Food = Very Important & Frusterating

Anyone who knows Matthew know that he loves food. As his wife, I really wanted to do my best to impress him with my culinary skills. Most of my own cooking was done last year in my Southern Village apartment with my beloved roommates Kristin and Emily. Kristin and I made up a saying that goes, "If it smells good...it must taste good." It was our way of testing out new seasonings and hoping for the best. My mother and father are both great cooks and so I felt pretty confident as we headed off to Korea.

Cooking food in a foreign country (those of you who have done this already understand) is somewhat frustrating. Okay, actually it was really frustrating at first. All the labels are in Korean and honestly the picture doesn't always match up with what's inside. To complicate matters we are vegetarians and wanted to stay that way so finding food was a challenge.

One time I got a package of curry. (This was curry that we'd looked up on the internet for ingredient and found out it was vegetarian. This method was very common for us when we first came here. Find the web address on the food, look it up, change website to English, and find the ingredients) I was really excited that day. We had been in Incheon for only a short while and so that day I finished my classes and headed to the open markets. Now I am very familiar with these markets, but this was the first time I'd gone by myself. I proudly purchased the necessary ingredient and even happened to find some extra wonderful goodies! I was so excited to have a new and filling meal for my husband when he came home from work.

I cut the vegetables, gently cooked them, cut tofu and baked it, and set the table. All this took longer than it took to type it and so soon I heard Matthew's key in the door. Pride filled my heart as he exclaimed, "Wow! It smells good in here!" I smiled broadly and said that we were having curry! It would be a few minutes more but that would just give him time to put his things away. Happily I opened the curry package and squeezed out the sauce onto all my hard work. At first I stared in disbelief and squeezed the rest of it out, just to make sure. And sure enough-there were chunks of beef. I called Matthew over to see the contaminated sauce covering all my beautiful and hard work. He said we should just get rid of it. Now, at this point we had not been paid yet. We were very careful with our money and it made me feel terrible that I'd wasted money and all that work. To think about throwing it all away was too much and like Meg when her jelly didn't "jell" I burst into tears and went to our bedroom. Poor Matthew. I have such a wonderful husband though. We ended up washing the curry off, and I tried to make my own sauce (it wasn't good but Matthew said he liked it) and we ate. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

Anyways, that whole week was like that. The ingredients were different than I thought or the oven (which doesn't have degrees labeled on it) would cook things wrong, or I'd just mess up. It was a bad week. This video is from the end of that week.



The only success I had that week was my bread. And even that was weird and different. I didn't have whole wheat, so it was all white bread and the yeast is different here and was overpowering.



This is me before I realized about the yeast flavor. I was so excited to make my own bread and have it rise and everything!



But I did make a mess of the kitchen while I did it.

I've had failures in food here in Korea that are very frustrating but I've learned a lot. For instance, I never made my own crust before, but since they don't have anything like that her in Korea (and no shortening) I had to learn to make my own.

This is my first attempt with crust and a veggie-pot pie. It doesn't look pretty but it actually tasted good!

Plus, Matthew liked it...and that's the whole point! Healthy and delicious!

As time has progressed (and I've tried other recipes) I've gotten better. I made this at Christmas for some guests. I'll admit that it's not the prettiest crust, but it's so much better than it had been.

A teacher here, Ruth, is a great cook and so I've learned to ask her about ingredient and whether or not Korea has them. She's been really wonderful to teach me how to make from scratch certain things like condensed milk. I've also just experimented with things. Thankfully I've been able to experiment more successfully because seasonings and spices I'm use to have been sent to me from America =)

One day I wanted to try making lettuce wraps. If any of you have been to PF Changs and had the lettuce wraps you'll know how delicious they are! This was our version. It was decent...but nothing like the real thing.

The things I've learned here have been wonderful for me. I've learned to make more from scratch then I'd ever wanted to know...but now I'm glad that I have and can. I enjoy experimenting with recipes. www.allrecipes.com is a wonderful spot for me. But family is the best place for recipes.

Omelet without cheese but with tomatoes and green peppers. Cheese is really, really expensive here. Actually anything dairy costs a lot so we've learned to not use it in a lot of things or use less.

There is some veggie meat here, you can see our previous post about our expedition to get tons of vegeburger... But when we went to visit Palau we were able to bring back some food that we couldn't get here. Whole wheat, dried beans, seasonings, cream of tartar, and veggie meat! This video was taped the day after presidential elections.

I still fail at making things correctly (choplets were my recent, not-so-good-cooking-experience) but at least now it's not like I'm wasting all the food we have and just spent our last few dollars on food that is now ruined, as it was with the curry experience. =)

There are some good food things about Korea. One that I'd like to share is about ice cream. For about a pint of ice cream it's at least 6,000 won. Anyway, it's much more than it's worth. However, for a bar of ice cream its only 700 won. But...it get better. During the winter most stores sell ice cream for 50% off. So it's only 350 won per ice cream bar. Or (if it was a good exchange rate) 35 cents. We decided to take advantage of this one day...

We still have some left but now spring is here, so I think the 50% off is going to be gone soon. But with spring we're going to try and not have ice cream and instead make fruit smoothies more! Fruit smoothies are our newest love! Matthew says, and I quote, "I think they taste as good, but I like them better because they're healthier." Now that something!

As we have previously posted, eating out is also and adventure and one time we went with two other teachers to a restaurant that we'd heard about but hadn't gone because it was expensive.

VIPS is the name of the restaurant and above are Ruth, Kelly, and myself. We were very happy with this place! It was a buffet and had a better variety than we had seen previously for vegetarians. Taco makings, pizza, create your own pasta, salad, fruit, whole wheat bread, mozzarella cheese w/ tomatoes, and the list went on. mmmmm It was lovely. We did this over last term break to celebrate and have a good time.

But as much as eating out is fun, home food is better.

This video is of us enjoying a food gift from my grandparents! Yay for ChilliMan!

As our love for smoothies as grown we are in a greater need of fruit.

This is the bunch of bananas Matthew got for 3,000 won. It was a great price. Matthew says it were at least twenty bananas!!

When you see beauty in even the way fruit is put together I am convinced over and over that there is a Divine Creator and His hand is in our lives.