Seafood Rice Porridge

On my first trip back to Korea, I met an adoptee who had a few fuzzy memories of being in an orphanage.  She didn’t remember much, but distinctly remembered eating 전복죽, or abalone rice porridge, while she was there.  I was too young to have eaten rice porridge at my orphanage, but hearing her connect this food with her past made me want to try it too.

As it turned out, there was actually some abalone rice porridge in one of the many bowls on my breakfast tray during the last day of my first trip back.  (Tthe top row of bowls is occasionally my header photo on this blog.)  Since then I have tried a grocery-store version of it, and made it a point to have it again on my second trip back.  But really, I needed to learn how to make it myself.

Since I haven’t had much luck finding abalone for 전복죽, I decided to try making 해물죽 (seafood rice porridge).  I don’t think I’ve ever seen seafood rice porridge on the menu in a restaurant anywhere, and have never seen an actual recipe for it.  But I figured I would simply made 죽 (rice porridge), add 해물 (seafood), and — tada — seafood rice porridge!

Making 죽 (rice porridge) is really easy, although it does require some planning since you have to soak the rice for a few hours beforehand.  For the seafood I used a frozen seafood mix, which I thawed and then diced so that the baby octopi were no longer identifiable as octopi.  (Yes, I realize that “octopi” is a nonstandard plural.  And I don’t care .)

It was really good, but best eaten all at once since the seafood becomes a little chewy upon reheating.

Protected: Nine Adoptees Who Piss Me Off

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Sadness in Happy Places

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Adoption Jumble

It’s nearly 3 am where I am right now, and I can’t sleep.  By itself this is nothing particularly new for me, but tonight I suspect that my mind is so full that it simply can’t slow down enough to drift off.

The last week or two have been filled to the brim with adoption-related events in my real life, and things are starting to become this huge jumbled mess in my brain.  I have had deep, heavy, adoption-focused conversations with a number of other adoptees.  I have had a disturbing adoption-related conversation with my parents, which would be downright humorous if the people involved weren’t…. my parents. I spent the better part of today with a large number of adoptive parents and got a splitting headache as a reward punishment. I am either involved in or am contemplating involvement in a number of adoption-related side projects.  I want — need, even –  to write about so many things, but can’t piece things together in the orderly way that I usually like to do.

I’m also running into this problem with my worlds and identities potentially colliding.  Some of the people that I talk to in real life have found this blog, and so I worry about my privacy, about how many details I can share without revealing connections that I would rather keep hidden.  I may need to change some of those details, something that I am usually loathe to do for reasons that I hope are obvious, but we’ll see what actually happens.  I have a feeling that much of it will simply end up under a password.

I wish my brain were something that I could turn off.  I wish I weren’t so damned drawn to adoption-related stuff, whether books, events, conferences, blogs, articles, etc.  I’m becoming one-dimensional and borderline obsessive.  It’s like I know that there are all these holes in myself, and that if only I could gain more information, then all of the voids would be filled and I would be a complete person somehow.

I would be fully human, rather than this flickering shadow with no light of my own.

Protected: Privileged Voices

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

STILL In Love With This:

Red Mango in the U.S., April 2009:

****************************************

Red Mango in Korea, April 2008 (clearly I still like the same toppings):

De-Lurking Alert!

Just wanted to let folks know that I added a place for people to de-lurk if they so wish. It’s a new page, so you’ll need to click on over to the actual site if you follow this blog in a feed reader. (I was going to add a picture of Disney’s Ursula the Sea Witch for illustration, but couldn’t find one that wasn’t scary. Which I suppose is part of the point — isn’t that what villains are supposed to be?)

I actually like lurking (i.e. reading without commenting) myself — it suits my slow-thinker tendencies, and gives me time to do my research and think critically (well, to *try* and think critically, anyway) before forming my own opinion. But as a blogger, sometimes it’s also nice to know who is reading here and why. So if you’ve been reading for a while but haven’t spoken up yet (or if you have but it’s been a while), here is a special place, just for you.

My plan is to keep this page up for a while (unlike my “About Me” pages, which come up and down depending on my mood), so whenever the fancy strikes, de-lurk away!

Comments are off to encourage de-lurking on my new page

One Thing Adoptive Parents Hate Doing

I’ve written about this topic before (here and here), but John Raible says it so much better:

Yet, even with all this compiled research and information about race and adoption, parents still have not received the message. Too many families still think

The Danger of Going Back

One year ago today, I was on a plane en route to Korea.

Today, I am counting the days until I can go back again.

***********************************

If you are a Korean adoptee, the biggest danger of going back to visit Korea is that as soon as you come home, you’ll want to go back again.

Even though you were just there, even though your bank account hasn’t yet recovered from the last trip, and even though your time there was a mixed bag of good and bad, shadows and light.

The danger is that despite the mixed feelings, despite being confronted on a daily basis by an alternate reality that might have been yours and now never will be, despite the “culture shock” and the sights-smells-sounds of everything so different, different, different –

Despite it all, the danger is that you will still feel a connection, thin and fragile yet growing ever stronger, to places that will never really be yours, to people that you have never met.

***********************************

But despite these dangers, if you have ever had the slightest desire to go back, then I tell you:

Go.

And if you hate every minute of it, if you come home and desire never to step foot in the cursed country again, if you are never overcome with physical yearnings to return, then all I can tell you is this:

Consider yourself very lucky indeed.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

In response to my most recent post, specifically the line where I wrote “Don’t tell me that my Korean mother loved me,” I received an email from someone that contained the following statement:

Honestly, and perhaps this is just my opinion – I think it would be better to hear that you were abandoned because of protective love rather than to be given the impression that you were abandoned because you weren’t loved.

I think this is a common feeling, because some things are just more comfortable for us to believe than others.  Wouldn’t we all rather believe