Dandelion pinhole and South Korean food

A dandelion in Santa Barbara, California, found while Gary and I were bike riding.
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Today I would like to share my thoughts about Korean food: It’s going to take some getting used to. Sorry Korea! It’s so salty and spicy and you eat meat at every meal. AND why oh why are your fruits and veggies so expensive? Thank goodness I like rice, but they even eat rice for breakfast!!!

Okay, it’s not all bad. I’ve had some really interested and delicious foods too. The hardest obstacle is everything is in Korean (duh). One of the other teachers knows a little Korean so he’s a HUGE help when we go out to eat. Nero, another teacher, who doesn’t read any Korean, gave me a tour of restaurants I can eat at without knowing Korean. He showed me all the restaurants with picture menus and places you can order by number (like KFC and McDonalds). The line at McDonalds was at least 50 people long. I have not eaten there.

The interesting thing about Korean dinning is that everyone shares and eats from the same plate with their own chopsticks. In America I feel like everyone is very germ-a-phobic, but here, it’s the complete opposite. (People cough and sneeze on you and in the bathrooms they don’t have paper towels or air blow dyers, no, they have ONE wet towel that everyone uses to dry their hands…)

One night we went to a kimbap restaurant, which is just a really super cheap place that serves mostly Korean sushi and ramen. I wanted something that wasn’t spicy and free from kimchee. The other teachers suggested I try Ramen with bulgogi (their beef). So I went for it. OH MY GOSH! It was spicy, and impossible to eat. They eat ramen with chop sticks! It was the hardest I’ve ever concentrated while eating, I eventually gave up, but not before splashing ramen all over myself. I had a piece of someone’s tuna roll there and it was tasty!

One afternoon the Owner of the school took everyone to a traditional Korean restaurant. We were in our own private dinning room, designed like someone’s home. Dish after dish after dish of Korean delights came to our table. It was the only restaurant I’ve seen salad and the salad dressing was amazing. At least 20 little side dishes of spicy kimchee and roasted anchovies also decorated the table. We had lilac soup, a very interesting pudding like substance that totally tasted like flowers. My favorite dish they brought out was a pickled radish/pork dish. You wrap the pork in the pickled radish. The flavors were amazing. I tried the radish by itself and didn’t like it, but combined with the pork, oh wow!!

Koreans eat out a lot! The kitchens (if you can call them that) are very small. Many of the restaurants have a grill in the center of the table to cook whatever you order. Also, many of the restaurants only serve one thing. We went to a chicken place, and cooked the mixture on our table and made lettuce wraps. I liked that restaurant. We went to another that only served pork, so basically you were cooking bacon, and then putting it in lettuce with rice.

I’ve met some other English teachers and last Saturday about 8 of us went to a restaurant in another part of town. It was a Korean bbq place. We took off our shoes and sat on the floor around rectangle tables with grills in the middle. You helped yourself to whatever meat you wanted to cook. They had regular stuff like beef and pork and the exotic tongue and liver! And to my delight they had octopus and squid! YUM! That’s what I ate! I tried everything (except the exotic) but was sooooo happy with my grilled octopus and squid! AND the side dishes, also help yourself style. They had a tasty soup and some yummy noodle dishes. The greatest part was it was only $7 per person. No matter how much you ate!

Boy teachers and I went to a fried chicken place the other day. They served 3 kinds of fried chicken: regular, sweet and spicy, and garlic. The pungent smell of garlic was to strong for me, so I skipped that variety. The regular was delicious. The sweet and spicy, was, well, on the spicy side! We watched Korean baseball while we ate. They LOVE baseball and soccer over here!

OH! If your order cheese pizza they throw all sorts of vegetables on top like corn.

There’s more, but I’ll share those dishes on another day!