Seafood Stuffing

Thirty-one weeks. The last stretch. Dr. Hernandez says Hana is positioned well — head down, engaged, ready. I am less ready. I am the most ready I will ever be. Both of these things are true. Both of these things have always been true about me and everything.

I started maternity leave early — not officially (that begins March 1) but emotionally. I am at Amazon in body but not in spirit. I attend meetings. I review code. I nod at architecture diagrams. But my mind is in the nursery corner of our bedroom, where David's crib stands with Jisoo's quilt folded inside it and a stuffed rabbit that Kevin sent from Portland and a stack of board books in English and Korean that I have been collecting for months. My mind is in March. My mind is in the delivery room. My mind is in the moment when they will put her on my chest and I will see her face for the first time and everything will begin.

Banchan Labs is running smoothly. James has taken over daily operations almost entirely. I go to the SoDo kitchen twice a week — Tuesdays and Thursdays — for recipe development and to see Grace, who has become something between a mentor, a grandmother, and a business partner. Grace looked at me on Thursday and said, "You are nesting." I said, "I am nesting at work?" She said, "You are nesting everywhere. You are reorganizing the kimchi jars by fermentation date. You have never organized the kimchi jars by fermentation date. You are nesting." She was right. I was nesting in the SoDo kitchen. I was alphabetizing the spice rack. I was arranging recipe cards by season. My body is preparing for a baby by organizing everything in my environment into perfect order. This is either instinct or control issues. It is probably both.

James and I packed the hospital bag on Saturday. Toothbrush, phone charger, a change of clothes, the baby's going-home outfit (the kimchi onesie from Tess, obviously), a blanket, snacks, and the jogakbo quilt from Jisoo. I also packed a Polaroid camera, because I want Hana's first photo to be instant, tangible, holdable — not a phone photo but a real photo that we can hold in our hands the way David held the photo of me at the airport in 1993. The symmetry is intentional. The symmetry is the point.

Jisoo calls every other day now. She is anxious. She is excited. She asks about my blood pressure, my weight, my sleep, my appetite. She dispenses Korean grandmother pregnancy advice with the authority of a woman who has done this three times: "Eat seaweed every day. Walk thirty minutes. Don't carry heavy things. Sing to the baby — she can hear you now." I sing to Hana. I sing Korean songs — lullabies I found on YouTube, songs I do not fully understand, melodies that feel right even when the words escape me. I am singing my daughter songs in a language I am still learning, and the imperfection of my pronunciation does not matter because the singing is not about the words. The singing is about the voice. My voice. Hana's first music.

The recipe this week is the miyeokguk I am pre-cooking and freezing for postpartum recovery — Grace's instructions, Jisoo's dried miyeok. I made a triple batch on Sunday. Beef brisket, sliced thin, sautéed in sesame oil. Soaked miyeok (seaweed), added to the pot. Soy sauce. Garlic. Water. Simmer for forty minutes. The soup is dark and rich and oceanic. I portioned it into twelve containers and froze them. Twelve servings. One a day for twelve days after birth. Grace said, "More. You need twenty." I will make another batch next weekend. Grace is right. Grace is always right. The seaweed soup is waiting for me on the other side of labor, warm and dark and nourishing, like the sea I came from, like the country I came from, like the mother who is waiting in Busan to hear that her granddaughter has arrived.

Grace told me I was nesting everywhere — the kimchi jars, the spice rack, the recipe cards — and she wasn’t wrong about any of it. So when I started thinking about what else to add to the freezer alongside those twelve containers of miyeokguk, I kept coming back to something that carried the same feeling: the sea. This seafood stuffing isn’t a Korean dish, but it holds the same spirit — oceanic, generous, built to nourish someone who has just done something enormous. I made it the same Sunday I made the seaweed soup, and it went into four containers next to Hana’s servings, because James deserves something warm too, and because filling a freezer before a baby arrives is its own kind of love language.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 loaf crusty sourdough or French bread (about 12 oz), cubed and left out overnight to dry
1 lb large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and roughly chopped
1/2 lb lump crabmeat, picked over for shells
1/2 lb bay scallops
6 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
3 stalks celery, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups seafood broth (or low-sodium chicken broth)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
Salt and black pepper to taste
3 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions

Dry the bread. If you haven’t left the bread cubes out overnight, spread them on a rimmed baking sheet and bake at 300°F for 20 minutes, tossing once halfway through, until dry but not browned. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside.
Sauté the aromatics. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for 6–8 minutes until softened and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
Cook the seafood. Push the aromatics to the edges of the skillet and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter to the center. Add the shrimp and scallops and cook 2–3 minutes, stirring gently, until the shrimp are just pink and the scallops are barely opaque. Fold in the crabmeat and remove the skillet from heat.
Combine. Pour the seafood and aromatics over the bread cubes. Add the broth, beaten eggs, Old Bay, thyme, and smoked paprika. Fold gently until everything is evenly moistened — the mixture should be wet but not soupy. Fold in the fresh parsley. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Bake. Preheat oven to 350°F. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased 9x13-inch baking dish. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake an additional 15 minutes until the top is golden and slightly crisp at the edges.
Rest and serve. Let the stuffing rest for 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with additional fresh parsley if desired. To freeze, cool completely, portion into airtight containers, and freeze for up to 3 months. Reheat covered at 350°F for 25 minutes from frozen.

Nutrition (per serving)

Seafood Stuffing — Nourishment from the Sea, Ready Before She Arrives