iamyoonis

On the Bed at Night, Alone

On the Bed at night, alone,

I stare at the door

Locked Shut tighter than I can remember

Your mouth moving against the silence

I reach back for the words but find them

Buried beneath your body, where I first learned

That love is patient, love is kind.

Love is the patient now, and love is a kind

of pain. Drown it in doses of tears and laughter and maybe

The only thing that screams louder than it–

Locks meant to protect are the biggest pains of all

And they slam shut to cross over the threshold.

in the absence of love, Love’s patient is unremembered

Disregard the pain from the sever if we never

stop to long for the thing that pains us.

On the bed at Night alone

and Yet I still remember the

cracked plaster on the corners of your mouth

The nerves pressed tightly to the tips of my fingers and toes and chest

And the sinking breaths colliding to the

sound of a heartbeat

Thoughts

May 6, 2010

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I saw a clip from “Spanglish” where Adam Sandler’s character makes what is dubbed “The World’s Greatest Sandwich” so I did some background on it. Apparently, it was a recipe that Thomas Keller developed to show what he thought was plausible for a renowned genius chef to whip up as midnight snack.

If Keller did make it for the film, though, he was not the first one to make this sandwich– I’ve been making the same recipe since I was old enough to fry eggs, meaning way before 2004 when the movie came out (Does this mean I’m a culinary genius?) Granted, I had no access to great bread as 10 year old in Korea but I did use that “Milk Sliced Bread” ubiquitous to Korean bakeries, which I personally find work better with soaking up the egg yolk and becoming a lovely mushy texture, easy to chew through.

If you like that sort of thing.

Well, anyways, bacon was hard to come by as well in Korea as it is a “foregin product”. Did this stop me? Nope– I just went and used the OTHER American pork product that was as smoky and delicious but much easier to come by. Did you guess it? If you did, you must be Asian/from Hawaii because the answer is SPAM.

Spam gets a bad rep here in the states, but frankly, Koreans love Spam. It’s not hard to cook with, is relatively cheap, and most importantly, a meat that goes well with eggs for some reason. I grew up on Spam smothered with egg yolks and fried. I had Spam in potato/egg salad before. Missing Spam in kimchi or budae jjigae is a blasphemy in my household. I have received an assorted set of Spam from a relative for holiday present before. Oh-so-salty, it goes great with rice because no seasoning is needed to counter the quote-on-quote blandness of the rice.

But my best recipe with Spam? The Spamwich.

Not the weird sloppy-joe-esque “Spamwich” that they give recipes for in the back of the cans. Not the strange “oh, hey let’s put a slice of spam between bread, throw in veggies and cheese, and call it a sandwich” ones.

Here’s a recipe to “The World’s Greatest Spamwich”…or, as I like to call it, “Why I Might Die from Heart Attack in my 50’s”

Ingredients

2 quarter inch slices of Spam lite (trust me, lite is salty enough)
1/2 slices of whatever sliced soft-ish cheese (Monterey Jack can be good, but do not put past you the possibilities of Brie, Cheddar, Camenbert, Harvati, Gouda, Fontina, or that good-ole White American. Heavily recommend Pepper Jack, if you’re into spicy like I am)

2 slices of some nice bread of your choice (I like softer breads… some people really enjoy rustic chewy ones… take your pick! But make sure it’s not Wonder Bread. Unless you’re into that sort of thing.)

2 large tomato slices (or more! If you’re into that)

2 leaves of lettuce (Whatever kind, again… but if you use leftover iceburg from your salad, I might cry. Use butter lettuce if you don’t have a preference)

1 teaspoon cooking oil (I like to use leftover oil from the Spam… some people like olive or grape seed cooking oils… or butter, if you’re into that, but really it only adds useless animal fats. Fried eggs are delicious enough that you don’t need butter to make it better)

1 egg (Good quality always necessary.)

Heat up the pan and cook the Spam slices until both sides achieve a golden hue and a darker pink but only until the slice still has its flexible quality. (No need for cooking oils, they’ll release their own oil, like bacon) Wash pan and use cooking oil of choice/don’t wash the pan (if you’re lazy like me) and drop the egg on low heat. Cooking in a temperature that’s low enough to cook the white and leave the yellow yolk runny is crucial! It’s much easier to keep the yolk unbroken if you cook the egg a bit slower. Flip egg and pull out of pan quickly before the yolk hardens (or don’t… if you’re into that sort of thing. I kind of am.) Assemble sandwich in this order:

Bread

Veggies

Spam

Egg

Cheese

Bread

Reason? Not extremely huge ones. I like putting the Spam and egg next to each other, like the idea of the cheese melting on to the egg from the leftover heat, and feel less like a pig when I have some veggies next to the meat.

Cut in half and enjoy from the CENTER where the yolk is probably running after the cut. Because if you’re eating around the crust, not only will the yolk cool by the time you get there, that’s not the true way to enjoy life (unless you’re into that sort of thing…)

Hold tight to this Spamwich, it’s a slippery and messy sandwich. Which probably defeats the point of sandwiches, but who cares, it’s DELICIOUS.

Damn, I miss Spam with eggs. Only about three weeks till home cooking.

BTW, for non-pork eaters, I think it’s doable with well seasoned tofu. A nicely fried good quality firm tofu, seasoned with soy sauce or teriyaki sauce and deliciously golden from the frying. Damn.

Food

May 3, 2010

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When Your Mind’s Made Up…

You see, you’re just like everyone
When the shit falls all you want to do is run, away
And hide all by yourself
When you’re far from me, there’s nothing else

When your mind’s made up
When your mind’s made up
There’s no point trying to change it
When your mind’s made up
When your mind’s made up
There’s no point even talking
When your mind’s made up
When your mind’s made up
There’s no point trying to fight it

–“When Your Mind’s Made Up” on Once OST

——-

History has feared women in position of power who embrace their femininity rather than resorting to masculinity.

We have feared too much, it seems.

Songs, Thoughts

April 28, 2010

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To Be Loved/To Be Safe

Call me a safe bet

I’m better than that.

Uncategorized

April 27, 2010

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Thousand Ways to Call Someone Your Own

Sometimes, I like to think about what would happen if I got married in the future. What would I call this person? Do I go with “Honey” or “Sweetie” or “Baby”? These words mean nothing to me. My husband will not be some candy. If I end up being diabetic, calling someone “Sweet” really becomes a sick double entendre. Baby? Why am I getting married to an infant? Does that mean that if I have a baby, I get to live in a house full of babies?

Somewhere along the line, English speakers all over the world have decided upon these nicknames as the norm for calling your spouse. I know not the meaning or etymology of these words, nor do they strike me as sensible within the sum of my experiences. I do not care to find out their meanings right now, but they are a contrast to what I’ve grown up with.

In Korean, I have mainly heard spouses referred to as “Dangshin” or “Yeobo”, at least within my family. The current generation of newlyweds also prefer “Jagi” as a title, but I’m a product of the older generation who uses “Jagi” for friends rather than spouses, so it doesn’t count. These titles actually have quite a lot of implications behind them.

“Yeobo” is my parents’ preferred terms for each other, and I mean besides the fact that they call each other “Jihye’s Mom” or “Jihye’s Dad” quite frequently too. (Something in those references to the children’s name always seemed to me that at least in Korea, parents are devoted to their children… and also, possibly that children are number one killers of romance)

“Yeobo” is made up of “yeo” and “bo”. “Yeo” means “woman” and “bo” means “treasure”. I suppose in the old days, “Yeobo” was a term strictly used by men towards his wife. However, the title is freely used by both genders nowadays, which says a lot about the gender bender that is becoming much more apparent since the turn of the millennium. To call your spouse “Yeobo” is to call him or her “my treasured person”.

“Dangshin” has a different connotation altogether. It sounds a little bit more formalized than “yeobo” and indeed, it is placed in a different level of familiarity in Korean. In a language where the words carry a different meaning depending on their form and implication of social hierarchies, “Dangshin” is something I can see in a very conservative and upper class households, although much of those implications have been turning, just as the gender connotations have been disappearing for a while.

“Dang” means “rightfully” and “shin” means “body”. Put together, the title means something like “the person who is rightfully one in body with me”. How crazy is that concept? In two syllables, you can declare that someone is rightfully of one body with you, that you are the same people and this is granted inherently and naturally. The term was probably first used by wives to refer to their husbands.

In a sense, these two terms are prime demonstrations of the shifts in the Korean society. The divorce rate in South Korea is unusually high, especially compared to mere decades ago when the word “divorce” was almost a taboo. The gender and class implications show that the categories that used to separate the country are fading into the distance. However, in the efforts to modernize and improve, sometimes Koreans forget that there was an undeniable history in the Korean culture, the beautiful words and concepts we have long forgotten about. Foremost, it reminds us of those times when love and marriage took respect and care… enough to call your spouse something as sacred as “a treasure” or “person who is one with me”. The hopeless romantic in me only hopes that one day, I would be able to find someone to call “dangshin” and mean it every single time.

Thoughts

April 23, 2010

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