As
turkey is to
Thanksgiving, a rice treat called song pyeon is to the
Korean thanksgiving holiday of
Chuseok. Song pyeon is kind of like a Ukrainian
pierogi made from rice flour and stuffed with
wormwood,
chestnuts,
sesame seeds, and
red bean paste. You then steam them over a bed of pine needles. (
Yeah. Wormwood and Pine Needles. What's a car deodorizer to westerners is food for Koreans.)
Sometimes coloring is added to the
rice dough to produce song pyeon in a rainbow of attractive colors. It's traditional to have really nice looking song pyeon at chuseok if there is a newly married couple in the
family. A Korean saying goes "If you make the song pyeon pretty, then you will have a
beautiful child."