They say daughter-in-laws don’t even want to eat spinach because it starts with the same sound as “in laws” in Korean. ( spinach is 시금치 and the first syllable 시 means in laws in Chinese Korean). It’s a strange concept to someone like me, whose in-laws are too nice.
My mother-in-law, who was an elementary school teacher, didn’t work in the kitchen until she came to America. After arriving to the US, she worked at the market alongside her husband. She was cooking mainly to survive, so she didn’t consider herself accomplished in that area. It made sense for me to take over the duty of cooking for the family when I got married. Though I wasn’t very experienced myself.
Until the day I married my husband, I was a student living without a kitchen. I had never even made a pot of instant noodles.
I called my sister Aera, who lived in Brooklyn, every day.
“Unni, how much water do I need to put in the rice cooker?”
“How do I make bean sprouts soup?”
Sometimes I looked up recipes from the cookbook my cousin gave me. This was way before the internet and YouTube videos. I made japchae every few days because it’s almost foolproof. It would take me 3-4 hours to make one dish because of my slow chopping skills. One time I made galbi tang (beef rib soup), and it was so flavorless my father-in-law said, “Oh the cow must have just dipped his feet and fled away.” I was so embarrassed, but my mother-in-law scolded her husband saying, “What do you mean? It’s delicious.” She always complimented my dish, no matter how it tasted. “Yours tastes better than mine,” she would say.
After 40 years of trial and error, I have to say I am much better at it. Thanks to so many recipes and how-to videos out there, anyone can become a decent cook these days if they are willing to try.
When my son was about the age we were when we got married, I imagined what it would be like if he came to live with us with his wife. That’s when it hit me. Everyone thought we were being a good son and daughter in law by taking care of our parents; but it was really the other way around. When we married, my in-law’s took in a 23 year old girl to take care of. We thought we moved in order to respect my father in law’s suggestion, that you become a family by living under the same roof. But in reality, we could not afford to live on our own with my husband still in school.
After a year and a half, we were able to move to a house of our own with help from my in-laws. My father-in-law was right. I learned so much about the culture and the way of my in-laws by living with them. I had a better understanding of how my husband was brought up, and it ultimately helped me in our marriage.
I am still grateful that my in-laws paid for all the expenses for our wedding. My parents were financially in bad shape after my father was forced to relinquish his position as a congressman. They could barely afford to buy my husband a $400 Omega watch and a hanbok for my in-laws.
My father-in-law told my parents that the wedding is his family’s affair, and that they were just grateful to my parents for sending them a precious daughter.
My mother-in-law was as pure as a lamb ( as she was born in the year of lamb 
They told their children to always try to pick up the tab when eating with others. Even I heard them saying it often after I started living under their roof. Whenever we’d go out with my sister and her husband, who was a resident doctor in a hospital, my father in law would advise us to hand over some money.
“You should pick up the tab, residents don’t make enough money “
I thought residents make more money than graduate students…
They were so trusting with others that they got conned a few times. They would let their friends keep better stores and others to buy the building offer that came to them first.
My husband wasn’t happy about his parent’s extreme generosity, but he himself isn’t much better than them. He is always fast to pick up the tab and has a tendency to give his items away if anyone compliments it.
Like my husband always says, apples don’t fall far from the tree.
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