Today is Lunar New Year’s — Seol in Korean — a day when everybody gets a year older and eats rice cake soup for good luck. The white, moon-shaped cakes traditionally symbolize purity and prosperity, but for me growing up, getting to eat ddukguk was just a delicious expression of motherly love.

I was a picky eater as a child, but I’ve always loved rice cakes. Because the cake rolls come prepackaged and sliced into thin oval coins, there is usually only one random, fat chunk from the end. And whenever my mom made ddukguk, she would fish through the pot with her ladle, looking for that big chunk to give to me. And when I’m home, she still does.

With Ben and I out in Korea on our own, I’m the one who cooks the ddukguk. Yesterday we picked up a bag of rice cakes from a specialty store around the corner, and even before I dumped them in the broth, I saw the chunk. Ben let me have it.

I’m an alpha cook. I enjoy cooking and I like to be in charge in the kitchen.

However, on very rare occasions, I relinquish control and let Ben cook dinner. But even then, he has to put up with me watching closely over his shoulder and offering unsolicited and usually unwanted advice.

Tonight he quickly threw together some eggs, a few handfuls of spinach and some cheddar cheese to create a perfectly light dinner, which we ate with a baguette from our neighborhood bakery.

And with some marked self-control, I was even able to keep my nagging to a minimum. Isn’t he lucky?

Finding good food is a top priority when Ben and I travel. It puts you in touch with the country’s culture and connects you with its people. I, unfortunately, don’t read or speak any Japanese (except for a handful of vocabulary) but Ben buckled down a couple of months before our trip and learned enough to get us around comfortably, order food, and even ask for recommendations. Here’s a collection of some of our favorite meals in Tokyo.

first dinner in Tokyo

curry dog taiyaki -- better than it sounds

my favorite thing we ate -- New Year's ozoni

we searched hard for this one -- ichigo mochi

grilled buns with various fillings

New Year's festival food -- candied strawberry

not just any old steamed potato

street cart okinomiyaki

5am breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market -- uni, toro, and tamago

still warm sweet potato mochi in kawagoe

the best salmon onigiri I've ever eaten

second breakfast of the day -- strawberry and chestnut mochi

one of many, many crepes

our last lunch -- pretty and delicious

These meals anchor all the good memories we made in Tokyo. We’ve always had great food experiences while traveling in Japan, and this trip was no different.

Happy New Year, friends!

Ben and I just got back from a fantastic winter trip to Japan where we spent the better part of the week wandering the streets of Tokyo and eating everything we could get our hands on. A photo-filled post of all the deliciousness we encountered is coming, but I wanted to dedicate one to the wonderful breakfast we had each morning before we started our day.

Before heading back to our hotel every night, we would stop at a convenience store (AMPMs dominated our block) and pick up some juice and a container of yogurt. Ben would get up early in the morning and walk up the street to the neighborhood Doutor coffee shop and pick us up some coffee and occasionally a muffin to supplement our convenience store finds.

It was the perfect way to start each morning; we fell in love with Japanese yogurt and were delighted to find drip coffee and grapefruit juice — two things that are difficult to come by in Korea.

Maybe Japanese yogurt only tastes this good if you’re on vacation… but we’re pretty sure it would be awesome anytime.

When this cheesecake store opened in our neighborhood Hyundai Department Store, there was always a line of customers. Ben and I made a mental note to come back and try it sometime when the wait wasn’t so long.

It’s been about a year now and we finally remembered to give it a chance. Cino’s is originally a Japanese chain. Unlike their American counterparts, these desserts are actually cake (no cream cheese filling) and, matching Asian tastes, light and barely sweetened. The consistency was like foam, almost dissolving on our tongues.

Out of all the Asian-style cheesecakes we’ve had over the past year or so, this is by far the best — but I’m not sure we would wait in line for it.

early morning jagalchi fish market

octopus (octopi?)

breakfast of blue crab soup

banchan

more fish

unagi

ho dduk at the PIFF plaza

Back in September, Ben and I caught the KTX and took a quick weekend trip down to Busan. Even though the weather was still hot, tourist season was over so the beaches were gloriously uncrowded. We spent two days wandering around the city, checking out Jagalchi Fish Market (the largest in the country), eating fresh seafood for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and relaxing on the beach.

We didn’t even mind the pungent smell of raw fish basking in the hot afternoon sun.

Has it already been over a month since our last post? Wow. We did not plan to be posting so infrequently, but life has been busy for both of us and with what little free time we have, we’ve had trouble getting around to food blogging. But Ben and I gave ourselves a little pep talk tonight over dinner and promised we’d do a better job from now on.

The problem with going long periods of time between posts is the amount of pressure you feel to write something exceptional when you finally do sit down in front of the computer. Ben and I recently took a weekend trip down to Gyeongju, and I was hoping to photograph all the delicious things we ate out in the countryside and have our next post be one giant photo series. As it turns out, Gyeongju is not exactly known for good food. In fact, we hear now it’s better known for a lack of it. We certainly found this to be true, as most of our meals were barely memorable, let alone blogworthy.

Disappointed, I put off posting for another week…and then another and now, here we are. Pressure…

Tonight I decided that I’ve waited long enough. This post might not be epic, but it does include good food, which is really the only criteria we had when starting Something-Tasty. So here’s our quick and easy dinner from tonight: chili tofu and broccoli.

It’s a simple Sunday night meal that we threw together using ingredients from our fridge that were dangerously close to becoming inedible. The inspiration was found on this beautiful food blog (which found the recipe on this blog).

Toss some tofu with corn starch and fry up until golden brown. All some onions, a ton of garlic, and chili sauce (we doctored it with a little honey and lots of ginger). Towards the end of cooking, I added some broccoli and topped it all with sesame seeds. Done and done. A solid cure for the pre-Monday blues, and a little inspiration for the week ahead.

The beginning of May is packed with holidays in Korea, and so at the start of a long weekend on Saturday Ben and I took a much-needed vacation to Taean County and the west coast.

We met up with my aunt and uncle from Busan, my three cousins and their spouses and children for an early celebration of 어린이날, or Children’s Day. What ensued was two days of eating delicious food and playing on the beach with my nieces and nephews.

Traffic was pretty rough going from Seoul to Taean, and by the time we made it to our rented pension, it was mid-afternoon and we were all starving. Luckily, my aunt was prepared and brought along 13 사발라면 (instant bowl-ramen), a dozen rolls of 김밥 (kimbap), and some 떡 (rice cakes). All we had to do was heat some water and dig in. Processed food never tasted so good!

My aunt and cousins brought carloads of food to cook and share, and we spent the first night grilling 갈비 (marinated short ribs), 삼겹살 (pork back) and 새우 (shrimps) outdoors. Throughout the evening, there was lots of laughter and beer and soju and nonstop eating. Being next to the ocean, surrounded by family and fresh, salty air, made everything taste even more incredible.

We finished off the night with lots of fresh fruit and a 윳노리 tournament before turning in for the night.

Even after all the eating the night before, everyone woke up hungry and ready to dig into the Korean breakfast spread my 언니’s prepared for us: 해장국 (there’s many types of this “hangover soup,” but this one had dried fish and bean sprouts), spicy crab stew, rice and loads of 반찬.

Later that day for lunch, we had fresh seafood which included raw sea anemone, sea cucumber, and wiggley octupus that Ben got to try for the first time. We finished the meal with 해물칼국수 and 매운탕 before saying goodbye, piling back into our cars, and returning to Seoul and reality.

Time flies when you’re not sitting in your dank office wishing you were on vacation.