Sparkling Lavender Lemonade -- The Cool-Down After Samgyeopsal Saturday

Heat dome again. Eighty-eight in Wallingford. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 2, on a step stool stirring miso into broth. She knows the order. She is bilingual already in food vocabulary. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Grilled samgyeopsal Saturday — pork belly on the grill. Sesame leaves and ssamjang.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

I FaceTimed Jisoo in the morning. She watched me make doenjang jjigae and corrected my technique. The chain extends.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

Saturday was samgyeopsal on the grill — the pork belly, the sesame leaves, the ssamjang, Hana underfoot — and by the time the charcoal cooled and the dishes were done, the heat dome had settled over Wallingford like a lid. I needed something that felt like the porch rain hour in a glass, something quiet and a little unexpected, something that wasn’t tea but had tea’s unhurried quality. The lavender lemonade has become my Saturday wind-down, the drink I make after the grill cools and before I open the novel. It is the transition between the outdoor hour and the reading hour, and right now, that transition is everything.

Sparkling Lavender Lemonade

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes (plus 20 minutes cooling) | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh lemon juice (from 6 to 8 lemons)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons dried culinary lavender
• 4 cups sparkling water, chilled
• Ice, for serving
• Lemon slices and fresh or dried lavender sprigs, for garnish

Instructions

1. Make the lavender simple syrup. Combine the water, sugar, and dried culinary lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir gently until the sugar fully dissolves, about 3 to 5 minutes. Do not boil vigorously — a low simmer is enough. Remove from heat.
2. Steep and strain. Let the syrup steep off the heat for 20 minutes so the lavender flavor fully infuses. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a jar or bowl, pressing the lavender lightly to extract flavor. Discard the solids. Allow the syrup to cool to room temperature, or refrigerate until cold.
3. Juice the lemons. While the syrup cools, juice your lemons and strain out any seeds or pulp.
4. Combine the base. In a large pitcher, stir together the fresh lemon juice and the cooled lavender simple syrup until well combined. Taste and adjust — add a splash more lemon juice if you prefer it tarter, or a little extra syrup if you prefer it sweeter.
5. Add sparkling water. Just before serving, pour the chilled sparkling water into the pitcher and stir gently once or twice. Over-stirring will flatten the bubbles, so keep it brief.
6. Serve. Fill glasses with ice, pour the lemonade over, and garnish with a lemon slice and a small sprig of lavender. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 118 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 31g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 9mg