisters, always cherished and adored) as “that guy” and “morbidly obese.” He has found his passion and calling. His clients gush about him. He changes people’s lives. They say things like, “Thank you for creating an environment where people push each other to be the best that they can be.”

Last summer all my siblings and I got together at my parents’ house in Arlington. It had been awhile since we had seen each other. My brother sized up his three dear sisters and he came up with an action plan.

The following week three identical amazon.com packages were delivered to three different households. There was no note, just this:

Now of course on an intellectual level we understood that our brother was expressing his concern for his sisters. That this was, undoubtedly, a ham-fisted expression of love. But…Ouch. Just…ouch.

A three-way email flame-fest of epic proportions ensued. My oldest sister wrote the first message. She reported coming home exhausted from a long day at work, being happily surprised to see a package addressed to her, opening it…and bursting into tears. My second sister was incensed. Me? I opened my package and read lying on the couch, eating a bowl of Cheetos, the book propped up on my big fat wheat belly. Knowing that our little brother had sent all three of us the same, bluntly-named book (did a caveman come up with that title?!) was a sister-bonding experience like no other.

Fairly early on in our email flame-athon, my sisters and I began addressing each other as “Wheat Belly” or even just: “Fatty.” When my oldest sister said that all she wanted to do to was to console herself by eating a bagel with her fellow Wheat Belly Sisters, it occurred to me that we really should and could do it. The Wheat Belly Harpy Weekend was born. (Oh, did I mention that my brother likes to refer to his sisters collectively as “The Harpies”?

The planning went a little something like this:

On Friday “we would have a delicious carb-laden dinner and then go to the movies…On Saturday, we would roll around on our wheat bellies by the pool after a huge breakfast of bagels, pancakes and waffles. Then another really starchy, carby dinner…”

The weekend was awesome. We spent the weekend in a hotel. We went to a spa. We filled our wheat bellies.

…And we made a special toast to our little brother, who had made it all happen:

I’m hitting the road again today. I’m going to be hanging with the harpies at our Second Annual Wheat Belly Weekend in NYC! Can’t wait to chow down on those fresh, piping hot H&H everything bagels smothered with cream cheese!

Chubs, Fatty, and Doughy

Thanks, brother! Love, Fatty

Nieces are Nice!

Jun 11, 2014

This past weekend we celebrated my niece’s sweet sixteen birthday party in Princeton, New Jersey. My niece was the first baby I ever fell in love with and the first of my parents’ nine grandchildren. I’m going to write more about this next week, but here’s a sneak peek:

The Girls

This weekend I’ll be traveling to Minneapolis for Wheat Belly Weekend III…The big twist this year is that we’re going to spend the weekend with my brother and his newly expanded family. We’re going to celebrate the birth of our newest niece and the youngest baby in the family.

For the next couple of days, I’ll be reposting the first Wheat Belly posts in honor of WBWIII!

My Mom’s Korean Salad Recipe

Jun 5, 2014

In my callow youth, all I wanted was to eat magically delicious neon yellow Kraft macaroni and cheese or that mysterious meat known as “Salisbury steak.” I’ve written before about the more challenging foods I grew up with instead. As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate the food that my mother prepares from vegetables harvested from her back (and front)! yards…I still don’t like eating sea cucumbers and acorns, though.

Here’s my mom’s own recipe for her Korean-style salad:

1. Harvest lettuce from your suburban plot turned farmscape.

2. Harvest other green, unidentifiable plants you’ve grown from seeds sent to you from Korea.

3. Dress with wild sesame oil (which is a bit thicker than regular sesame oil), soy sauce, garlic powder, sesame seeds and red pepper flakes.

I can’t tell you the proportions, because my mom makes it up as she goes along, but I can tell you it’s yummy!

Call Me Grandma

Jun 4, 2014

Momentous changes are afoot around here…

One minute, I was a brand new mother:

I blinked, and then this happened:

Middle School Graduation

It’s hard to believe that baby I held in my arms is now a high schooler who already towers over me.

It’s hard to face the fact that I can no longer be the one making all the decisions for him.

Like what he should wear for Halloween, for instance:

“What?! You don’t want to wear a skirt for Halloween again this year?!”

It’s hard to face the fact that I have to let this boy spread his wings and fly. It’s a daily struggle, but I’m doing the best I can.

Right after his middle school graduation ceremony, I saw him off on his own adventure. He is now at the beach for a week with friends from school and adults who are not his own mother and father. As I drove him to their house, I gave him a lecture on letting his conscience dictate his behavior and about making “good, responsible choices.”

The morning after they arrived at the beach, I got a message from one of the parent chaperones saying that my fourteen-year-old firstborn son was now himself “a proud parent.”

Attached was this photo:

My new grandchildren.

Sure, I know that every kid has to make his own mistakes. It’s all part of growing up. But had I known that sending my adolescent son off to the beach by himself would mean that I would become a grandmother overnight…I can assure you I would have locked that boy in his bedroom until he was…oh, I don’t know, 35? 40?

Obviously, what’s done is done. I had to find some way to make peace with this news. I had to regain some modicum of control over the situation. So, I reached out to him in the only way I knew how…Facebook instant messaging, of course. It hasn’t always worked out for me, as you’ll note from the message dated May 21st. This time, though, I think I really got through to him:

Oh yeah, Grandma’s still got it!

(And in case you’re wondering: UnYoung is my Korean name and NOT a reflection of my age. It means “bright like silver”…NOT old or decrepit or anything like that)!