The majority of Saturday morning and afternoon was spent apartment-hunting with my mom, who came to Seoul to help with the search, negotiate rent, and to speak legalese with the realtors etc. After a tiring search and a lot of indecision, I'm happy to announce that I found an apartment!!! But before I tell you more about my future abode, here's what we ate before heading out on our search. We knew we had to get a good breakfast in since we would be walking around a lot, and what better than pancakes for a filling Saturday breakfast?!
For these pancakes, I used my favorite go-to pancake recipe from vegweb.com. I love this recipe, because as the title says, it is indeed very easy, does not require any odd ingredients, and it can be modified in numerous ways with whatever I have on hand.
This time, I decided to sub half of the all purpose flour with spelt flour! Now, you might be wondering, where the heck I got spelt flour in Korea... . well, unfortunately, I didn't get it here. I actually bought a bag of the stuff (Bob's Red Mill brand) from a health food store in the Philippines, when I vacationed there over a year ago!! I'm (obviously) not gluten-intolerant, but thought it would be fun to try some gf-baking, but then I sort of forgot all about it all... . Anyway, now that I have to start thinking of moving, I figured it would be good to consume this long-forgotten item stashed away in my freezer.
Spelt Pancakes (modified from this recipe on VegWeb)
serves 2
1/2 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil (I used grapeseed oil)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk (I used sugar-free soy milk)
1/4 cup water
dash cinnamon, optional (I omitted this part)
1. Lightly mix all ingredients in a fairly large bowl; leave 5-10 minutes to rise. It's important only to mix the batter enough to moisten, as overmixing will make the pancakes tough.
2. Heat a lightly-oiled pan on medium heat. When you sprinkle a few drops of water in the pan, it should skip and sizzle, but not explode everywhere.
3. Pour some batter in the pan and cook on one side, about 2 minutes, or until you can see the edges are half-cooked. Flip and cook the other side for another 2 minutes, or until it is golden brown. Serve immediately.
We topped our pancakes with walnuts, dried blueberries, and agave syrup. YUMMMM. I'm not sure if it was the addition of spelt flour, or the use of sugar-free soymilk, but these pancakes were much fluffier than usual and they tasted really great! And I really loved the nuttiness of the whole spelt flour.
Oh sweet, fluffy-goodness.
speaking of fluffy-goodness... Bunny 'tocks!!
*tickley-tickle~!*
So anyway, back to my apartment search. I'm happy to report that I finally found a place that hits almost all of my big criteria. It's a regular studio apartment in Yeungdeungpo-gu, all the way on the opposite side of Seoul from Gunja station, which will give me a chance to explore a whole new part of the city! And while the room itself is rather small, it has a nice little outdoor rooftop patio that I get all to myself! When the realtor was showing me the space, I started picturing all these fancy outdoor dinner parties that I could throw (you know, like in the movies), Bunny frolicking freely in the open air, me painting or reading a book in the summer sunshine, and growing my own organic roof-top veggies, that I immediately fell in love with the place. It's even in my price-range!! One problem though (ofcourse). It doesn't free-up until mid-October, which is more than a month after I have to move out of my current place. AHhhhhh! I was so disappointed at the possibility of not scoring this spot, and then all the subsequent apartments I checked out just didn't tug at my heart strings in the same way, so in the end, I decided to sign the contract for my little rooftop shack anyway! So, it looks like I'll be "homeless" for a month and a half. Well, not really homeless because I'll probably just crash at Cheonan for the 1 1/2 months inbetween... . (oh dear gawd, i'll be living with the folks again... .)... . unless anyone in Seoul wants to put me up? haha. I can pay rent in the form of vegan cookies.
Anyway, to celebrate our successful apartment-hunting, my mom and I rewarded ourselves with a late lunch feast at Garobee buffet in Gangnam. The food was much more plentiful than my first visit, and I definitely loaded up on veggies and banchans. :)
mini bowl of bibimbab
dessert was fruit, ddeok, nuts and seeds.
So that sums up my day of successful apartment hunting and vegan eating. Even though I won't be moving into my new place until mid-October (ugh, it seems like forever away), I'm excited for the change of scenery, and for now, I'll enjoy my last few weeks at my current Gunja place, which I have called 'home' for the past 4 years. *Sigh* I'm definitely gonna miss my 'hood, Gunja. Anyway, I'll save the sentimentality for a later time~
And now, I shall leave you with an image of today's breakfast:
Oatmeal, flax, and chia seeds cooked with soy milk, and topped with toasty-brown coconut shreds, raisins, and dried tropical fruit-mix. Happy to have oatmeal back in my life.