How does grandma karaoke?

Family dinners in a Korea differ from family dinners in the U.S. -- and it's not just the food.

But let's start with the food. You eat rice, of course, and then you share all the other dishes, reaching into the middle of the table with your chokura (chopsticks) to grab bite by bite:

• Steamed octopus dipped in sweet chili sauce
• Boiled uncured bacon dipped in salty-salty-salty fish dip
• Cabbage pickled in garlic and chili paste
  
• Greens with chilis
• Skate wing pickled with garlic stems and chili paste
• Blue crabs, raw with garlic and chili paste
• Beef short ribs sliced thin and broiled in garlic
  

You don't drink wine or water or beer or even sparkling apple cider (as we did as kids at pesach). Every few minutes you have a shot of soju (rice vodka) -- everyone reaches into the middle of the table and says kombae or cheers.

Soju has a lots of its rituals too. For example, you never pour your own. When a more senior person pours for you, you hold your glass with two hands. Similarly, if you pour for him, you hold the bottle with two hands.

The next course is fruit and rice cakes.

The whole meal is had at a pap-sang, or short table set in the middle of the room around which you sit cross-legged.

Or rather at two pap-sangs -- one for the men, one for the women.

After dinner, everyone goes to the nooraybong or karaoke. Except the two youngest daughters-in-law who have to stay home and do the dishes.

Below is grandma singing at the club: