Hi! I’m Jennifer! And welcome to my little corner on the Internet! Hope you enjoy it here and stick around for awhile! I’m not very good at blabbering about myself without any structure so here are some questions that I think you may be asking when you stop by the About section.. Here it goes!
Who are you?
I’m Jennifer – the recipe experimenter. I’m Korean but was born in a little town called State College in Pennsylvania and went through my emotional stages of life in the outskirts of DC in Northern Virginia. I recently got married in April 2016 with my long-term long-distance boyfriend, now husband! (If you need pro-tips on many years of long distance, you should ask us! We’ll give you great advice like, don’t do it). He sometimes refers to me as farm girl because I love following a few local orchards in the DC area and going to them throughout the summer and fall. I think it has to my small town upbringing, maybe. I also love spicy food, I love Korean food, and I love sweets. If given the option, I’ll choose to eat cabbage for dinner so I can eat my 2 slices of cake for dessert over eating one big hearty delicious dinner meal. (new insert: I eat both these days, my tummy is not thanking me) I’m kind of shy and quiet in the beginning but then again really talkative and hyper around my closest friends and husband. I’m also not the best writer – so hope you can bear with me!
Where are you?
My husband is finishing his last year of medical school in Boston while I’m still at my usual job in the DC area which means I reside somewhere in between until he graduates in Spring 2017. !!
Husband (DrJuh) is finishing his residency in Boston, so we are here! (Or, well, in Cambridge!)
What type of food do you cook? What is your blog about?
Baking is my first love in the kitchen and then once I realized I can’t eat cake for dinner forever, I’ve started to explore cooking. I’m mostly inspired by my mom, Korean (and Asian) foods in general, Korean blogs and Korean TV shows. Soon after marriage I began to explore Korean blogs but I needed to experiment a lot because the recipes also aren’t written in the greatest detail. There are also a bajillion ways to make one dish in Korea depending on the region and style the dish is coming from. I’m trying a lot of them and documenting them here!
I also love baking. I’ve had a LOT of frustration with Korean baking recipes because they are sometimes not written in very much detail (a dash of vanilla?! and a handful of salt?!) and the sizes of pans are not often written out or in weird sizes (7 inch pans? or one 6 inch pan & left over batter for another small size?!?!?!) so I’ll share the successes here and so I can remember too! You’ll see that much of my baking is inspired by Korean bakery favorites and ingredients – which in the end is similar to baking everywhere(?).
What’s with your blog name?
I found baking a few years ago on a bored evening and really fell in love with it. I had a few successes in a row in the beginning which grew my confidence (woohoo!) and then I baked a Korean recipe (soboro bread) which to this day I’m not sure what happened, but it was really really salty!! I ended up with 24 really salty Korean soboro breads (streusel bread). Alas – sweet success and salty failures! In ode to the blog name – I’ll share some fails occasionally because why shouldn’t everyone enjoy in my sadness? 🙂
My husband always used his username as “mrjuh” so I’ve followed suit as “chopsticksandflour” for “jeh-nee-puh” is on how Koreans says Jennifer!
Why did you start this blog?
I’ve just started it recently but post-marriage, I made a few yummy Korean foods merging a few recipes and tips from all over the place and I realized 1 week later there was no way for me to recreate it! Time to start documenting = blog.
I also want to share all the popular and trendy TV recipes – because they’re fun!
What foods do you not eat?
I eat my carbs in dessert so to not like them in my savory meals i.e. don’t eat a lot of pasta or rice. Not true anymore after living with DrJuh. I still explore these recipes for my husband and take some bites here and there or more…. I also don’t eat any weird or gamey meats – like tongue, liver, snail or some meat pate and so on. These meats, I don’t plan on exploring…
What’s in your fridge?
Unsalted butter. Kimchi. Gochujang (spicy red pepper paste). Pork for the husband because Koreans eat a lot of pork.
What’s your favorite dessert?
Cheesecake! Korean saeng cream cake (fresh cream cake a.k.a. genoise cake with whipped cream) found at the nearest Korean bakery near you! Recently devouring lots of donuts particularly from Union Square donuts in Boston…
My husband also says I’m going to turn into a yogurt – I really like frozen yogurt. Is this too many favorites?
And that’s all! Thanks for reading all of my run on sentences! Hope you stick around and cook a few spicy dishes while baking a few sweets!