What to cook in Korea?

I promised posts about my food life here in Korea. Many ingredients don't exists or cost a mouth-dropping amount of money ($5 a can for tomato paste? YOUR'RE NUTS!)

In Korea and stumped on what to cook? Here are some ideas!

(Unfortunately, a lot of the easy things to make are not the healthiest...)
- Meat, potatoes, and gravy- chicken fried steak, fried chicken, etc.
- Onion Soup
- Potato Soup
- Chicken & Noodles, thick, served with mashed potatoes and gravy just like grandma's
- Pastas- spaghetti, olive oil based, angel hair (with the cheap noodles)
- Zucchini casserole (zucchini, onion, canned tomatoes, with cheese on top! mmmm)
- Mushroom soup
- Chicken and Rice (The thick kind of mushroom soup)
- Enchiladas (creamy and tomato based, using canned tomatoes)
- Quesadillas
- Burritos, breakfast burritos
- Bagel sandwiches
- Biscuits and gravy (using a simple drop biscuit recipe, subsitute oil for shortening)
- Chicken pot pie (same drop biscuits)
- Breakfast casserole
- Grilled cheese
- French toast
- Pancakes
- Giant sandwiches full of veggies
- And TONS of stir-frys!

I also have been trying my hand at more complicated things, like making yogurt and "bread in 5 minutes a day." I will have to add that later!

FOOD- Project 365 gone bunk

So, a lot of my life here in Korea is centered around food. Why? I have more time, so I choose to spend a lot of it in the Kitchen. I have seen other people's cool "projet 365" where they take a picture a day of something, I thought.... Cool! I will do that too! But, I failed. I did it for like 2 weeks, but never got around to uploaded them. Well, new idea! I am going to add stuff for foodies to my blog.

I have high aspirations of adding lots of things to my blog, but... well, we'll see.

This is how far I got on actually posting my recipes. Grand total = 4 :(

New Years in Seoul 2009-2010

This year was the first year, since the 6th grade, that I did not host a New Years Party at my place. :(

Of course, there was still organizing involved. A group of people and I organized an event on Couchsurfing.com, and it turned out to be a really great night.

About 15 of us started off by eating Korean Pizza (like fried pancakes with stuff in them) and drinking Dongdongju, which is kind of like a fizzy rice wine. Its a little sweet and is served in ceramic cups/bowls. You serve it with a large ladel-like spoon that apparently is mimiking a gord.

After that, we headed to the Bellfry Tower to join the mass of people who had gathered in the square. There was a concert and then at midnight they rang a giant bell 33 times. We drank way too many "Soju-drivers" (Soju with pineapple juice) and drank some super yummy rice wine at midnight. There should have been more fireworks, but this year they made them illegal, and good-ol-Koreans actually listend, so while there was a few, it wasn't as festive as I would have voted for.

Once the craziness was over (no one got trampled in our group, despite the apparent-possibility of it), we found our group again and tried to formulate a plan. We were split 50-50 over going to a disco or going to a "noribang" (Karaoke), so we decided to split the group into two more-managble groups. I, of course, joined the Noribang group, and we had a great time belting out the few English songs available. At that point I was also ridiculously drunk. :P Once our time was up in the Karaoke bar (4am), we went to another bar to kill an hour before the subways started up again. I drank a coke and tried to convice my stomach it was not pissed off.

At around 5:30am we caught a subway to get closer to the mountain we had planned to climb. By 7am we were hiking up Mangwoo Mountain hoping to make it to the top before sunrise. We were not alone, it seemed like out of nowhere TONS of koreans showed up! We got high enough, staked out or spot, and then waited the miserable 10-15 minutes left before the sun FINALLY peaked over the mountains. We knew it was coming because we could hear the oohhhs and awwws from people higher than us, who saw the sun first. You get to make a wish if see the sunrise on New Years Day, so we are hopeful!

We hiked back down the mountain, the -15 degrees getting to us JUST a little, and then we went home and slept allllllll day. That evening 2 couchsurfers from Poland arrived. They are really nice and showed up pictures of their town/country.

I think today we are still recovering.. I managed to sleep till 12:30, then Ayax made me an amazing breakfast. :)