Making Kimchi with My Mother-in-Law

Every November, my Korean mother-in-law makes kimjang, the big winter batch of kimchi. After nine years of marriage, I was finally invited to help.

There were six women in her kitchen and about a hundred heads of napa cabbage. We salted, rinsed and stacked them all morning. Then we sat on the floor in a circle on plastic sheets, wearing rubber gloves dyed bright red, rubbing chili paste into every leaf.

My Korean is terrible. Nobody minded. The aunties corrected my technique with gentle hand slaps and lots of laughter. They fed me pieces of boiled pork wrapped in fresh kimchi leaves as we worked, which is apparently the reward.

When the last leaf was done, my mother-in-law filled a big jar for my husband and me, and wrote my name on the lid in Korean. "Now you're family," she said. I already was, but I didn't argue.