Traveling Tuesdays (Totally behind!)..Korea!

1st place in the season!

Tisk tisk...I'm totally behind. I'm not really sure why...no excuses. I guess it was because this past week was kind of busy!! Monday and Tuesday, Matt and I spent time mentally preparing ourselves for our big games on Wednesday for the Fort Leavenworth Volleyball Championship. Sounds important doesn't it. :) Well it was. To us at least...haha. Wednesday night we set out to maintain our winning streak with our volleyball team that we weren't on at first, but then we were asked by one of Matt's instructors (a LTC...couldn't say no! lol) after the first game to come help the next week. And somehow after that...we were just on the team! Of course Matt and I are awesome, so we were a great addition to it. :) Tooting my own horn. Actually it was a lot of fun. But we ended up 1st in the whole season. Which was awesome. So Wednesday night we had to play a team to get to the final championship game obviously. And we beat them 2-0; they had improved so much throughout the season I was a little concerned at first. But we pulled through. Then we waited while the other teams played each other (somewhat of a bad place to be in since you cool down) and finally were able to play the team that I knew we were going to have to play. One that was made up of all dudes. And especially this huge, tall, muscle-y black guy who is so awesome in volleyball it's unreal. If he gets a good set...he smacks it down...no questions asked. Of course, this same guy also smashed it into my head lol, but it's cool! We joked about it later. This team ended up beating us in the first match 26-24...which was our first loss of the season! So we pulled ourselves together and ended up beating them out the next two games with not so close scores *pat on the back*.  It was honestly a lot of fun and I wish the season was still going on. I hope I'll always be able to play volleyball at some point in my life. I'm so used to being in that setting, that it's like home each time I set foot on a court. :)

Season and Tournament trophies

So that was our Wednesday. Of course, we'll back track to Tuesday for our World Cuisine night! :) We "went" to Korea! I've been wanting to make Bulgogi, or Korean BBQ for a while just because the flavors sounded so good. And I was finally able to do it! I kind of mixed two recipes together because I didn't have some things on one, but did have things for another. Here's how I did it!

Ingredients!

BULGOGI (KOREAN BARBECUED BEEF)
Yields 4 servings

Ingredients (what I used!)

1 pound top sirloin steak trimmed
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3-4 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
Crystallized ginger (got to use it up!)*
2-3 teaspoons dark sesame oil
4 big cloves of garlic (yummy)
Cooking spray

Added:
Chili Garlic Sauce for some heat!
Sliced onions
Snow peas
Sliced mushrooms 
Green onions (why not.)

*Note: The recipe called for 1 teaspoon fresh minced ginger. I used about 5 pieces of the crystallized ginger and minced as best as I could. It's sticky!

Yea...whisk action shot!

 First thing I did was mix all the ingredients together, minus the meat, to form the marinade. I then sliced the meat thinly. They suggest freezing it for about an hour wrapped in plastic wrap to get it to the 1/16 of an inch thickness; however, I had the meat in the refrigerator after it had thawed out and it was fine. I would just suggest making sure it's cold enough to slice thinly. Obviously.

I know...the raw meat..kind of nasty

Next, I put all of the meat into a Pyrex dish, along with the marinade and covered it for a good four hours or so. During this time I flipped the meat around a couple of times for even coating, watching some Paula Deen, and ran 3 1/2 miles. All in a days work. :) After all of that, it was time to cook! When I opened the Pyrex up, *sniffs* yummy. Seriously. All those flavors mixed together. Mmmmm!!

Amazing smells from this dish!

I heat up my grilling pan which I coated with some cooking spray and let the meat sizzle away. It took about 6 minutes total since the meat was so thin. And then I decided...okay I know traditionally it's served with rice on lettuce wraps..and I'm totally cool with that since I eat like a rabbit anyways, but I do have a muscular man that I have to feed..and he looked at me funny when I told him the traditional way because I guess it sounds too rabbity to him..what else can I add? Oh yes...maybe some sliced onions, snow peas, green onions, and left over mushrooms! Since it also said that sometimes other veggies are set out as fillings with the meat. Why not! So I sauted up the veggies in some cooking spray!

Mmmmmm....

I added everything in with the beef on the skillet just so everything could get flavored up together and then served it with some jasmine rice and of course...a salad! Matt was a happy camper. And so was I since it was a veggie packed dinner and super tasty! The meat comes in at about 208 calories per serving and I'm sure adding the veggies added on a bit, but not by much. It's veggies! It was really good and although it was a bit like my other Asian dishes, the taste was definitely different than the rest. I would highly recommend it! I wouldn't even mind trying it the traditional way. Here's the website: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/bulgogi-korean-beef-barbecue-10000000429500/ (didn't use mirin)

This weekend was a fun and also relaxing weekend for us as well. Friday we went to a Brazilian restaurant. Where they come around with these huge skewers of meat. You felt a little caveman-ish. Grunting at the meat as it was presented to you....okay maybe not me personally, but the guys sure were! :) It was really good. And a neat experience!! Saturday and Sunday were spent lounging and getting ready for Matt's brother, Mark, to come into town on his pre-deployment leave. We are really excited to see him, as we haven't seen him since Christmas/New Years. Today, Monday, we took him to Fort Riley, Kansas to see his friend (and ours too!), Thomas, who is stationed there with his wife! We played some disc golf and had a lot of fun catching up. Matt and I left Mark there to come back to Leavenworth so Matt could rest up for class tomorrow (back to the grind!), but Mark will be joining us again tomorrow and will be here through Sunday. We plan on taking him to the two disc golf courses we found here in Kansas as well as out to a little place called High Noon Saloon for some pool (and of course local people watching) on Thursday. Matt's been teaching me pool. :) And I plan on hopefully doing a fire pit at our house so Mark can maybe meet the neighbors. We're just really excited to show him a good time before he leaves to go to sea for 8 months or so. I'm hoping to take some pictures. As I always talk about doing...but never do. This time I'm going to REALLY try. Pinkie swear. Well, I suppose that's all for now. Of course, tomorrow is Tuesday again...so hopefully I won't fall behind. We're doing a Hawaiian pig roast! Not really...but I've read that it's pretty darn close! It was either that or Australia and since Matt was born in Hawaii, I couldn't resist! :) Take care!!!