We Had a Baby! - Mee-yuk Gook

A baby! A baby! We had a baby!

Good gracious no, it isn't my baby. It's my sister's baby. My sister and her husband had a little baby girl on Monday.

No no, not the sister who just got married. I have two sisters; they are identical twins. One has been married now for almost three years, and had the baby. The other sister just recently got married, and her bridal shower, eight months of planning, and wedding were the subject of many a post here at the Delicious Life. I suspect that baby-related food subjects will make their way into my Delicious Life now as well.

only her jaw, just like her aunt

Okay, so technically, we, as in "including Sarah," didn't have a baby, but it sure feels like we, all of us, my whole family, had the baby. Together.

I am going to call her Bunny. In her teeny tiny newborn outfit, she looks like a little pink bunny rabbit. And this is the only picture of my Bunny I'll post, I promise. I'm not going to be one of those overzealously proud aunts who picture-messages, emails, IMs and carries everywhere her newborn niece's picture. Wanna see Bunny when she's three days old? Four days old? Here she is when she's one week old! That won't be me, I promise. Well, just for the first month, then I swear I'll stop. ;)

Now, to keep this post within the confines of The Delicious Life as a food blog, let’s go through some of the food I experienced on the day that Bunny was born. Bunny was born about 10 am on Monday morning. I got to the hospital by about 2:45 pm to visit the Happy Family in recovery. (What is Happy Family in a Chinese restaurant anyway?)

Hawaiian Bread. My brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, the Baby’s Daddy, was also the Coach during labor. He was instructed to bring snacks and drinks with him to the hospital to keep close at hand because there would not be time for him to wander off to the hospital cafeteria for a snack, not that he’d even want to eat that *ahem* crap (as you will read later), let alone rush off to In n Out to grab a Double-Double, Animal-style. When I got to their recovery room, there was a three-quarters eaten loaf of King’s Hawaiian bread. So while normal people who go pick up “snacks” will go and buy chips, or if they’re healthy, trail mix and granola bars, my brother-in-law had gone and bought two loaves of Hawaiian bread. I have no idea why a loaf of Hawaiian bread as a snack is so hilarious to me, but it is.

Turkey and Prime Rib. The nurse brought a turkey sandwich for lunch, but my sister couldn’t eat it because the anesthesia was still pulsing through her body, making her very nauseous. *shrugs* I hadn’t eaten lunch yet either, so I took a bite. *blech* Good thing my sister’s nausea kept her from eating the sandwich. There were two slices of turkey on cold, chewy bread, and though the lettuce and tomato came separately, the bread was soggy. Hospital food is about as good as Airplane Food. Actually, I think Hospital Food is worse because at least on airplanes, you can choose to not buy the food.

We stayed at the hospital all afternoon and through the evening in the recovery room with my sister, her husband, and the Bunny. Clearly, I didn’t learn my lesson from the turkey sandwich because when dinner time came around and the orderly wheeled in a cart with prime rib...Let’s just say that Hospital Prime Rib is definitely not Lawry’s. In fact, it’s not even Arby’s.

Now I get to wax on about why the Delicious family women are Incredible with a capital “I,” just like the movie. For obvious reasons, my sister-the-new-mommy is pretty effin' incredible because she carried around the equivalent of a very large turkey on her body for nine months, eight of which she spent working as a badass in her own wildly successful business. All the while, she still maintained her supermodel appearance. I could exhibit some serious sibling jealousy here I suppose, but I can honestly say that when it comes to my sisters, I am nothing but awestruck and incredibly proud of them.

Congratulatory Snacks. My other sister-just-married is incredible because she, too, is a badass businesswoman, pretty much runnning the show at a giant hospital conglomerate (I have no idea actually if it's a comglomerate per se, but it's a giant health care provider that has hospitals all over the place). She finished her big meeting on the day the Bunny was born, then snuck out to come visit, still in her professional pantsuit, still lugging her giantlatop. She called us from the road to find out what we needed and heard about the turkey sandwich. She stopped off at the market and picked up Fritos. LOL! It may sound totally stupid, but she picked up our sister’s favorite snacks – Fritos, Chex Mix, SoBe Lizard Fuel drinks, Gatorade (which was actually for the Coach to go with his Hawaiian bread), and gum. It was exactly what she wanted. She should know – twins are weirdly connected like that.

Mee-yuk Gook. Mom is incredibly – there is no other way to say it – incredibly incredible. For months, she cooked at home in the OC and took food to my sister while she was pregnant. She mad
e my sister’s favorite things, always heeding her weird cravings and new dislikes-due-to-hormones. In the early stages of her pregnancy, my sister craved baked potatoes and naeng-myun, Korean cold buckwheat noodles. In Korean culture, a craving for naeng-myun is a good sign that the baby is a girl. Isn’t that crazy accurate? I wish I knew the science behind that one.

We learned a little bit about Korean culture from Mom throughout the duration of the pregnancy. She made pots and pots of mee-yuk gook, simmering chicken on the bone with onions and garlic for hours until the meat is hanging onto the bones by mere tendrils, then adding mee-yuk at the very end with a little bit of soy sauce and sesame oil. As she explained to us, in the Korean culture, pregnant women are supposed to eat a lot of mee-yuk gook. Of course, like many traditions, there is some real science behind the culture. Mee-yuk is seaweed, which is super-rich in essential vitamins and minerals, especially iron, for a pregnant woman and a developing baby.

I love Korean soups, and mee-yuk gook is one of my favorites. When Mom made the soup for my sister, she always made a little extra to drop off to me. When I called Mom to let her know that the Bunny had been born, first she practically blew my eardrum out screaming that she was a grandmother, then second, she told me she’d be at the hospital as soon as she could. When she got to the hospital, she plopped down a vase of three dozen congratulatory roses, pulled out a long silver thermos from her purse, took out a bowl and spoon from the Nordstrom shopping bag she had been carrying, and poured my sister a bowl of mee-yuk gook to eat right there on the hospital bed. Incredible. Mom brought hot mee-yuk gook to my sister in a thermos.

Then she took off with the Daddy’s parents, the other set of grandparents, to go eat sushi. LOL!

My Mom is incredible. My whole family is... pretty incredible. We had a baby!

tags :: food : and drink : korean : cooking : los angeles