Discovered By Accident : The Nuts (더 넛츠)

So, few days ago I was sitting on my couch eating baked potato wedges while watching Yoo Hui Yeol's Sketchbook on KBS World. One of the guests for that night was The Nuts. The MC introduced the band as 'a rock ballad band'. Naturally, I don't really listen to the genre, so I just changed the channel (I'm sorry DX). When I changed it back, they were saying farewell before singing their second song. I was waiting for the next show on KBS so, I didn't change the channel again. And thankfully I didn't because once they played their song called Love Note, I was definitely in love with it. It's not like the ordinary rock ballad I've listened (or thought). It's more like britpop, something like Coldplay or Keane would do (although not exactly the same). And I think I love the song because of the husky voice of the vocalists. I immediately regretted that I missed their first performance (le sigh). 

Picture is taken from Google

So I did my research and It surprised me that Google failed me because I don't really get much about the band.  The Nuts debuted in 2004 with five members, but two of their members, Kang Il and Kim Hyun-joong, departed and leaving the group with only three members. Although reduced in number, the music force of The Nuts seemed to have grown, as their vocal talent and emotional expression have matured greatly over the years. One of the members was actor Ji Hyun Woo who might be known best as his role for drama Queen In-Hyun's Man, movie Mr. Idol or plainly Yoo In Na's girlfriend XD

After Ji Hyun Woo left for the army, the remaining members, Jung Yi Han and Kim Sung Gyeol reinvented themselves as a duo and continue the name. Since 2004, they've released five albums; The Nuts (2004), Whispers of Love (2006), Could've Been (2008), Crazy Love (2008) and Truth J (2009). They also released several singles during the years. 

After being hiatus after their latest album in 2009, they finally came back as a duo and released a single digital album Rebirth with their tittle song Love Note (the one that got me into them XD) in the early of 2013. In the same year, around December 2013, they came back as a four-members band and reinvented the members again. Aside from the original member Jung Yi Han (lead vocalist), also joined the members Na Jun Ha (vocal, guitarist), Noh Seung Hwan (base) and Kim Sang Don (drum) (he's adorable kekekeke). They released another digital single album Return To Love with tittle song Ddoreureu (translated as rolling).

 Love Note MV

Ddoreureu MV

 I know I'm late for they've been around for like ten years and they've already released a new song like months ago. But, for good music, better be late than never, right. I just wish they will do really well with this new formation and please no more restructuring kekekekeke. As I researching I found that they are underrated, I don't know why. They have amazing tunes and lyrics and voices. I'm having hard times looking for their background and songs. I rummaged around iTunes and I could only find one song. You can check youtube or last.fm to listen to their other songs, though. I'm just saying that they deserve to be  known more, imo.

I'm looking forward to their new project soon. Like VERY SOON. Hopefully a full album or EP *crossing fingers* Meanwhile, below is the performance that blew my mind and heart, made me feeling suddenly romantic and stop everything that I did kekekekekeke

Love Note performance on Yoo Hui Yeol's Sketchbook

The Nuts on Twitter

The Nuts on Youtube

The Nuts' Return To Love on iTunes  

Jung Yi Ha on Twitter

Na Jun Ha on Twitter

Noh Seung Hwan on Twitter

Source : korea-fans.com and akp

Swing a little swing of me

I always love Swing music (which I used to refer as 'old movies tunes') since long time ago. I may be listen to various kind of musics but I always go back to swing. And lately, I've been listening to Swing music a lot. Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Tape Five are some of many Swing singers/group I've been listening to. Tape Five is a multinational German music project that was founded by Martin Strathausen in 2003. They don't have fix members in  the group because Martin would collaborated with many singers and instrumentalists. Their music style is popular musics in the 20's, mostly Swing and Jazz. Their two previous albums focused of on Swing and Lounge and on 2010 they started to focus on Electro Swing. If you ever watched cartoon 'Tom and Jerry', you'll hear electro swing a lot. 

I'm very much fond of old musical movies, hence my musical choice. Listening to Swing music makes me feel like I'm living the musical movies life where you express all your emotions with singing. Yes, I'm into Bollywood too. The good classic ones, not the ones where the actors have too many muscles and the actresses wear... I don't know. 

Listening to Swing music calms me down, makes me happy, makes me smile unconsciously, makes me feel romantic, makes me feel like slow dancing by my self and grab the nearest object to make it as my mic. It makes me appreciate the music, the notes, the sound every instruments make. And isn't it lovely how the sound of trumpet in it makes you smile, lighten your mood?

I really love Louis Armstrong's 'La Vie En Rose' lyrics :

Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Everyday words seems
To turn into love song
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be la vie en rose  

and of course 'What A Wonderful World's. They are simple, as in you don't have to read between the lines to understand the meaning of the songs. And the music gives you romantic vibe. I've been such a romantic hopeless lately, forgive me for that :) 

As for Tape Five, their Electro Swing really lighten up my mood with their fast-tempo songs. Makes me unconsciously clapping during the song and, if God allows, do the fast tempo swing dance. One of my favorite songs from them is 'Cool cat in Town'

And performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lady Gaga singing 'Baby It's Cold Outside' is a must-watch one. Why? Because it's Joseph Gordon-Levitt

So, why don't us turn up the volume, grab your mic and let's Swing!!!!

Burberry Prorsum Menswear A/W14

Hand painted fabric with abstract patterns inspired by Britain's scenery and arts. Classy and preppy. These collections are just beautiful...

"The Return" by Karl Lagerfeld

I know I'm late. The video has been added to my playlist like weeks ago and I finally watched it today.

And I think... you might wanna watch it too...

Happy New Year

Let's face the new beginning with positive attitude, more hopes, more smiles and especially more strength. Maybe it's an opportunity for you to make new goals, new dreams and new lessons to be learned. Whatever lies ahead, you need to know that you should try your best and the best only.

Happy New Year. Happy New Beginning. Cheers

Good food good mood: The Legend of a Lazy Lady Who finally cook part 3

Watching too much Korean Variety Shows makes me craving for lots of Korean dishes. I'm a big fan of a Korean variety show called Family Outing (패밀리가 떴다; literally translation Family's Here).  Just like the name, the show is about an outing in the countryside. They helped the locals, played games and, of course, cooking dinner and breakfast. Have you feel sudden hunger when you see someone eats? I feel that every time I watch the show. For this post, I will post the Korean Food I tried to make after watching the show.

Hoddeok or 'Korean Misro' ^^

Tofu jjeon

I have sweet tooth, means I'm craving for something sweets all the time. What really annoys me is when the craving comes at night time. Or even worse, in the middle of the night. And one of my worst case scenarios happened not long ago. Last week (or is it two weeks ago?), I watched one of the episode of Family outing (I think the guest was Kim Jong Kook?). It was winter time and Yoo Jaesuk really wanted to eat something sweet. So, Lee Hyori made Hoddeok. It's a variety filled Korean pancake, but they normally use brown sugar. I immediately googled and found a recipe from Maangchi, as my friend, Aiko, always recommend for my Korean recipes' needs ^^ I thought Hoddeok would be like another pancake I use to make, but to my surprise, it is not. The ingredients are basically the same, more or less. But, one of the ingredients is yeast and it needs approximately an hour and a half to let the dough rise T_T I decided to sleep it on and plan to make it another day. That night I ended up dreaming of eating brown sugar T_T I love the sweet taste from the brown sugar better than the white sugar. In my area, there's a traditional food called 'Misro' literally translated 'sweet inside' and it taste just like Hoddeok. Even my mom said so :p

The next food I made was a side dish-called Tofu jjeon. Well, you know tofu and Jjeon is korean Tofu jjeon is literally translated as 'tofu pancake'. I got the recipe from my friend's blog. I was cooking dinner for my brother and what I got left in the fridge is just one square tofu. One. My brother's appetite is just too wild to be served one tofu. He's an eating monster. It won't be enough. I once read tofu jjeon on her blog. It's very easy you don't need to look at the recipe to make it. You just need tofu, egg and flour. They are the basic ingredients. If you wanna add onions, garlics, scallion, etc, you are more than allowed ^^ from one tofu, I could make ten pieces of tofu jjeon ^^

Soondooboo jjigae

On my previous blog I posted about Soybean stew or Doenjang jjigae. This time I'll post about Tofu stew or Soondooboo jjigae. The ingredients and cooking process are the same. The difference would be on the broth. When Doenjang jjigae uses rice starch (or some people use beef broth instead), Soondooboo jjigae uses seafood broth. The recipe I found on Maangchi used mixed seafood and beef. But, I don't eat meat and I didn't have seafood stock at that time, so I just put Tofu (or Soondooboo), mixed vegetables and egg. Voila. You can enjoy your hot Tofu stew in this cold wheather. You can fin the recipe here




Happy cooking and happy eating, guys. Until next time ^^

Good food good mood: The Legend of a Lazy Lady Who finally cook part 2

It's been two months since I posted my blog about the foods I cooked for the first time. In those couple of months, I've made several dishes. Some were sweet and some were savory. Some were western and some were Asian (well, Korean to be exact). But don't you worry, I won't post all of them today, just some of them (although I probably will add the rest of the foods into the second post sometime this week ^^)

I love chocolate. I always love chocolate. That's why, the cakes/cookies I made, were almost always chocolate. For these past two months I've baked many chocolate snacks. Some were my first times and some were my regular kind of cakes. There were three cakes I made for the first time.

Molten Lava Cake

The first cake I made was Molten Lava Cake. It similar to the ordinary brownies, but when you dig into the cake, you could find some liquid filling inside, like lava. Hence, the name. When you bake a cake, you usually put a wooden skewer into the cake to check whether it's done or not. When your wooden skewer is still sticky with the batter, your cake hasn't done yet and you need to bake it a little longer. With the Molten Lava Cake, it's the opposite. You need the inside of the cake to be still 'liquidy'. For the recipe, I, again, saw it from my friend's blog, Aiko. What I love about her food blog is, she always put simple recipes. They just right for my lazy being. Thank you, Aiko XD Molten Lava Cakes are usually baked in a heat resistant dish, but Aiko also mentioned that you could baked it in muffin papers. So yeah, I did it kkkkkk.... You can find the Molten Lava Cake's recipe here

Chocolate Muffin

The second cake was Chocolate Muffin. It was all started when in one Sunday night, I re-watched my all-time-favourite TV series, FRIENDS (all of you who lived in my era must be familiar and be in love with the series too). Those who know the series must be know that those six New Yorker love to hang out in a coffee place called Central Perk and tease Gunther. And you also know that the Central Perk's counter always have muffin's display. If you didn't know, now you know. If you have no idea what I was talking about, it's time for you to start watching the series. It's a good one. I promise you. Anyway... had watched the show again made me craving for some muffins. Since it was Sunday, going out was definitely not an option. I started to google and finally found the recipe that I like. It was from a food-blog called Hesti's Kitchen. There were lots of chocolate muffin's recipes out there, but her post has these mouthwatering pictures of the muffin. I. Just. Couldn't. Help. Myself XD She got the recipe from Dan Lepard from Guardian.co.uk but she put some adjustments to recipe. You can find her recipe here. Meanwhile, I also put some adjustments to the recipe. I discarded the sunflower oil, chocolate chips and vanilla powder because I ran out of those ingredients. Plus, I changed the brown sugar into the ordinary white sugar.

Chocolate Chips Chocolate Walnut Cookies ^^

On one Thursday night, I, unintentionally, watched a re- run episode of Top chef: Desserts only. One of the contestants made chocolate chips and they looked very much mouthwatering. So, I decided that I'd made it during the weekend. But the thought of those mouthwatering cookies weren't leaving my memories, that on the next day, I've decided to buy Good Times at the nearest mini mart. But, I still wanted to make my own chocolate chips. Later that day, I got home a bit earlier than usually. So, I just decided, Let's do some baking!!!! So, FYI, this was not my first time making chocolate chips. I used to help my mom. But, this was my first time that I made it from the very scratch. Without any help from my mom or anyone else. I got  the recipe from my mom's cooking book. It wasn't really chocolate chips because it has no chocolate chips (Sadly, I ran out of chocolate chips) (I added some white chocolate and cheese on top of it, though) but I replaced it with walnuts (just because I have bunch of it). I named it Chocolate Walnuts Cookies ^^

Doenjang jjigae
(I took the pic when I was almost finish eating ^^)

The third dishes I'm going to post this time is a Korean stew (찌개 = jjigae). There are a lot of kinds of jjigae, because Korean really love eating jjigae.  The kind that I made this time was Doenjang jjigae (Korean soybean paste stew). Just like the name, the soybean or doenjang is the main star of the day. I came across to this dishes when I was watching an episode of a travel/cooking show at National Geographic Channel (I seriously forget the name of the show). On the show, a chef traveled to South Korea to try the original Korean dishes and at the end of the show he needed to recreate his own version of the dishes he tried and served the food to food critics. In one segment, he tried Doenjang jjigae and he suddenly lost his words because he thought the jjigae was really, really, REALLY delicious. You see, I watched the show when it was pouring rain outside. Seeing hot steam came out from the clay pot just made me say 'Let's make some Doenjang jjigae. Tomorrow.' kkkkk because I needed to but the doenjang first . So, on the next day, I really made the jjigae. And it was good. The weather was cold lately and having a bowl of hot stew was just what you need ^^ I made the dishes based on a recipe I found on a blog called beyondkimchee.com here . I made several adjustments to fit my palette because I was not familiar with the taste. Just several seasoning. Nothing major. The rest was still the same.

Wow, such a long post I made today. Anyhow,  those foods aren't all yet. I'm gonna post the rest of the food I tried to cook in the past few weeks. When you eat good food, your mood will be better ^^