Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar* New Year, from our Korean baby!
It's the year of the dragon, a very auspicious year. Our Chinese friends predict that many children will be born this year since a lot of parents want dragon children. I guess we'll have to wait and see if that's true.

In honor of the New Year, I made duk mandu gook, a traditional soup that Koreans eat every New Year's Eve. I became a little obsessed with the stuff near the end of our time in Korea and I make it often now. I thought I'd share my recipe because it's super quick and awesomely delicious, especially on a cold night.

I adapted my recipe from this recipe from the New York Times.

Ingredients
12 Mandu/Gyoza/Potstickers
4 cups beef broth, preferably Korean (see note)
1/2 bunch scallions
1 cup frozen Korean rice cakes, sliced (see note)
1 egg, lightly beaten
Black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Toasted seaweed (optional), julienned.

1. Place a large pot filled with broth over high heat. Prepare scallions: discard white parts, chop a few inches of green parts into rounds and slice remainder lengthwise. When broth boils, add 3 to 4 dumplings a person, reduce heat to medium and cook 5 to 7 minutes.

2. Add frozen rice cakes and scallion slices and cook until cakes are soft, another two minutes. Add eggs and gently stir. Shut off heat and season with black pepper. Ladle into bowls and garnish with scallion rounds, sesame seeds and seaweed, if using.

Note: For beef broth, dashida powder is sold in bags at Korean markets. Dissolve one teaspoon per cup of boiling water. Korean rice cakes, called duk, are sold in the freezer section of Korean markets; the wide slices are the most traditional. This makes 2-4 servings. It's best eaten right away; it doesn't always reheat well.

The two main ingredients are mandu and duk. Duk is a glutinous cake made from rice flour. When I first tried it, I didn't like it. It's weird and doesn't have much flavor. But it's kinda grown on me. My local Asian market doesn't carry the sliced duk so I just make do with the round kind that is generally used for dukbokki. I have made my mandu from scratch before (Cook's Illustrated has a great recipe), but I typically buy mine. I prefer the pork filled mandu, since that's what they use in Korea, but you could use chicken or beef potstickers too.

You could use regular beef broth but dashida (Korea beef broth) is SO much better and easy to find in any Asian market. This is the broth powder that I brought home with me from Korea. I also sometimes throw in a little anchovies powder because other recipes I saw included it, but it's not essential.

The trick with the egg is to slowly and gently stir your broth with a chopstick while pouring in your beaten egg. I love the egg. And in less than 30 minutes, you have a delicious Korean soup. Mmmm.

After dinner (and the baby had been tucked away in bed), I broke out the box of hotteok I bought before we left Korea. There was a little stand near our apartment in Seoul that sold these delicious cinnamon filled pancakes, which are a popular Korean street food, especially in the winter months. I think they'd be super easy to re-create even without the mix. I think next year, I'll definitely have to find my own recipe.
After letting the dough rise a bit, you fill it with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and nuts and then fry them them up.
The insides get all gooey and delicious.
David approved. I don't think I'll be able to eat hotteok without instantly being transported back to a cold winter day in Seoul. Oh, the memories.

Our New Year's was topped off by the first real snowfall of the year. The world is beautiful and wonderful all covered in snow. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year!


Here in the Malone household, we say "Lunar New Year" instead of "Chinese New Year" in deference to all those other Asians who are not, in fact, Chinese. :)

Thanksgiving 2011

Yes, yes, I know that we're way past Thanksgiving time, but I wanted to share some of the photos I took from our week in San Diego to celebrate Thanksgiving. We had a great time with friends and family. And eating. Oh yes, we did eat!

Poor little baby was so tuckered out, she fell asleep on the bed while David was reading. My parents' cat Bronte joined them. Sadly, Bronte was hit by a car and killed just before Christmas. She was a sweet little cat.

My sister drove down from Lemoore with her three kids. Zara loves spending time with her cousins. I think she especially likes Anna. They even had matching pajamas (which was so not done on purpose, by the way).
Zara and Seth, who are three weeks apart.

And general mayhem rules when six of the seven Hayman grandkids are afoot.

The day after Thanksgiving, or was it Saturday? we went for a walk down by Lake Hodges.


Seth just kills me. His cuteness grew by leaps and bounds when he started walking. I don't know why, but Seth walking is just about the cutest thing I've every seen.

Besides this adorable little thing, of course.

It didn't take long before my brother-in-law Brigham was carrying/pushing all three of his kids. Talk about a work horse.

Now, maybe if I try really hard, I can get our Christmas pictures up sometime before Valentine's. :)

Welcome 2012

As I was running around doing my errands today (it being Thursday, my designated errand day), I just kept thinking "life is good" and marveling at how content I feel. I have felt forms of contentedness over the years, but never such a complete fullness and happiness. It's a marvelous feeling, to feel that life is good and know it is true.

Zara has reached an age where she's (for the most part) absolutely adorable and delightful to be around. She's independent enough to play on her own but still loving and affectionate. She babbles almost constantly (David and I take turns translating her baby talk), giggles gleefully, runs circles around the cat, practices somersaults with much laughter and self-applause (we still don't know where she even learned how to somersault), and is generally just a fun little person to be around. It's amazing to watch her personality emerge more and more each day.

I've been working at BYU for a month now and love it a little more each day. Not only is it great to be back at a university and in an academic environment, but I really enjoy my job and the flexibility and intellectual outlet it offers me. My position is a brand-new one so I really get to create the job as I go along and it's so fulfilling to see how quickly I've already been able to make a difference. Plus, I just love working with all the history professors and the students.

David and I were also called to be the Gospel Doctrine teachers. We rotate with another teacher, but since there's two of us, we teach two Sundays and then the other teacher does one Sunday. We've taught two classes so far and I think they went really well and have received many compliments about the lessons. I love teaching and I have prayed and prayed to receive a teaching calling and yet I've always been called to do some form of activity planning. (Though I did teach the Sunbeams (kids age 3-4) for a little while.) You can imagine how overjoyed I was to receive this calling and to feel like I finally get to use the talents I possess to serve in the church. (My talents do not lie in party planning although I've certainly improved in those after all these years on the Enrichment/Activities Committee.) I love to teach because it gives me the motivation to study and learn....and I love to learn. Plus, this year we're studying The Book of Mormon which is full of such amazing power and doctrine. What could be better?

More than that, David is happier now that he's on the path to having a career he can truly enjoy, we have a comfortable home, a nice car, plenty of food to eat, and a very sweet kitty. Not that we don't have everyday worries. We certainly have those too and our future is still very much up in the air, but all in all, we've been very blessed. So yes, life is good.

I don't typically set New Year's Resolutions. I never keep them and I hate feeling like a failure. Besides, they're always vague and overly general, like "Be more patient!" or "Lose weight!" that it's hard to quantify them. But in an effort to hold myself to something and to continue my general sense of contentedness, here are a few of the goals I'd like to achieve this year in order to foster happiness:

1.) Blog at least once or twice a week. (My goal is to have 90 blog posts this year, up from 85 from 2011.)

2.) Set aside time to sew at least once a week. This is harder now that I'm working but I have many projects I need to finish and/or work on, and I do gain so much enjoyment from sewing that I need to be more proactive in spending time doing what I love.

3.) Read the scriptures every day. This is made so much easier now that I'm teaching Sunday School and really have a reason to do it.

4.) Say yes to service. I challenged myself recently to say yes whenever I could to service opportunities. I'm not really good at this, but I do belief you are greatly blessed for serving others and so I want to make a more concerted effort to do what I can.

5.) Spend quality time with David and Zara.

6.) Delve back into the world of history. Since I graduated from GWU four years ago, I've been telling myself that I would revisit some of my research projects in the hopes of publishing some articles. Now that I'm working at BYU, I have absolutely no excuse not to do this. I have access to their wonderful library and online resources and am surrounded by history professors who can offer guidance and peer review should I need it. I just need to do it!

2011 Retrospective

I love the end of the year, when I look back and remember all the things that happened that year. As always, I'm amazed by everything that we did, what happened, and how lucky I am. So here it is: the year 2011.

January: Zara entered the fifth month of her life. We dealt with sleep issues, introduced solid foods, and watched her roll herself all over the place. I finally finished Zara's baby quilt (my first completed quilt; I've since made many others), and undertook a few more sewing projects.

February: Zara falls off the bed for the first time, but we both survive. (And all the 324 times she's done it since.) David and I celebrate our birthdays with our first child-free date since Zara's birth (dinner at a Thai restaurant in Itaewon). David receives LEGO Hogwarts and we buy ourselves our joint birthday present: a brand new TV. David was kept busy at work--as usual--but spent a lot of time studying for the GMAT which he re-took this month. (And he got a much better score than his first attempt.)

March: David finished his application to the MBA program at BYU at the beginning of the month, and then did his phone interview at the end of the month. We crossed our fingers that he'd get in because he didn't apply anywhere else. Zara mastered the art of crawling. And getting into everything. She also grew her first tooth.

April: David found out he was accepted to BYU at the beginning of the month so we could all breath a great big sigh of relief. Zara grew. I sewed. The weather in Seoul improved and we ventured out from our winter hibernation.

May: We soaked up every last bit of Korea we could get during our last full month in the country. We bought lots of Korean items to commemorate our time and we bought a new Nikon DSLR camera.

June: We fly home to San Diego, where we spend two weeks before departing on the first leg of our Rediscover America Super Awesome Roadtrip which takes us to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (lots and lots of Texas), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. We explore more of Atlanta and spend time with David's family (and help his parents move into a new house). David finally FINALLY finishes his Bachelor's degree in accounting. Whoo! Zara walks.

July: We embark on the second leg of our roadtrip which takes us to Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the northern part of California. We stop over in San Diego for my mom's 60th birthday, family reunion, and family photos. We end the month by rolling into Utah with no place to live and sick to death of living out of our suitcases.

August: We live with my Aunt Debbie while we search for a place to live in Utah. We finally find our sweet 19th century pioneer home in Provo which we move into on August 16th, the same day that David starts school. Zara celebrates her first birthday.

September: We adjust to life in Utah. I work on more sewing projects and Zara and I visit many parks in the area. David loves his classes and what he is studying.

October: We get to spend some time with our good friends from Korea, the Cottrells and enjoy the beauty of fall in Utah. We enjoy Halloween festivities and Zara gets really into the whole candy receiving thing.

November: I apply for and interview for a job on BYU campus. We drive down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

December: I get the job and start working 15-20 hours a week while Zara deals with a little bit of separation anxiety. (But she's getting much better.) David finishes his first semester of grad school (and receives all A's and A-'s) and we enjoy Christmas in Utah.

It has definitely been a great year. Many changes, many unknowns, but through it all, we've enjoyed ourselves and had some truly amazing experiences. For the most part, life is good. Sometimes I think that we'll look back on these two years at BYU and remember them as the best days of our lives. David loves what he's studying and gets to have a regular schedule and spend lots of time with Zara and me. I found the perfect job which I love and allows me to earn a little extra money for our family. Zara continues to both exasperate and exhilarate us with her joyful baby giggle and intelligence. She's a special little person, that one is. We are definitely looking forward to what 2012 will bring us....if, you know, the world doesn't end on December 21st. :)

Holiday Baking

It's time for my annual holiday baking report. In years past, I've gone a tad overboard with the cookie-making and have baked anywhere from 5 to 7 different holiday treats to pass out to friends. This year I decided to simplify my life just a tad and only pick four different cookies.

One had to be sugar cookies. I remember making them with my mom every year to leave out for Santa and I just don't feel that it's Christmas without them. To be quite honest, I love a lot of other cookies more than I love sugar cookies and they are rather time consuming, but I still do them every year. I thought these ones turned out particularly good this year.

Another must cookie are my pumpkin cookies with brown butter maple frosting. They might just be my very favorite holiday cookie ever. Pumpkin and maple are amazing together and are flavors you don't often see in a typical holiday cookie plate.

So I had my sugar cookies (no chocolate) and my pumpkin maple cookies (again no chocolate), so I decided to do a standard chocolate chip cookie. Except these are not your standard chocolate chip cookie, these are Jacques Torres' ("The King of Chocolate") famous chocolate chip cookies which are oh so delicious. David doesn't agree with me, but I think these are the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. (But be warned, they take a while to prepare.)

For my last cookie, I decided to try a brand-new recipe. I knew I wanted something very chocolatey and when I stumbled upon these chocolate cookies with mint chips, I knew I had a winner. Plus I liked that it added another flavor (mint) to the overall composition of the plate. Strangely, this recipe does not call for any eggs, which I liked, but it did leave the cookies a tad crumbly, so you have to be careful about that. I decided to use mint M&Ms to give my chocolate cookies a noticeable punch of green and red color. Above are all my cookies prepped and ready to be packaged.
In the past, I've piled cookies on plates or in metal tins. I prefer using tins but they are a tad pricey, especially to give to each friend (and we are kinda poor right now). Plastic/styrofoam plates just don't hold many cookies and they shift around a lot in transit. Plus, I've never found an adequate way to cover them and still have them look pretty. This year I remedied the situation by picking up these cookie boxes. I found them at Big Lots for $2 for a pack of two. (I saw them other places as well.) They held far more cookies than a plate and kept them secure and snug during transport. Plus, they provided a little window to display the goodness inside. All around a great idea, and one that I'll be using again in the future.

How was your holiday baking this year? Any good new recipes? I've included my recipes for sugar cookies and pumpkin cookies with maple frosting below. :)


Tessa's Sugar Cookies

3 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. margarine
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 sour cream

Sift together dry ingredients, set aside. Combine margarine, sugar egg, and vanilla. Add 1/2 flour mixture and sour cream until well blended; add remaining flour. Roll out to 1/4" thickness (or if you're me, even thicker :) and cut out cookies using cookie cutters. Bake at 400 for 8-10 minutes.

Frosting:
1/2 c, unsalted butter, softened
1/4 c. milk, room temperature
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 lb. powdered sugar

Pumpkin Cookies

1 cup pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Dissolve baking soda in milk and set aside. In large bowl whisk together pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla, and egg.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and then. Stir in the baking soda mixture and then chocolate chips. Spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until done.

Brown Butter Maple Frosting

3 cups sifted confectioners sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp maple flavoring

Sift sugar and set aside. Melt butter over medium heat until golden brown. Watch closely so it does not burn. Add butter to sugar, scraping all the butter into the bowl. Add milk and maple flavoring. Stir until smooth.

Merry Christmas!

I really can't believe that it's already Christmas Eve. I mean, honestly, where did the time go? I feel like time goes into hyper-drive after Halloween.

We're all very excited for Christmas at the Malone household. (Though we've been a bit slow on getting everything ready for the holiday season.)

Zara, though, is as cute as ever and excited to open all those gifts underneath the Christmas tree. (And of course, she's got way more gifts than David and me combined. How is that fair?) Still, she's super cute, so I guess I'm okay with that. Also, how did my baby get so gigantic? I really have to train myself to not call her a baby anymore.

We decided to stay in Utah for the holidays in part because of my new job which I started two weeks ago and in part because we couldn't afford to travel anywhere else for the holidays. I'm glad we opted to stay put. Yesterday, we drove down to East Carbon (a tiny little town in eastern Utah where my mom grew up) to visit my Grandma Urbanik. My sister and her family also came to Utah for the holidays to spend time with her husband's family, but we get to spend a little bit of time with them which will be awesome. Tonight, we're spending Christmas Eve with my aunt and all her family. Turns out, we get to spend the holidays with lots of different family members. What could be better?

And since it's been a little while, here's a few recent photos of Zara in all her adorableness:






Merry Christmas to all our friends and family around the world!

Gratitude Countdown Rundown

So I kinda dropped the ball on that whole gratitude countdown thing, didn't I? In my defense, we drove down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my family and I didn't have a lot of time to update this old blog. But since then, several other things have occurred which give me lots of reasons to be thankful.

First and foremost is that I got a job! My first day is tomorrow and I'm all sorts of apprehensive and excited about it. It was one of those rare opportunities where the job was absolutely perfect for me and I was absolutely perfect for the job. My official title is "History Internship Coordinator" in the History Department at BYU. It's a brand-new position which they've created to helped facilitate and administer the internships which both family history and regular history majors undertake each year. I'll be working closely with two faculty members and the students to help them find internships and to help them navigate the legal and academic requirements of the internship. I really hope I'll be able to help the students become acquainted with the many diverse places a history major can work (or intern) and help them recognize what a great opportunity it is to intern (as it is how many organizations hire new employees).

The job is part-time (which is great, I didn't want to work full-time) and even though we plan to arrange my work hours around David's class schedule next semester, we still had to find outside help to watch Zara for a few hours each week. We were, of course, quite apprehensive to trust the care of Zara to anyone else, but after meeting our new daycare provider (Audrey), a lot of that fear and guilt has disappeared. She runs a small daycare out of her home and I think Zara will gain a lot from spending time with someone other than me all the time and being around other children her age. We'll see how it goes, but at least I'm not feeling like a horrible mother at this point. And that's progress.

David and I also (FINALLY) receive callings in our ward today. It's not official yet, so I don't want to say what it is right now, but I'm super excited about it. And that almost rarely happens.

Also, David has finals all this week and then he'll be officially done with his first semester of graduate school. He's worked very hard and enjoyed his studies so much, but I am looking forward to two weeks of unencumbered David time (meaning that he won't have to spend his nights doing homework). I'm really looking forward to Christmas and celebrating it with my little family.

Gratitude Countdown: Day 12

Today I am grateful for those who serve others. I joined the MBASA service committee and one of my duties is arranging help for new moms. (And since this is BYU, we have a lot of new moms.) One spouse had her third baby this past week and I set out to arrange some meals and playdates for her other children. I was overwhelmed by the response of people willing and eager to help. It certainly made my job easier but it reminded me that there are many kind and giving people out there. We have all been touched by the service and kindness of others and it's also good to remember that "when we are in the service of our fellow beings, we are only in the service of our God."

Gratitude Countdown: Day 11

Today I am grateful for the ability to create. I don't just mean babies, though I think I did a really good job with that the one time I tried it. I still sometimes look at Zara and marvel that I grew her myself. Totally from scratch! How did I do that?!?

I've come to see that women have the innate ability to create. It's something that I've come to love about myself as well. I didn't set out to be "crafty" or "domestic" or "housewifey" or any of those terms; in fact, I resisted them for a long time. But as I've embraced those attributes within myself, I've found great joy in creating things for myself, my family, and friends. I love to bake and cook and am grateful that I enjoy those pursuits since I know so many women who absolutely dread the kitchen. I love to sew and fill my house with the work of my own hands. I've undertaken a new sewing endeavor (which I'll share with you soon) and I'm surprised by own enjoyment at being hard at work at a sewing machine. I also (gasp) started making my own Christmas cards this year. It started out as a Relief Society project but I discovered that I really enjoy the artistry of paper crafts (I know, I know). It's a delight to create this things and I am grateful that I have the ability to do so.

Gratitude Countdown: Day 10

I am grateful for the Gift of the Heart Exchange (GOTHE), a free exchange of clothes and toys that the BYU MBASA (the MBA spouses group) and the Law Partners put on several times a semester. Kid-to-Kid, a used clothing company here in Utah, donates a lot of clothes to this event and there are piles and piles of clothes and toys and baby items available to take for free. It's open to all student families and is really helpful for those of us who have a limited budget and income. They just held one this morning and I was able to find all the clothes and shoes that Zara will need for the upcoming months. It's a wonderful blessing for us poor grad student spouses.