'Tis the season for ....

...fresh watermelons! Now, I don't want to lump all Southern Californians together on this topic but I will speak for myself. Until moving here, I could not identify a summer fruit vs. a winter fruit. People who have lived here longer can rattle off when certain produce will arrive and disappear from the markets. It seemed to me that in our Californian grocery stores, every fruit and vegetable was available all-year round. Was I wrong? If you read "seasonal fruits" in a menu, would you know which ones they had back in the kitchen? I sure didn't!

As you can see, we have been enjoying the sweet summer fruits! There are watermelon "piles" like this all over the city. None of them are seedless so I bring them home, "de-seed" them and save them in the fridge since there's nothing like chilly melon on a hot summer day.

I am learning a lot about seasons. And I have a lot of catching up to do. It never felt like we had "real" seasons in California. We generally had nice weather all-year round. Not to mention, produce all-year round as well. Here, we have four distinct seasons and very distinct seasons of produce. The men holding buckets and yelling "Raspberries! Strawberries!" are back wandering around our courtyard after a year-long absence.

Right now, we're in a season of language learning. I am still working with an in-home tutor while David attends class at a local teaching center.

David usually buys bread for his classmates to eat during break sessions. Here are the women who bake and sell David his daily bread. Just a few minutes in this underground bakery will quickly bring you to a sweat!

I decided one day to give his classmates a break from bread. I brought a Korean lunch to their class. I made Korean BBQ chicken (my cousin Susan Neff's recipe), jap-chae (my Auntie Won Ok's recipe), cucumber salad and rice. I also brought seaweed (graciously sent from Korea by Aunt Joanne) and go-chu-jang (a hot paste). I am glad that I am finally learning a few Korean recipes. When my parents were here back in January, my mom taught me how to make mi-yeok-gguk (seaweed soup). I made it for the girls last week and all three of them love it!