Vegan's Chronicles

Apartment-hunting!

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?!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Oh sweet, fluffy-goodness.

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speaking of fluffy-goodness... Bunny 'tocks!!

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*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.

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Link

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. :)

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mini bowl of bibimbab

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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:

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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.