Category: Food & Drink

Caveat: That didn’t last long

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Hiking & Travel

I went into a grocery store, and it was strange how the "reverse culture shock" of my return to the US suddenly caught up with me.  I really hadn't been experiencing much difficulty with adjusting to being back, but somehow being in the store left me feeling lost.  And even more strangely, amid a giant warehouse-style grocery store, I managed to find some locally made kimchi in about 2 minutes, but couldn't find several things that should be easy.

I managed not to have kimchi for about a week.  I guess I was craving some.  Weird how it grows on a person.  I used not to like it.

Caveat: 냉콩국수

Food & Drink / Life in Korea / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

어제 내 친구를 만났어요. 엘브릿지에서 가까운 영어학원을 소유하고 있어요. 하지만 에전에 링구아포럼영어학원에서 내 상사 였어요.  우리는 이야기도 많이 하고 일산칼국수 식당에서 저녁도 먹고 갔어요. 우리는 냉콩국수도 먹었어요. 맛있었어요. 새로운 영어학원을 열었는데 학원이 절되서 다음해에 내가 근무할 수 있어요.  여하간, 이야기 하는 것을 좋아했어요.

Caveat: Pesto on rye toast

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

I found some pesto-in-a-jar at the upscale supermarket in the basement of the Lotte department store (which I can go through when exiting the subway station at Jeongbalsan).   Earlier today I took some rye toast (made from that dark Russian bread I buy sometimes in Seoul’s “russiatown” as I call it) and spread the pesto on it. It was really delicious. I’m sure both Russians and Italians would be offended, not to mention Koreans.  I often like to imagine concocting odd cultural mixes:  lately I’ve been imagining making tteokbokki but with a Mexican-style mole poblano sauce. Seems like it would be delicious. I also occasionally concoct strange bibimbaps, using whatever’s on hand. I put peanuts in about a week ago, and it was pretty good.
I found a cellphone pic that I had taken of a bank advertisement I saw in “russiatown.”
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It’s in Mongolian. Why do I think this kind of thing is cool? It’s stupid, really – you can see Mongolian anytime you want, just surfing around the internet.
Maybe it’s the same reason I find it easier (if only slightly easier) to try to learn Korean from signs and advertising and boring work-memos than from textbooks: it’s because it’s somehow more real. Relevant. Someone, somewhere, didn’t construct this sample of language just to instruct, but to communicate with other users in a concrete context I can identify in my physical environment.
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Caveat: Koreagraphy

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea / My Photos

I had a student write “Koreagraphy – study Korea” for the vocabulary word (said out loud) “choreography.” I thought that was clever.
I’m feeling very scattered, lately. Today is a holiday: 어린이날 = Children’s Day.  Pues, ¡feliz cinco de mayo!
The children were out in force, and being spoiled hither and yon, all over Seoul. I’ve never seen so many hyperactive children using public transportation. It was sunny and summery. I went on another long walk (as I suggested I might try to do, in my execrable Korean post from yesterday). And I came home, turned on my fancy new fan, and got crazy/creative in my little kitchen.
Always dangerous. I started out with a plan to make some stir-fry rice (bokkeumbap) but ended up using very unconventional ingredients: to the Korean standards (rice, onion, garlic, sesame seeds, red pepper) in some olive oil, I threw in peanuts, curry powder, dried cranberries, and in a moment of inspiration, half a can of pre-cooked lentils that I’d found at Homeplus a week or so back. Delicious.
Okay, then.  Here’s a picture taken during my wanderings the other day:  a view from the Guri subway station.
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Caveat: 점심 물냉면을 먹었어요

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

I had 물냉면  for lunch. I was craving it, kind of. Cold super-thin noodle soup, with julienned cucumber and radish, sliced boiled egg, mustard, sesame seeds, and ice-cubes floating around. Such an interesting dish. Very good in combination with the first “hot” day of spring — not really that hot, but I broke a sweat walking jacketless to work, and there was a haze in the air, along with lots of pollen.

Caveat: Corned Beef Hash

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

My friend Basil showed me a curious little hole-in-the wall place only a block from where I live that serves American-style "brunch" on Sundays – eggs, hash browns, pancakes, bacon.  All those very American breakfast foods that are so bad for you, but so comforting, too.  "Denny's food," is how I always think of it.

For about 8 dollars (which is very expensive for low-end restaurant food, here), I got corned beef hash, french toast, eggs over easy, two cups of coffee.  It was a nice nostalgia trip, but, for health reasons, not good to make into a habit.  It's a good thing I'm not into going to restaurants alone – that place is too close to be entirely safe.  "LOL."  And… so much for incidental meat, eh?

Anyway, it was cool.  And then he and I spent some time trying to study our Korean.  He's not as far along as I am, which of course is good for my ego, because I get to be knowledgeable and erudite about it, which in fact I'm not.  But, exploiting relative differences, and all that. 

나는 콘비프 해시를 점심 먹었어요.   맛있었어요.  그래서, 지금 행복해요.  잘 지내세요… ^_^ 내일 보겠읍니다.

Caveat: apple-onion-bean-rice-curry-stuff (Uh oh, Jared’s in the kitchen again)

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

In the spirit of my thoughts about meat, yesterday, and inspired by my success with some leftovers last week, I decided to get creative in my kitchen area.  In a couple tablespoons of olive oil, I fried a chopped-up small onion, a generous scoop of minced garlic (which you can buy in tubs from convenience stores in Korea), some sesame seeds, some roasted salted peanuts, and half of a an apple, finely chopped.  I added a pinch of red pepper and a tablespoon of curry powder.  When things were browned, I added the remains of my cooked red beans (about 2 cups, which had been cooked with red pepper, soy sauce, etc, a few weeks back).  I added a cup of cooked rice, and voila, apple-onion-bean-rice-curry-stuff.  Totally delicious.  Very nutritious.  And completely vegan.

The attitude barometer, episode 5:

    * Number of times I've opened my resignation letter and edited it:  4
    * Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  3
    * Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  1
    * Number of students that have said something to the effect of "teacher, you're so funny" while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  1
    * Number of times I've told someone that I am "much happier than when I was in L.A.":  1
    * Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the "fake it till I make it" approach I'm fond of): 0
    * Days I was late to work this week:  0
    * Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  0 (plus, I worked Saturday, again, for a few hours)

soundtrack:

Minnesota Public Radio ("the current" streaming)
Silvio Rodriguez
The Go Team
Aly & AJ
Proyecto Uno (Nuyorican rap / hip hop)
Big Bang (k-pop)
The Cure
Kray Van Kirk (really!)
Gordon Lightfoot

 

Caveat: Incidental Meat

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

I've been thinking about meat.  I read an article in Scientific American about the "carbon footprint" of eating beef, specifically.  It's quite stunning, and it has got me to thinking, once again, about whether or not I would ever seriously become some kind of vegetarian (maybe a chicken-and-fish-only type, or a real vegetarian, or even a vegan).  All those things have crossed my mind many times.  But I lack the self-discipline to stick to any of them, it seems like.

Only hours after reading the Scientific American article, I was ordering and eating bibimbap from Gimgane.  The amount of meat in it is negligible, I suppose – at most some flecks of meat that might equal something under a tablespoon.  I'm not even sure what species of meat it is.  But… I'm not the sort to be a hardcore "I don't eat such and such," it seems like.

Still, it seems the compelling reasons for avoiding various types of meat keep building.  There's health impact (unless you're an Atkinsian).  There's ethical impact (I have been reading a book by Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop, wherein he offers in his first chapter a meditation on meat-eating vis-a-vis the question of the relative sizes of souls).  And now, particularly for beef, there's global environmental impact, too.  The basic point: if we ALL quit eating beef tomorrow, and let the beef industry die, we'd do more to prevent the continuing global warming trend than if we ALL stopped using cars tomorrow.  That's very plausible, if you examine the facts.

So, I'm wondering how I feel about it.  I've been developing a sort of approach that is kind of based on the distinction between "incidental meat" versus "intentional meat."  Intentional meat is when I go out and seek it.  When it's the "purpose" of a dining experience.  Incidental meat is where I'm eating meat because someone else has ordered it.  Or they're giving it to me.  Or it got added, unexpectedly, to something I ordered (like the bibimbap the other day).  Maybe something can be made of this distinction.

Caveat: 김家네에서 점심 밥 먹었어요

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Last night a bunch of people from work went out to a Chinese restaurant in the “meat market” which is local foreigner-slang for the west end of the La Festa shopping center (which my apartment building is directly adjacent to).  I don’t know how the area got that name — whether because of the large number of restaurants, the existence of place(s) specifically selling meat (which I haven’t seen as something salient), or because of the nightclub scene (which as you know I tend to avoid).  Anyway, there are some good restaurants there, and the Chinese place is a regular haunt for semi-official LBridge staff outings.  Note that “Chinese” is interpreted broadly:  just as getting “Chinese” in America is hardly the same as getting food in China, I rather doubt there’s more than a passing similarity between China’s authentic cuisines and what they call “Chinese” in Korea.  But it’s pretty good.
Today, after the unhealthy food last night, I was craving kimchi bokkeumbap. I ordered some delivered from 김家네 (Kim Family’s House), the convenient take-out and delivery place on the corner. Having lunch delivered to the staff room at LBridge is nearly universal, but I tend not to do it except rarely, as the portions are always larger than I should eat regularly. There are lots of places that deliver, but 김家네 is the most popular – I think it’s part of a chain of Korean fast food joints.
It took me a long time to figure out the middle syllable (Kim-ga-ne) because on all the written material associated with the restaurant, they use the Chinese hanja to stand for the “ga.” In pure hangeul, it would be 김가네.  I don’t know why they use the hanja – it’s a strictly stylistic thing, but I never knew how it was pronounced as I have never managed to develop the skill required to search for Chinese hanja in dictionaries without already knowing the pronunciation.  I had to wait to overhear some coworkers talking about it to make the connection with the bags and containers I saw from the place.  “Kim-ga” means, roughly, Kim Family, and the -ne suffix means something akin to the way “chez” works in French, for example.

Caveat: шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea

It’s now been 20 years since I studied Russian in college.  And unlike some other things I’ve studied, I’ve not made much use of it.  At the time, I was quite good at it.   I completed a year of college Russian and got one of the highest grades on the end-of-year final that the department had recorded for a first year student — high enough that I remember being contacted by a CIA recruiter (remember that 20 years ago, the cold war had not yet ended).  I was flattered but uninterested at the time.  Imagine if I’d pursued that?  How different would my life have been?
pictureAnyway, I was with Basil today, we went to a bookstore and then we went out for Russian food at a restaurant in the Russian neighborhead near 동대문 (dongdaemun).  After having some pretty good borscht and kebabs, we went into a tiny Russian cafe (picture at right) where we drank some kefir and I bought a loaf of dark Russian bread.  And then in a Russian supermarket I bought some Russian chocolate (for the novelty, of course).
I was stunned to realize that I was interacting with the Korean-Russian lady behind the counter in Korean, much more comfortably than if I’d been forced to use Russian.  And it felt like a weird sort of linguistic milestone, to be in Seoul’s Russiatown interacting in Korean… it means Korean has passed Russian in terms of my linguistc comfort and competence.  That’s not really saying a lot, of course.  The Russian is very very rusty.  But it felt good, in  a very weird way.
The title says шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле (“chocolate, bread and borscht in Seoul”). I ate the borsht in the restaurant, but here below is a pic of the bread and chocolate I brought home with me.
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Caveat: From the inside…

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

picture… looking out…
onto my dinner:  tteokbokki from the corner puesto when I walk past TaeYeong on the way home from work.  They put it in a plastic bag, and I dump it into a bowl to eat when I get home, it’s still hot.    I was pleased to actually understand and answer correctly (as opposed to not understand and answer correctly anyway, which is my standard approach):  가저가세요?  네, 가저가요.   Simple stuff, but nevertheless a fulfulling minor linguistic triumph.  We take what we can get, right?
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Caveat: 도스타코스 (K-Mex?)

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

I went into Seoul and shopped at my favorite bookstore – Kyobo, just north of Gangnam station (on the Green Line) in the massive Kyobo Tower, along Seochoro.  I bought some manga books, a Korean language grammar, and a novela by García Márquez entitled La hojarasca – yes they have Spanish language books at Kyobo, although the selection is only about a single shelf’s worth.
So… I was walking southward back toward the subway station, feeling pleased with my purchases, and lo! there was a taco and burrito joint.  Really.  In Seoul.  I took a picture of the sign:
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The place is called “Dos Tacos” (in Hangeul, 도스타코스 = doseutakoseu).  I went in and had a delicious veggie burrito.  It’s definitely Americanized-style Mexican food, passed through a slight but perceptible Korean filter, but it was a nice change.  I wonder if there’s a future in K-Mex cuisine?
I’ve noticed that my blog host seems to be inserting my picture uploads differently than before – it appears to be placing them inline rather than making thumbnails and linking them out.  I wonder if I like this better.  I’ll have to think about it, and try some things out.
Earlier, I had been wandering, a bit randomly as is my occasional wont, and I saw some flowers growing through a fence near a railroad right-of-way, also in the Gangnam area.  Here is a picture:
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Caveat: Ramyeon with cabbage and egg

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

I made some ramyeon (ramen) and added chopped cabbage, some tomatoes and broke an egg into it.  It is delicious, and I'm watching David Letterman (Monday night's show) and having some boricha, and looking forward to a few days off (the Lunar New Year holiday).

Caveat: No free lunch

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea

Honestly, when I got here, I wasn't expecting a free lunch.  But for the last three months, one of my favorite "perks" of my teaching job has been the free lunch (or, really, dinner) they give us every day.  Not only do I get to sample a wide range of Korean cuisine, since it's generally "eat whatever we give you," but also, of course, I could make it my main meal of the day and it essentially supplemented my income.

But now, change of policy:  the free lunches are over.  I don't really resent it.  But I will miss it, I'm certain, if for not other reason than for the adventurousness of eating something I have no idea what it is two or three times a week.  Having to bring/buy my own will cause me to tend to a more conservative "order what I know" strategy, I'm certain. 

Ah well.  I did learn some delicious things.

Caveat: Chicken bombs and the end of science

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea / Teaching & Methodology

Well, my science class that I've been doing suffered a setback, today.  We've been requested to adopt a simpler curriculum… some of the students were feeling left behind.  Danny, my boss, had explicitly said to me, when I started this biology unit, a little over a month ago, that he wanted me to "teach to the top students."    And that's what I've been doing.  But, because this is an after-school academy, the curriculum tends to be pretty flexible, and will respond to parental requests fairly rapidly.  This makes for a shifting platform for the teachers.  I'm not really upset.  It's just interesting.

Some of the students – the "top" mentioned above, of course – were disappointed in the change, however.   And we had a long in-class conversation on Monday about all kinds of things, including some "meta" talk about the nature of Korean private English language academies and how they seem to work.

In this same class, today, some students came in eating some chicken "skewer bombs" (폭탄꼬치).  These are barbecued fillets of chicken-on-a-stick sold by street vendors, the "bomb" part of the name indicating that they are very highly spiced.   The Koreans justifiably pride themselves on their very spicy food, and they seem to be singularly fascinated by the prospect of freaking out foreigners by feeding them the most dangerous parts of their diet.  So it was no surprise that one of my students offered me a taste of his "skewer bomb," and then they all waited with fascination and eager silence to see my reaction.  They wanted to see steam come out of my ears, or something.

But they hadn't reckoned with the fact that I happen to be not just a gringo, but a gringo achilangado.  Which is to say, I have deep familiarity with (and love for) a cuisine even spicier than theirs:  ie. Mexican.  I said, "oh, that's very good."  Meanwhile two of the others who'd had some ran from the room to get a drink of water.

End result was, we decided to celebrate the "end of science" (ie. the end of the advanced biology I was teaching) by having "skewer bombs" – I gave Jason and Danny 11,000 won to run down to the corner and get some for everyone.  We had a little feast and discussed the vocabulary for the much simpler unit we'd be tackling next.  And I ate a whole one, and it was very spicy, but not as spicy as my famous mole poblano, nor even as spicy as my mother's famous chile verde.

Caveat: Domesticity

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

Never sweep a floor laden with dust and cat hair while wearing a clean, black, linen shirt.

In other news, about two weeks ago, when I got back from my visit with Bob, Sarah and Henry in southern Wisconsin, I had with me most of a loaf of very heavy, dark rye bread that we'd bought at the co-op in Milwaukee.  This is the classic bread known among many as Bob bread – as it's his characteristic dietary staple.  I like it too.  I was trying to think of a way to use it, and thought to myself:  pea soup.  I haven't really done much cooking in the last decade or so – living alone is like that.  But I had this bag of dried split peas, and some nice fresh apricots, and I got creative in the kitchen – generally, this is something that goes well for me. 

I ran to the store and bought some leeks and carrots, and put together a pea-apricot soup (more like stew) with leeks and carrots.   Added some cayenne, tumeric, cumin … you know.  So I cooked up a giant batch, and ate some with the dark bread, and put the rest in little containers in the freezer.  I went back and had some more the other day, and man, that stuff is awesome.  And I'm so dumbfounded that I followed no recipie, just kind of a weird instinct, and that it came out so good – better than the (admittedly quite good) gourmet stuff to be had from the Lunds grocery across the street.

Well, so anyway – such episodes of domesticity are awfully rare.

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