I have a pot belly from Chuseok

So...this weekend was Chuseok in Korea, which is like a type of Thanksgiving and it's a 3-day holiday in Korea. Basically it is a time where people celebrate the harvest with lots of traditional foods, and some people pay tribute to their hometowns to honor ancestors of the past by performing prayer rituals and visiting and setting up offerings at their family tombs. For me, Chuseok has simply been known as a time to eat Korean food, as typically in my diet, I do not eat a ton of Korean food. I am trying to change this detail and work on preparing one new Korean dish a month, but this might be ambitious.

Truthfully this year was only my second celebration of Chuseok, although I plan to keep the tradition going. Before I only knew of it from my birth parents, as they are farmers, Chuseok is a very big deal for them, and my mother prepares food for days for the village celebration. Last year was my first real American celebration of Chuseok. My high school friend's mother is Korean and has been a second mother to me, and last year I was invited to her mother's friend's Chuseok party. All of the women brought dishes of Korean food to share, and we sat around gossiping, filling our stomachs, and for some of the women, letting out little toots of gratitude. Yes, I mean farts. It was an interesting experience, and I definitely enjoyed myself.

This year I decided to try something new. I looked for a local event and found that on Sunday there was a Chuseok 5K happening at Lake Phalen with traditional dance, food, music, massage, taekwondo and other goodies for sale to follow the race. It was a fundraiser for a Korean American newspaper called the Korean Quarterly. I have not been in a race since last May when I ran a half marathon and thought it couldn't hurt to displace all of the calories I was going to take in from Chuseok with a little fall jog around the lake.

So I signed up and Jay and my friend Sarah came too and we did the run, got some free Korean poetry books, ate some snacks and then went to Mirror of Korea for dinner. We were feeling a little bit chilly, so Sarah ordered wonton soup, I ordered Kimchi Chigae and Jay ordered Galbi Tang. We enjoyed ourselves very much, and I plan to consider doing the race again next year!

Here are the following Chuseok dates in case you want to get in on a future celebration (as taken from Wikipedia):

2009: October 3
2010: September 22
2011: September 12
2012: September 30
2013: September 19
2014: September 8
2015: September 27
2016: September 15
2017: October 4
2018: September 24

Chuseok as well as the day before it and afterwards are legal holidays in South Korea.

Sipping tea @ Mirror of Korea



Food...NUMMY!


Sporting our free sweatshirts from the race...its like wearing a fleece blanket!