The Korean Vegan

I sliced off the very top of the sponge cake that had been cooling on my kitchen table for about an hour. I wanted a perfectly flat top for the whipped cream frosting I would add the next day. I popped a piece into my mouth and smiled. This was, undoubtedly, the best vegan sponge cake I'd ever eaten. Anthony, my husband, was leaning over the kitchen faucet behind me, washing the dishes from lunch. "Babe," I said. "You have to try this." I tore off another small chunk of cake and carried it to...

Several years ago, my mother and I went to the local H-Mart--the first one to open in Chicago. Tucked away in Niles, Illinois, a quiet-ish suburb of Chicago, this massive Korean grocery store boasted a sprawling parking lot that provided for tons of jockeying between impatient shoppers, cheap grocery carts, sojourners who simply wanted a quick bite to eat from the market's food court. Going to H-Mart was always that--a journey, of sorts. It was far enough away to require some advanced...

My parents' wedding. Last week, you all BLEW ME AWAY with your feedback to the topic: When Adult "Kids" Won't Leave the Nest. As I was hoping, you shared so many beautiful stories about parental love, resilience, and family, and, in the process, restored my diminishing faith in humanity. It truly reinforced why I started sharing my own stories--to prove that however different we are, we have more in common than we realize. If you haven't checked out some of these stories, you can do so and...

This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I found my first, undeniable, totally pigment-less white hair. I'll be turning 45 years old in a couple weeks, so this shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise. But it did. It signaled that I could no longer hide under the cloak of young adulthood, claim that I was still really just a kid. Because that's the thing--despite having started and ended a career in law, begun my own business, written my own book, gotten married and divorced--I still feel...

Did you know that people born in the 1990s are four times as likely to get colorectal cancer as those born in the 1950s? I didn't either. As you all know, last week, I spent some time in Chicago with my family to celebrate my father's 80th birthday. During that time, the Princess of Wales unraveled the tragic mystery to her recent "disappearance"--a cancer diagnosis (she did not divulge what kind of cancer). When I showed the video to my mother, the first words out of her mouth were: "But...

Hello all! Just a brief note today, as I'm literally sitting on my parent's sofa in their living room in a very, very cold Chicago. Earlier this month, my father turned 80 years old, which, in any culture, is a pretty big deal! It is a particularly big deal in Korean culture and as a result, my family has been discussing and planning the festivities (plural!) for over a year. We kicked things off this past weekend by throwing a small, intimate dinner of 37 people for the family and some...

In 2014, I went to my very first marathon. And by "went to," I don't mean "ran." I was a spectator at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon--one that my very new boyfriend was running. I'd never been to a marathon before and, as many of you know, it was this first experience as Anthony's "water girl" and the indescribable elation of participating in this collective athletic conquest that ultimately led to my love of long-distance running. It was also the first time I met Robert, my very new...

Your feedback to last week's newsletter... Last week, I spilled my guts on my concerns regarding the Ozempic craze that's sweeping the nation. Many of you generously took a moment out of your day to write to me, directly, expressing your solidarity with me in my continued quest to accept my body and for that, I am so grateful I could cry. I never in a million years imagined that somehow I would end up with the kind of compassionate, empathetic, and altogether brilliant newsletter community...

Last week, we talked about whether exercise helps with losing weight, and man--it really struck a chord. I haven't received that much feedback from you all since the war in Ukraine. On the mantle of personal objectives, I think it denotes an openness to replacing the ideal physique with fitness. The fact that exercise is so much more effective than being "svelte" when it comes to living longer (which is really the end goal for so many of us), gives us permission to jettison the unrealistic...

We've all been there: You're trying to get rid of some extra "holiday weight," your doctor has suggested that you lose a few pounds, or you want to transform your body into the slimmer version you remember from your 20s. You start walking around your neighborhood for an hour every day and hit the gym to lift some weights a few times a week. After a while, you start running a couple miles here and there, throw in a Zumba class with your friends, even sign up for a local 5k. You're definitely...