I was going to have a Christmas party this year because it just seemed like the thing to do, but my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t want to stress myself out anymore than I already was by trying to force the yuletide spirit up my ass, DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Still, I felt that doing something on a smaller scale could boost my mental well-being, so I got Henry to agree to let me have a Korean dinner party, and by “let” I mean that he had to be on board because otherwise we’d just be sitting around eating ramen and kimchi, unless of course I couldn’t find the strength to open the jar.
Of course Henry said yes though because that guy loves to cook and he has really embraced the nuances of Korean cuisine. And thank god because how else could I have spent the last year eating a primarily Korean-based diet? Henry is kind of the best.
I promised him that we would keep it small since he would be doing all the cooking, plus our dining room table is small as fuck. Technically it’s only meant to comfortably seat 6 but I managed to squeeze in two extra seats.
The guest list was:
- Chronica
- Blake & Haley (Blakely? Halke?)
- Janna
This was kind of like their reward for putting up with my complete Korean immersion without judging or mocking me.
A few weeks ago, I had this grand idea that we should put Korean stars on the banchan bowls. (Pro tip for you Westerners who might not know much about Korean food because let’s be real before last year I only knew kimchi and bibimbap: banchan is an array of Korea side dishes that are traditionally served with meals – you don’t order it, they just appear on the table and they are fucking glorious. It’s mostly vegetables, like kimchi, bean sprouts, pickled cucumbers or radish, etc etc. Ah, service.) So that’s what Henry and I had been diligently working on around here lately and I am so happy with the results! For starters, here’s this gorgeous G-Dragon bowl and Chooch’s Got7 tea cup:
A BIGBANG dessert tray (this is my favorite!).
Weekly Idol & IU tea cups. (I love Weekly Idol so much.)
I made this one to honor our recently departed Jonghyun. The inside is Korean for “You worked hard.” This dinner party was actually a secret memorial for him in my head. I brought down his picture from my bedroom wall and surrounded it with candles. It made me feel moderately comforted.
For our serving bowls, we made one with Goblin and Boys Over Flowers (two of my favorite k-dramas) and the second one is RUNNING MAN. I used the original 7 members because that is my favorite line-up. Now Gary is gone and they have two new members, but it will always be 7012 in my heart. (THAT’S A RUNNING MAN THING.)
Ugh, Taemin’s beauty makes my heart hurt.
Here’s all the banchan bowls on the lazy susan! In addition to the G-Dragon and Taemin ones, we also did BTS, SHINee of course, 2NE1, Sistar and a larger rice bowl in the middle was Twice.
Henry wanted Blackpink to be his tea cup but I gave him…
Hyuna instead, because he loves watching her scandalous music videos. Also, he’s actually redoing this one right now as I type this because he fucked up the one mouse ear. This is why I was just in charge of the Photoshop part and he got to do the actual decal placement because I have zero patience for things like that!
Wouldn’t be a K-dinner party without a Girls Generation plate! Don’t worry, this picture was taken the day after the dinner. The cats were not on the table at all prior to that. Also, Chris initially thought that was a kimchi-scented candle and not just me using an empty kimchi jar as a votive holder, which made me laugh!
Another view of the EXO tea cup. This one was hard to make because they currently (allegedly) have 9 members but there is some weird “scheduling conflict” that constantly comes up with their Chinese member, Lay, and he has been AWOL for like every promotion they’ve done in 2017 and some people say that SM Entertainment is trying to quietly force him out of EXO!? I only know like 4 EXO members and am not qualified to make assumptions about this at all, but Kpop’s got some drama.
We used my precious G-Dragon table as the dessert table, natch. We had a type of traditional Korean rice cakes which are often eaten during celebrations such as Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving), honey cookies called yakgwa, and Haley made delicious orange cranberry cupcakes – I was obsessed with the frosting and commented on it like three times like it was the only thing I was capable of talking about.
Also! Korean cinnamon punch, OMG. It tasted just like the kind we bought at the Korean food festival last year! It has a shit-ton of ginger in it and dried persimmons. Chooch was happy because for once we had punch with no alcohol in it.
This was what the table looked like after I finished fussing with it. Everyone got a BIGBANG tea, as well, which I thought would be a nice souvenir but NOT EVERYONE TOOK THEIR EMPTY BOTTLE HOME!
OK, I have shit to do so I’ll be back later to write about the food.