Fatty's Got to Eat!

This one is dedicated to two of my college friends, Katie and Claire, who often reminded me that being a fatty is not a size, it's a state of mind. If you know me at all, then you know that one of the greatest joys in my life is good food. I love eating delicious food, and I love making it. So you can imagine I was a little uncertain how this move to Korea would affect my eating habits. Claire pointed out that the older posts on the blog don't exactly depict a landscape of delicious food in Korea, so I'm going to fix that right now!



Though navigating food has been one of the more challenging parts of our everyday life, it has also been one of the most exciting. We live pretty far from downtown Daegu, so many of the restaurants around us have little to no English on their menus. Which makes ordering difficult. We've tried a few techniques, like pointing to a pictures (this works some of the time, but some of the pictures don't look like what we actually receive), just pointing to an item that looks like the price we want (this usually ends badly, last time we were trying to order lunch, we were pointing to the part of the menu that was for bottles of alcohol, fortunately the waitress didn't bring us that!) and the most consistently successful is just saying the names of dishes we've had in the past that we liked, hoping that the restaurant made that dish. Overall, our success rate for receiving what we thought we ordered was probably 50% for the first month or so. We've really gotten better at this recently (thanks to eating with lots of people who help us) and now we can pretty much ensure we know what we're ordering.




But enough about the difficulties, let me tell you about the joys of eating in Korea. Korean food is delicious. My only complaint is that I haven't found a dessert that I like particularly (but thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law, I've been getting my fix on E.L. Fudges and thanks to Lindsay and Whit I've been baking cookies recently). So for those of you interested in visiting us, here's a run down of the meals we love to eat. This will be an ongoing subject of future blogs, because there is entirely too much for one post!



There are tons of soups, hot and cold, and all of them are delicious. Some are very spicy, others more refreshing. Jess loves this soup that literally has ice floating in it. And at one restaurant it came in a bowl made of ice. It's really refreshing on hot summer days. Many Koreans believe you should fight fire with fire, so on the hot days, you should eat a hot soup. One we tried was a boiling broth (almost all the hot soups come out boiling) with an entire chicken cooked in it. The chicken was stuffed with rice and vegetables. It was perfectly yummy! My favorite soup is mandu-guk. It is soup with dumplings in it. Oh the dumplings! They are delicious. They make vegetable ones, seafood ones, and meat ones. All are delicious whether in soup or steamed or fried. It doesn't matter. As long as they are homemade, they are great.



Another favorite meal is barbeque. This is a totally different idea than the barbeque we were used to in the US, but equally delicious. Each table has it's own grill and you cook your own meat. Usually the meat is pork or beef. There are side dishes as well here (as with every meal in Korea) and you basically make a little taco-like serving, using a piece of lettuce as the tortilla, meat, rice and other side dishes in the lettuce. It's fantastic! It's a great meal to eat with friends. So why don't you come to Korea and visit us and we'll take you out for some delicious barbeque!!!



More about food later!

Moving Canvas

There must be at least two festivals per month here in Daegu. From what we've seen this is typical across the country. This weekend we went to see the International Bodypainting Festival. Another free festival, the event hosted artists from all over the world that use the body as their canvas. There were dozens of tents set up all day that attendees could visit to see models being painted up. There was also plenty of festival food, arts and crafts tents, and random trinkets for sale. For the most part it was your typical festival, except for all the naked people with crazy painted murals all over their bodies.




This guy was also there.


And this guy.



One strange activity for kids was the mechanical teddy bear rickshaw race. These bears that have mechanical legs cart participants around in a circle (the circle goes around an ancient burial mound). It seemed cute at first but it's pretty creepy to see them in action.

What Ever Happened To Pong?

Nothing happened to Pong. It's still here, alive and well in Korea. I was able to see an international ping-pong tournament this weekend. It was part of the 2010 International Firefighters Tournament which had dozens of events ranging from arm wrestling to dragon boat racing. The only one I was successfully able to see was the fire truck parallel parking event (which was incredibly boring but hilarious) and the ping pong. The event was very ill attended, but one spectator came and spoke to me about what was going on. I got to see Hong Kong and Romania battle it out, the two teams are apparently the best in the world.

Beer Snacks, part one

So many things about bars in Korea are different than in the States. They serve a different purpose here, and it is a bit complicated to explain. I may try and expand on that in the future, but for now I want to talk about something that is always fun about having drinks in Korea: the snacks. So far we've been consistently surprised with what comes with our sub-par beer. This weekend we received this:


The popcorn tasted a bit like curry, a bit like shrimp. But the sticks on the left, their really weird. It is kind of like a raw piece of spaghetti that is salted, but it might be an attempt at a pretzel stick. The problem is they really don't do bread here, so they may have tried to make a pretzel without yeast and flour. The result was a salty, crunchy stick of I don't know what. This bar was a self proclaimed "western bar," but even at the places that are attempting to emulate American establishments there is always still a small disconnect. It's really great fun to figure out what it is.

recent photos

A week or so ago we went to Gwangju to see some friends, and we went to one of our (my) favorite markets today. I thought I'd share some new photos. The man sitting "Indian style" is our Grocer, Mr. Kim. He invites me at least once a week to come to the rose park next to our place to drink soju and practice his English. He has noodles and pork jerky. Both times I've gone he's quoted JFK and talked about how much he loves Korea and America's "friendship." It's usually a good time.

Korean Beer Analysis (it ain't pretty)

Koreans love to drink. I read this before I got here, and locals have confirmed this. The national drink is Soju, some sort of fermented rice wine. But for a country that is known for enjoying the drink, Korea's beer selection is pretty limited. The only beer you can get here is really marginal macro-brews. Even the imports available are pretty average; Budweiser, Guinness, Heineken, Hoegaarden, a few Australian beers...nothing that you couldn't get at an Applebee's in the States.

While there aren't any beers that have thrilled me yet, its like Sting said, you have to make the best of what's around. Here is my analysis of the beers that are local to Korea in no particular order.

"Hite"
slogan: Power of Beer

Hite is the Bud Light of Korea. It is watered down, it has a low alcohol content, and is overpriced for what it is. The makers of Hite produce most of the beers, if not all of them, that you'll see in this analysis. It needs to be really cold to be consumed. It isn't bad by any means, but it has nothing to distinguish from any other light beer you've ever had. When I looked up this beer to find an image, the website said "THE HITE!!" like it was a disease or something.

"Max"
slogan: Delicious Idea
bonus tag line: Rich and full bodied taste beer made from all malt and fine cascade hop.

Max, I guess, is Korea's answer to Budweiser. It does have more flavor than most beers here but it still isn't very interesting. You can buy most of these beers in a plastic 1600ml bottle (think Gatorade) so that lessens what you think of it as well. Max must use the "finest cascade hop" as it claims because it is always a bit more expensive than Hite.

"Black Beer Stout"
slogan: unknown



Another product of the Hite brewery, this beer easily has the most flavor of any of the Korean beers that I've tasted. I can't say it tastes much like a stout, more like a black lager (which for me is a good thing). Again, it is priced higher, and typically you can only find this one in cans or 12oz bottles. The rest of the Hite line up comes in bigger bottles. I actually enjoy this beer, as opposed to most of the others. It has a lot more flavor.



"S"
slogan: Beer with dietary fiber
bonus tag line: Smooth & light premium beer exclusively designed for well-being of young generation






Of course, I had to try this the first week I got here. Who wants a beer that will help with a bowel movement? This tastes a little bit worse than Hite, but I imagine if you worked your way through a six pack of this it would be pretty fun, laughing harder at the silly slogan with each successive can. By the way, the "S" is for "Stylish." Of course, a "stylish" beer would be more expensive than a regular one. I can't think of what beer it would be competing with because of the extra fiber content.










"Cass"
slogan: Sound of Vitality






This beer is awful. I haven't had all the varieties of Cass (Red, Lemon, Light) but the "Fresh" must be Korea's answer to Michelob Ultra, a bland and tasteless beer. It may be worse because I don't know if it has the low carb thing going for it. I will stay away from Cass "Fresh" and all other Cass products if I can help it. I couldn't borrow (steal) any images from their website, but you should go look at it. Everyone's beers are spilling (coming) out of the glasses, some weird beach party is going on, and everyone is simply delighted. It's like a hyper-real Budweiser/Miller commercial. The website is also a Flash nightmare.
http://www.cass.co.kr/

I hope that in the future I can post about some excellent beer that I found here, but it doesn't look like that will happen. For now, i will try to enjoy the Hite that the store downstairs carries, and occasionally splurge for a Black Beer Stout.

Chilsong Market

Initially I thought that all the markets are pretty much the same here...a clutter of umbrellas with different types of fish underneath. I now know that each market has it's own identity. The Chilsong market had a bunch of stuff I hadn't seen yet. Looks like if you need your food a bit more raw than Chilsong is the way to go. We saw lots of live food, like hard shell and soft shell turtles in big open containers, and weird eels swimming and churning in giant buckets. We also saw skinned animals. I know where meat comes from but I have never had to look it in the eye.

Thirst Quencher

All Koreans love to drink Sweat. Yes, Sweat. There are Sweat machines everywhere around this country. Koreans really don't sweat that much (even though it is hot as hell here right now) so they supplement their lack of sweat with Sweat. Kind of like fighting fire with fire.

Seoul from a Woman's Perspective

Our trip to Seoul was completely delightful and exhausting. We walked all over that city and saw as much as we possibly could have in 4 short days. There was much art to be taken in, great food to find, and palaces to wander through taking in the history and the beauty.

My favorite two events of the extended weekend happened in the evenings. The first evening after a day of touring, we stumbled across a bar that looked inviting and we decided to have a beer before retiring to our lovely guest house. With our beers, we were politely served bar snacks, which in Korea is some sort of corn nut type snack and a bowl of dried anchovies. We see these anchovies everywhere in the markets on the street, but we hadn't had the opportunity to try them until that night. We both did eat one (actually Jess ate two and I was only able to eat one after I stared it down for a few minutes looking into it's little dried eye) and that will probably be the last time I eat those.

The second night we went out to a perfect little jazz bar that was almost hidden. We had an awful time trying to find it, eventually giving up, eating some dinner, deciding to try again, then when we finally found it the band was on a 30 minute break. We stayed anyway and had a wonderful time listening to great music and feeling like we'd found a place most tourists don't find.


Which brings me to the best thing about Seoul. Jess and I successfully found every single thing we were looking for in Seoul, which was no easy task! We had a list of sites we wanted to see, including obscure restaurants and bookstores that weren't in the most accessible places, nor were their signs written in English. But every single time, we found what we were looking for (even if it took a few hours). We can't claim all the glory for this though. There were several very helpful Koreans who stepped in and assisted us. There were a few information centers we found, but mostly there were friendly people who wanted to help us when we were lost. This is what we've experienced everywhere we've gone in Korea, helpful friendly people (notice helpful man #1 to the right). This makes Korea a very happy place for us to live.

Seoul - Large and in Charge

Seoul houses 25% of the population of Korea, over 12 million people. We were a bit intimidated at first, but quickly figured out how things work. Super long transfers between trains, too many places to see. We did manage to get to everything on our itinerary this time around though. Fantastic food, art, and people. We even managed to see a little bit of Jazz while we were there.