Roasted Garlic Chicken and Kale Soup

Roasted Garlic, Kale, and Chicken soup

I can’t pretend this hasn’t been an odd, equally difficult week, for reasons entirely other than coworker conflict–mounting work expectations, several different people all asking you to do the impossible all at once, and getting angry at you when you tell them you are only human. But I don’t want to be the girl who blogs about how difficult her job is, because I am extremely grateful to even have a job that allows me to support myself in a very expensive city, and gives me a disposable income to boot. Let me not become that person.

Instead, let me complain about my insane downstairs neighbor who doesn’t want my roommate and I to use our kitchen after 9pm because our walking around makes too much noise.

Just kidding. Except not really. Our neighbor is actually that crazy.

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Korean Rice Cake Soup

Korean Rice Cake Soup

New Year’s is sort of, kind of one of my favorite holidays. Though I suspect this is not a unique line of thinking, everything just feels like a new start. Tabula rasa. New Year’s resolutions and all that.

(I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions anymore–I’ve been down that road too many times before.)

When I was little, holidays always meant presents, presents, presents, materialistic little creature that I was (and still, just a little bit, am). These days, holidays are all about food, food, food, and New Year’s just so happens to serve up my favorite holiday meal.

All of my best food memories seem to involve my mother, who is still the best cook I know. Growing up with a mixed Korean-American heritage, I got to sample flavors and spices that most of my peers did not, so the most memorable dish of my mother’s that stands out to me is, naturally, a Korean one: ddeokguk, or, simply translated, “rice cake soup.”

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