Time is gold! I have heard this a lot of time growing up, but it only came to me how some moments just fly by. Maybe, living in the city is a factor. There's just this unexplainable moments for me when I look at the clock and suddenly it's already half past the day. Working from home, attending virtual meetings, and setting up a work station on the same table where I eat my meals have made me adapt to a certain routine that will allow me to spend my time wisely. This includes making lunch meals that are easy to cook. However, just like the food we buy from fast food places, unhealthy food could be our only option.
I am glad that I am constantly learning from the different entertainment media which I've been consuming in the past months. Some Korean variety shows features food that are easy to prepare, cook, and even eat! This is where I am getting the variety of food choices I've been eating. Two weeks ago, when I was in the middle of finishing a bulk of my work tasks and also making sure that I'd be able to consume the groceries I've bought for that week (I went home to our province on that weekend 😅 so I needed to empty the fridge), I had to toss everything that would match on the lunch plates I was cooking for myself. To start...
Gimbap with fried eggplant
I am just sure that there's no gimbap recipe that uses fried eggplant as "filling", but what I like about fried eggplant is that it's not too savory, so it won't really affect the taste of the other ingredients in this gimbap. You'll just know it's in there because of its subtle sweet flavor when fried.
Stir fry the ingredients. What I love about our frying pan is that it can accommodate a lot of ingredients to fry. This saves me time in preparing the ingredients whenever I would cook this meal.
Cut everything into strips. There's just this joy whenever I see the ingredients well-arrayed on the plate. This also allows you to pick the ingredients faster and arrange it on top of the layer of rice.
Time to roll. If you're really on a rush, after making gimbap rolls, some would already eat it. It's an on-the-go food for people in Korea. What I love about it is that it can have the necessary components of a healthy and balanced meal in one roll. There's rice, ham, and vegetables...it's complete!
Loads of greens! This is my most recent addiction when it comes to Korean food. When I was watching the variety show Three Meals in a Day, I was convinced that they just lack ingredients at that time and that none of them knows to cook when they made cabbage pancake ( jeon ) for their meal. While watching them eat the jeon that they cooked, they were really enjoying its good taste so I became curious. It's the simplest thing I've known that can be eaten as a viand. All you need to do is mix flour, water, salt, and pepper to coat the cabbage leaves before frying it. That's all! Since my plate a a little small and I don't want to add more kitchenwares to wash, I decided to roll the jeon and place it beside the gimbap rolls that I've sliced.
Ready your chopsticks! My lunch plate is now assembled! All I had to do is go back to my work table and eat this quickly while attending to the work tasks that I still have to do. So if ever you're in a hurry, hope you got an inspiration from this post too. Good and healthy food can be cooked in a few minutes, so don't forget to eat and enjoy. :)