This is the right way to catch food particles in a kitchen sink

Sometimes when you are in another country you discover a better way to do things. Some of these things are so obviously an improvement over the way things are done back home that it's hard to understand why the usage hasn't been universally adopted.

In this category I would put cup lids (China: keeps your hot drink hot) and heated toilet seats (Japan).

Also not wearing shoes in the house. This just seems pathological to me.  But I digress.

One of the things we have in America that doesn't work very well are the little kitchen sink strainers that catch food waste so it doesn't clog up the drainpipe. In my experience these things are always stupid and annoying. Here's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

It's small. It fills up right away, so you have to empty it multiple times during a single dish-washing session. But it's hard to get hold of and take out, especially when hands or sink water are soapy.

And here's the fancy, expensive version (from Kohler). Looks nicer, still works stupidly.

Every kitchen sink I've seen in Korea uses the same system, which makes the American system look like it was designed by monkeys.

The drain opening is nice and wide, a good 4 or 5 inches in diameter. On top is a flat plastic disc with sloped sides and a slotted raised center. Only food bits thin enough to slip under the slot can get into the drain.

Lift off the plastic disc, and inside is a big basket, several inches deep, with an actual handle. It has holes on the bottom and mesh sides, for good drainage. It's got a large capacity, and thank to the handle it's easy to lift out for emptying.

I don't know when these first came to Korea, if they were invented here, in Japan, or elsewhere, but it baffles me that they weren't adopted world-wide within a few years.

I wants one!

How close is close?

I've been wondering exactly how long it takes me to walk from Tek's school to my Herren House office in the morning after dropping him off. This short (and incredibly entertaining!) video on Vimeo reveals the answer. You'll need to enter the password "korea" to see it.

To view video on Vimeo, click me and enter password "korea".

Keyless

What is something of a novelty in Seattle — our new keyless entry system on our front door  —

Schlage keypad

is the norm in Korea. Typically they have sliding covers that move up to reveal the keypad. After typing in the code, you slide the cover back down and the door unlocks.

Here's the one on our apartment door:

And here's the one on our Herren Haus office door:

There are also keylesss entry systems for the apartment building entryways.

Our apartment building

Our entryway

Since we seldom drive, I get to leave the house without any keys at all most of the time. It's a good thing.

We're back, baby!

I am back in Korea, in quite different circumstances from my last major sojourn in 2007-08. So time to revive the blog!

One thing is identical to before: I am on sabbatical. In fact, I am embarrassed to say that I am working on the same damn research project as last time I stayed in Korea, a project I should have finished years ago.

But many things are different: I am here not only with Erma, but also with Tek, our little 3-year-old boy. We are in Gyeongju 경주 慶州, not Seoul, and living with Erma's parents in their large, comfortable apartment. We have put Tek into Korean daycare. Erma and I have rented a studio apartment which we are using as a daytime office.

We have now been here for three weeks, just enough time for the contours of our daily routine to start to resolve. Perhaps the most gratifying thing to date has been how resiliently Tek has dealt with being completely uprooted and thrown into unfamiliar circumstances, and how game he has been for new adventures, new foods, and new experiences. The only truly difficult thing for him has been adjusting to his new daycare and the communication barrier, but over the last few days he has apparently found his footing there as well.

One of the great things about our set-up is that the three places that triangulate our lives—home, daycare, office—are within a five minute walk. In fact, our office is located right behind the daycare.

Our office is in Herren Haus. Don't ask my why it's called that, I don't know.

House of Lords!

As I mentioned earlier, our "office" is really a studio apartment. I wouldn't want to live here, but it makes for a pretty great office.

Check out the funky-shaped little windows.

We get to Herren Haus via a small alley right next to Tek's daycare. This is the view of the daycare from just outside the front door of Herren Haus.

The small alley is a functioning street, open to motor vehicle traffic. That doesn't stop people from parking there.

The "Since this is a STREET, NO PARKING" sign doesn't seem to be doing any good.

This behavior is entirely consistent with Korean driving culture. It has been an interesting exercise in moral philosophy trying to explain to our boy why every single car in the country is illegally (and dangerously) parked.

The only thing that is less than ideal about our situation is that the five-minute walk to school with the boy is incredibly terrifying. After we leave our apartment complex we only walk along two little streets for half a block each. But it is terrifying.

There are no sidewalks. The edge of the street, a three-foot wide strip demarcated by a dotted yellow line, which is supposed to be safe to walk on, is obstructed or cluttered by trash, rocks, detritus, glass, cement outcroppings, poles, and homemade "no parking" obstacles. None of this prevents cars from parking, reducing the two-lane road effectively to a one-lane road, through which cars speed with abandon despite the high density of pedestrians and cyclists. This is all normal to the local residents, but strikes fear in my parental heart.

Here are a few photos of the two streets we have to navigate. Erma and Tek are in a few of them.

Will you look at this thing is blocking the "sidewalk"?

These plastic jugs weighted down with sand have been set out to prevent cars from parking here. They also prevent pedestrians from walking by.

Notice the tow-away zone sign on the pole in the foreground!

Guess we'll have to go out into the street again.

Careful, Tek and Erma!

By the way, in case it isn't apparent, I love it here.

Ondol

Korean home heating is a wonderful thing. It's called ondol (온돌 溫突), under-floor heating. Nowadays this is usually done with pipes circulating hot water under the floor.

It's a much smarter way to heat than with a forced-air furnace or electric radiant or convection heaters. It's more efficient, in that more of the energy actually goes to heat the room; more effective, in that it works really well to keep you warm; and more comfortable in that your bare or socked feet get to touch warm floors in the winter. And it has the added advantage of freeing up space along the wall for furniture, outlets, or whatever else you'd rather put there instead of a heating register. I hope someday to install it in our house in America.

One of the disadvantages I noted about the dormitory apartment I'm in now is that I can't control the level of heating. The apartment is usually too hot, even when it's quite cold out, so I have to keep a window open.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. The Chinese girl living next door to me showed me how to adjust the heat. There's this closet out in the stairway with a gas-fired water heater in it:


Five tubes run from the heater, one to each room on the floor.


By adjusting the valve on tube #4, I can control the amount of hot water flowing under the floor in my room.

Woldeu Bil

My living situation this time around in Seoul is not nearly as luxurious as it was in the fall, when Erma and I were living in a fancy officetel. This time I'm living in an off-campus student dorm. But I'm pretty comfortable here. One reason is that I still have many of the useful objects Erma and I accumulated over the course of the autumn. Some of those were given by relatives, some were loaned from Erma's parents, and some we purchased. These things range from pots and pans to power strips to bedding to toiletries. We were able to store all of these things at Erma's parents' place over the winter, and they very kindly drove them up to Seoul when I arrived. Erma's mother also provided me with banchan (side dishes, described here) like kimchi and myeolchi (멸치, little anchovies) and some other basic foodstuffs.

But I get ahead of myself.

I arrived at Incheon Airport on February 25, too late at night to get into the city and move into my dorm room, so I spent the night at an airport hotel. The next morning I took a bus into the city. The airport bus system here is really good. There are numerous "limousine" bus lines that connect the airport with different locations in and around Seoul. They run frequently, are very comfortable, and don't cost too much -- under $10. One of them (the number 603, if you're curious) goes straight to SNU. This is what it looked like from my seat in the back row:


The TV at the front was receiving satellite broadcasts.

I got off the bus and took a short cab ride to my dorm building, which is called World Ville (월드빌 Woldeu Bil). I had an address, but as you know from this earlier post, an address isn't much use. Fortunately, I had prepared for the cab ride by printing out a map showing the location of the building. The cab driver studied it for a while and then got me there with little difficulty.

It was a little after noon. I had two heavy suitcases and a backpack, and I was standing in front of this building:

See the little set of glass doors on the left? Outside the doors there was an intercom. One button showed a stylized image of a man's head wearing an official-looking cap, labeled gyeongbi 경비, which means guard. At the old officetel, there was a guard on duty 24 hours a day. I figured I'd buzz this guy, he'd let me in, look up my name on a list of new students moving in, and give me keys.

But every time I tried the button, the little LED screen said "EROR", which I took to mean "error". I spent about ten minutes trying this, pushing different combinations of buttons, and then trying again, even though it never worked. I peered in through the glass doors, and there was nothing to see but a narrow stairway and an elevator. I looked in the first-floor windows to the right of the door, but the room didn't look like an office, and it was dark and apparently unoccupied.

So, I thought for a minute about what I should do. The SNU language school had told me what room number I was in. Then I had told them what day I was moving in, and they had acknowledged that information. They hadn't said anything about HOW I should move in, and I had just assumed that there would be an official person on site when I arrived.

It seemed that the next thing I should do is call the language school office. But I wasn't sure I had the number. I had carefully printed up sheets with all the information I thought I would need when I arrived in Korea: the airport hotel phone number and location, the World Ville location, instructions for how to take a local bus to campus, etc. But I didn't have the language school phone number. Probably, though, it was somewhere on my computer, maybe in the signature of the emails that I'd received from the school.

I was just about to take out my computer when a young woman approached the door with a card key. She looked like a student; I asked her in Korean if there was a guard somewhere. She didn't understand at first, but seeing my suitcases, she asked if I was a new student. I said I was, and I was moving in. "You don't have keys?" she asked, surprised. I said I didn't. Did I need to go to campus to get them? "No," she said. She told me to wait and she'd get help. Then she went inside.

A few minutes later she came back out with another student, a friend of hers. Both of them were Japanese, and their Korean was not much better than mine. The second student gave me the phone number of a person to call. I tried it, but there was no answer. They decided I'd best come inside -- it was cold out, snow on the ground -- and then we'd figure out what to do. So I took my luggage in and got invited to one of their rooms. The first student I'd met was named M-, and the second R-. R- found the phone number of the school, and I called. They said they would get in touch with the person who had the keys, and would get back to me. A few minutes later they called back to say that the person with the keys would come by at 2:00. I looked at my watch: 12:45. "It's okay," said the students, "we have nothing to do today. You can wait here until 2:00."

So we spent an hour chatting in Korean in M-'s place. I thought: this is great. I'm already making friends in the dorm. When I asked how living here was, I got two warnings from the students: one, that their rooms had been filthy when they'd moved in; two, that the guy coming with my keys, who was sort of the resident proctor, wasn't very responsive and that it was hard to get problems in the dorm addressed in a timely fashion. Moreover, none of the dorm rules were actually enforced.

When 2:00 came around, I went downstairs to wait, and a few minutes later a young guy showed up. He apologized that my room hadn't been cleaned yet. We went in together, and he spent a short time sweeping the floor and scrubbing at the kitchen counter. That's when Erma's parents showed up with all the stuff they had driven up from their home, and the guy who had been cleaning my apartment disappeared when I went down to greet the in-laws.

After we moved everything into the apartment, Erma's parents took me on a quick tour of campus, which was a mob scene -- it was graduation day. Students in graduation robes were posing with their parents, holding flowers. The campus roads were jammed solid. We crawled through campus, locating my language school building. Then they dropped me back off at the dorm so I could work on getting settled.

Indeed, as I'd been warned, the place was filthy. I probably spent a total of 15 hours cleaning. The previous inhabitant had left a number of things behind, a few of them useful (like laundry detergent) and most of them not (like bathroom slippers, lots of notes written in Russian, and plastic silverware).

The most surprising thing I found when cleaning was under the bed. I don't think anyone had cleaned under there in 5 years. I was poking under there with a swiffer, bringing out huge clods of dust, when I hit something big. If I had been fishing I would have been excited. I leaned over and looked down, but I couldn't make out what it was until I'd slid it out into the center of the room.


A tire! A tire! I still don't understand how there could be a tire under the bed.

The biggest problem was the bathroom. The floor was covered in a disgusting, thick oily layer of scum, hair, and god-knows what else. Like all Korean bathrooms, there was a drain in the middle of the floor, but it was almost completely clogged. Similarly, I discovered that the bathroom sink drain was almost completely clogged. Without a working drain, I couldn't clean in there.

Fortunately, the next day I left with Erma's parents for their home in the south. While I was there I sent a series of text messages to the guy who had let me in, and he managed to get the drains unclogged, so that when I returned I was finally able to scrub the bathroom clean.

I waited to take pictures of the place until it was clean and all my belongings were unpacked and put away.

This is what the staircase and elevator look like. It looks pretty fancy, no? Marble walls and all.


This is my door: Room 404. The hallway continues around to the left, where there are three more apartments. That's a total of five per floor. I think there are 25 residents.


When you open the door, this is what you see. There's no place to store my suitcase, so it just has to sit there. I put up a decoration to relieve the monotony of the white walls. That metal thing is a rack for drying clothes. Note too the small space in the entryway for leaving shoes. One reason the floor is elevated is to make room for the pipes that circulate hot water for heat.


Turning to the right once inside the door, you can basically see the whole place:


The fanciness of the hallway is not carried through to the inside. The floor looks like wood. But it's not. It's not even fake plastic wood. It's a wood-colored vinyl lining. And it's buckling up in places.

Looking back from the other direction:


This seems pretty neat until you look down. I've got the second suitcase and the laundry basket, as well as trash and recycling, behind the headboard of the bed.


Here's my desk and bookshelf. That's a big map of Seoul on the wall.


The space is small, so it's not surprising that there isn't much storage, but it's still amazing how inefficiently laid out and furnished the place is. For example, there are no drawers in the entire place. Not in the desk, not in the kitchen counter, not in the closet. That thing that looks like a drawer is in fact ... well, I'm not sure what it is. But I decided to put my computer on it, since the desk is too high for comfortable typing. That works pretty well, since it keeps the desk clear for books and such. The disadvantage is that when I move the chair behind the computer, it bangs into the box that I'm using as a nightstand.


The closet works fine as long as you can hang most of your clothes. I've stored boxes above the closet.

My underwear and socks are underneath the television.

The kitchen has a single electric rangetop. There's a clothes-washing machine underneath it. This area is also terribly designed. There are no drawers for silverware, knives, spatulas, etc. The cabinets are arranged in such a way that when the cabinet door is open, it's in the way of where you need to stand--right in front of the sink--in order to reach into the cabinet.


There's no place for a refrigerator, so the small fridge they supplied sits awkwardly between the kitchen and the living area. You can see it in the first picture of the room above, with the microwave on top of it. It was originally facing the bed, which seemed really silly, so I rotated it to make it more accessible from the kitchen.

Here's the bathroom:

Those things on top of the toilet tank were left by the previous resident. Since there is conditioner and moisturizing body wash, I'm assuming it was a woman.

The biggest surprise is that there is no separate shower stall. The showerhead is attached to the sink, and the entire bathroom is the stall. I've seen lots of bathrooms like this in China, and I suppose they are probably not that uncommon in small apartments in Korea.

It's a slight hassle, but not too bad. Mostly it's a matter of training myself with a few simple habits. Before showering, take the towel and the bathmat out of the bathroom. After showering, don't forget to change the diverter so the water comes back out the sink faucet. (I have twice now, after showering, dressed and gone back in to brush my teeth, only to give myself a second shower.)


There isn't much room in the bathroom. The door swings in, with about an 8-inch clearance in front of the sink and a 4-inch clearance in front of the toilet. This means to open or close the door while in the bathroom, you either have to smush one skinny thigh up against the sink and scrape the door past it, or straddle the toilet.

The toilet itself is set right up against this corner jutting out from the wall.

Basically, it prevents your left leg from going where it would normally go when sitting on the toilet. So you have to sit side-saddle.

My suspicion is that this whole building was once as fancy as the halls, with big rooms, and that at some point those rooms got divided up. The light in the bathroom gets its power through the shared wall with the kitchen, suggesting that the bathroom was divided off some time after the building was constructed.

I still don't understand why there aren't more windows. The window over the sink looks out over the street, though you can't actually see out of it. Then there is a tiny window in the bathroom, which is too high to see out of. I would have thought there would also be a big window over the desk, where I've got the map of Seoul. That's an outside wall.

So I went out to look. The arrow points to the bathroom window of my room on the fourth floor.

Quite odd! There is a large window on the third floor, but on my floor there is just a wall, and a mysterious railing, as if there were a balcony there.

I don't mean to complain too much about the place. It's reasonably comfortable, and certainly acceptable for a three-month stay. The oddities and annoyances can be worked around, and I'm able to study effectively.

My main disappointment is that it seems really hard to meet people here. One reason I wanted to live in the dorm was to have a social experience with other international students. But the place is structured in such a way as to prevent that from happening. There are no common spaces at all, and the hallways are so narrow that you can't leave a door open with blocking access. That means that when residents are at home, their doors are closed. Occasionally I meet someone going in or out, but there's no place to stop and chat.

Well, it's still early -- I've only been here a bit more than a week. We'll see how things play out.

By the way -- for those who have been waiting with baited breath for the explanation of the mystery photos I put up a few posts ago, I've now posted it in the comments section.

Tellebijeon

We've just gotten a TV (Korean: tellebijeon 텔레비전)! Erma's parents were originally planning to buy a nice new flat-screen LCD TV when they move next year, but they've decided to get it now instead and loan it to us while we are here. How generous!

The spiffy, jet-black 40-inch TV is rather enormous for our little apartment.


This is either going to mean that my Korean listening comprehension will improve enormously, or that my classroom preparedness will drop precipitously. Possibly both.

Eumshik 2: Yori

We have pictures of a few things we've cooked.

Alert readers will recognize the first two from an earlier post.

Breakfast: toast with butter and jam, fruit.


A word about toast may be in order at this juncture. When I lived in Hong Kong, I also didn't have a toaster and wanted to have toast. I remembered that my grandfather had taught me how to toast a bagel over an open gas burner, by sticking a fork in it and moving it gently back and forth over the flame. That was the first thing I tried, but you can't hold up a piece of sliced bread with a fork. It doesn't have the same solidity of structure as a bagel half. I tried using chopsticks and a spatula, but it was too difficult to hold and maneuver the bread while exposing it to the flame.

The next thing I tried was frying it in a little butter, à la a toasted-cheese sandwich. But that was a mess.

At some point I tried just putting the bread in the hot dry pan, and it worked like a charm. I have no idea to what to attribute this flash of inspired brilliance.

Anyway, here's our first home-cooked dinner. A full description is in the OfficeTel entry.


The tofu-pepper stir-fry came out surprisingly good even though I had almost nothing to work with. It's flavored with just soy sauce and sesame oil.

Last weekend we decided to try to make pancakes for breakfast. That meant finding a mix, since it wouldn't make sense to invest in flour: we're only here three months, and there's no oven for baking. We found a Korean product called Hat-Keik Karu 핫케익가루, "hotcake powder". (Below the product name it says, I think, "Make and enjoy delicious hot cakes in no time".) You'll note on the package that it is served with butter (or is that cream?), syrup, raspberries, and a mint leaf. We decided, with regret, to make do without the raspberries and mint leaf.

Oddly, although the Koreans make their own pancake mix, we couldn't find Korean syrup. (Maybe it's available somewhere.) So we got imported Japanese syrup. It says on it ケイキシロップ keiki-shiroppu, "cake-syrup", and partially obscured in the lower-right corner メープルタイプ meipuru-taipu, "maple-type", a clear indication that there is no maple in there whatsoever.


We added milk and an egg, and cooked 'em up. Not great, not terrible. I think the bag was intended to make enough to serve four or five people, but the two of us tried to eat it all ourselves. Didn't manage it. Had to put some away for later.

Oh, that's a persimmon (gam 감) in the background.

We (read: Erma) have been making some Korean food as well. Here's an action shot of bulgogi 불고기, which is one of the best-known Korean dishes, in the making.

[Linguistic note: bulgogi means literally "fire meat".]


That's carrots and onions in the pan. The beef (in the background, mixed with scallions and soy sauce) is Australian. Erma and I don't eat beef at home, unless it's organic, natural, grain-fed, or otherwise immunized against mad-cow disease. So we were a bit dismayed when we learned that a few weeks ago imports of US beef into Korea had resumed and reached high volumes. Australian beef at the markets is all branded as "Australian beef: clean and safe". I think they are trying to corner the suspicious-of-American-beef market in Korea.

Here's the tasty finished product:


This picture is actually a great illustration of the basic elements of a Korean meal. More on that later.

Eumshik 1: Apateu

Korean food!

There's so much to say on this topic, it's hard to know where to begin. For this post, I think I'll limit myself to the food in our apartment.

We still haven't figured out the best way to shop for food. In our neighborhood, there are lots of syupeomaket (슈퍼마켓). But don't let the name fool you. These aren't what we'd call supermarkets in English; they are more like tiny neighborhood grocers carrying packaged foodstuffs, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, all piled on crammed shelves separated by narrow aisles. Some have a small produce section. As you might expect, the groceries at these places are pretty expensive, and the selection is limited. There's also a little fruit specialty shop, and one day there was a guy selling fresh vegetables from the back of his truck.

[Linguistic side-note: why syupeomaket instead of supeomaket? Where'd the "y" come from? Erma speculates that this borrowing is based on British English pronunciation, in which the "u" in words like "tune" and "super" is preceded by a "y" sound.]

In Shinchon there is a large, upscale department store, Hyundai. Like most department stores here, there is a full-scale food court and supermarket on the underground floor. The selection is much better here: you can get a wide variety of meats and produce, and a lot of packaged goods, included imports. But here, too, the prices are very high. This supermarket (and presumably others like it) also have some peculiarities from the American point of view. Different stations in the market belong to different vendors. These stations are manned by employees of the product makers rather than employees of Hyundai. As a result, the same product may be available in multiple locations at different prices, and the employees are working hard to get you to buy from them. While you're considering getting kimchi at one place, the lady at the kimchi counter next door is trying to entice you over there instead. Want garlic? Better check the prices at the three different produce stands where garlic is being sold.

Another interesting feature of food products sold here is that an unusually high number of products are sold with a smaller product attached to it as a promotion. I recently bought some soft tofu, and there was a free half-size packet of hard tofu taped to it. Sometimes this practice is taken to what seems like ridiculous extremes. Last time we went there, the quart cartons of Seoul brand milk had cup cartons of the same exact milk taped to them. (Yeah, okay, they were metrically measured packages, but I don't remember how many centiliters they were. They looked like quarts and cups.) And, craziest of all, the little jars of Bonne Maman jam had tiny 40ml jars of Bonne Maman jam taped to them. Perfect for your dollhouse!

Anyway, all of this food is really expensive, while simple meals eaten out are incredibly cheap. You can have a large, tasty, healthy meal for less than $4 at a restaurant. So it makes eating in a rather expensive alternative. Still, it makes us crazy to eat out all the time, so we do cook sometimes.

Another option for shopping are the supermarkets inside the giant discount chains like Homever and E-Mart. They work the same way as the Hyundai market -- multiple vendors -- and the prices are supposed to be better. But it still seems kind of pricey to us.

Anyway, if you're curious, here's what's in our house right now in the way of food. We'll start with the pantry:


1. Seattle Chocolates brand chocolates, brought from Seattle to be used for gifts.
2. Pickled garlic cloves, a delicious Korean side dish.
3. Digestives, the delicious cracker-cookie found throughout Asia. A remnant of British colonialism, no doubt, but no less delicious for it.
4. Instant ramen. Always good to have around for emergencies.
5. Two kinds of Chinese tea, one brought from Seattle. We've been drinking a lot of tea.
6. Packet of crackers given to us by Erma's father. He intended for us to eat them immediately as a snack, but we've saved them, brought them to Seoul, and kept them around for an emergency.
7. Seasoned fried seaweed squares, sometimes called laver in English, called gim 김 in Korean. Another delicious side dish, especially wrapped around some rice.
8. Some pretzels saved from our flight. Yep, you guessed it: emergency.
9. Bag of sugar. We tried to avoid buying this for a while, since we'll never use it up in 3 months. But we caved. We'll need it to prepare myeolchi (see below).
10. Sesame oil.
11. Trader Joe's trail mix. Brought from Seattle, now half eaten.
12. Black pepper.
13. Jar of Korean strawberry jam.
14. Sesame seeds in a little grinder. Ground-up sesame is a necessity in Korean cooking.
15. A tiny tube of sugar stolen from a local coffee shop. (Well, not really stolen. I mean, if you order a coffee, you're allowed to take a tube of sugar, right?) It was when we realized that we couldn't satisfy our sugar needs for three months on stolen cafe packets that we bought the bag of sugar (see #9).
16. Salt.

That was exciting, wasn't it? Let's do more.

In the narrow drawer next to the washing machine is some vegetable oil for cooking:


There's also some soy sauce on the counter, not pictured.

Then there's the fridge:


1. Milk. We bought this to make pancakes from a mix. The recipe only called for 280cc, so we have some left over.
2. Imported Japanese syrup (not genuine maple), again for pancakes. It was expensive, but not as expensive as the genuine imported Canadian maple syrup.
3. Bean sprouts (콩나물). Another Korean staple, used mostly in soups.
4. Tofu. I've been making simple stir fries.
5. Hot pepper paste (고추장). Another staple.
6. Bean paste (된장). A bit like miso -- used to make soup stock.
7. Some Gyeongju-style red-bean cookies, a gift from Erma's mother.
8. Butter. We don't have a butter dish.
9. Kimchi. This is cabbage kimchi, the prototypical kind most familiar to Americans.
10. Kimchi. Another type (총각김치), this one made from small daikon radishes.
11. Garlic. We've been unable to find whole unpeeled garlic anywhere. Koreans seem to buy their garlic pre-peeled in little bags.
12. Mandarin oranges. We've been taking these to school to eat as a snack halfway through our four hours of classes.
13. Yogurt. Also for school snacks.
14. Apples and asian pears. Erma's skill at peeling these (Koreans don't eat the skins) is improving steadily.
15. An onion and half of a very large scallion.
16. Barely visible, an egg.
17. Myeolchi (멸치), tiny little anchovy-like fish. These can be used in soups or seasoned and eaten as a side dish.
18. Hot pepper powder.
19. A larger variety of myeolchi.
20. Sliced whole-grain bread. We got this loaf at one of the many little bakeries that are popular here. They are very similar to the bakeries you find in Japan and Taiwan, with all sorts of odd pastries for sale.
21. Strawberry jam. For breakfasts we toast the bread in a dry frying pan, and eat it with butter and jam. And usually some fruit.
22. More butter.
23. Little yogurt drinks, called yogeureut in Korean. Very refreshing.
24. Orange juice, Minute Maid brand.
25. Bottle of water. Erma refills it and takes it to school.

And, finally, the freezer, two bags of frozen dumplings. (See the end of the Opiseutel entry for a list of some of the different names by which these are called.)


If that's not enough detail for you, send email or post a comment, and I'll fill in the gaps!

More about Korean food, eating out, etc. in future posts.