Wednesday Market

On Wednesday mornings, the ground just outside of our apartment building is extra bustling. I can peer out from our 12th floor balcony and see the tents rising and the trucks unloading.

Each week a little market sets up on the street below. It has a bit of everything, but most involve some type of food - fruit, vegetables, seafood, Korean side dishes or street food. Clothing, toys, housewares and plants fill up other tents. Handwritten signs and vocal vendors beckon you to come and take a closer look.

 This string of tents (on the left side of the picture above; to the right here) is my favorite vendor, a modest vegetable dreamland. They have a wide selection and a few popular items available in bulk, like the huge red bags of garlic. It's also the only place that I've been able to find fresh cilantro.

Most of the basic Korean street foods are available here too. Isaac and I finally gave into the yummy smells and had a junkfood dinner here for a total cost of 6500 won, about $5.50.

On the two long skewers is odeng, fish cake, which absorbs the flavor of the broth it's cooked in, which is the amber liquid in the cups. It's slightly salty and...fishy? And a good ol' corn dog. In addition to being doubly battered and deep-fried, it is coated in sugar and ketchup.

In the bowl is a mixture of ddeokbokki and kimmari. Ddeokbokki is made of rice cake (it's not sweet, just a chewy, bland blob made of rice) soaked in a spicy sweet sauce. Kimmari is clear noodles wrapped up in seaweed and deep-fried. So that's chewy and crunchy blobs in a sweet and spicy sauce. Can't go wrong there.

These wandering markets are nice and convenient. They set up in the parking lots of different apartment buildings each day. Sometimes as I walk around town, I see the colorful tents somewhere else. When the weather is especially nice, other special markets come as well. One weekend, a night market visited our apartment building. It didn't have the fresh produce, but had lots of street food and cute fair games like throwing darts at balloons to win a stuffed animal.

Yes that's a lot of meat! Isaac said it reminded him of southern style barbecue; and you can see the grill which cooked it in the picture below.

It's Wednesday here now, so I will inevitably go wander through the market again. But it will be the last time for a little while.

This Friday we leave for our honeymoon in Europe. There are still quite a few details we are unsure of, but that uncertainty will be part of the fun.

Weekends with Apa

Being so close to Isaac's father is the wonderful thing about living in South Korea. It takes about 2.5 hours to travel from our home to his on public transport, making weekend outings together totally feasible and comfortable.

We are already establishing a sort of routine too - eat some incredibly tasty food together (no surprise there) and go for a walk in a mountain park.

Last time we ate lunch at a shabeushabeu restaurant - that's Vietnamese summer rolls. It's basically all sorts of goodies wrapped up in rice paper, and you get to cook and assemble them yourself.

Sadly I took this picture before the gigantic plate of assorted meats arrived, but there's still plenty to see. That's a grill in the middle of the table, with a soup simmering in its center. The reddish liquid is used to dip the circular rice paper in to make it chewy and ready to roll. We had many types of meat to taste: pig, cow, duck and chicken.

Here are some of the meats cooking. They gave us an insane amount of meat, I wish I had a picture to share of the ridiculous portions!

So dip the rice paper in the hot water and lay it on your plate. Pile on some food, roll it into a burrito shape and eat it up! I especially love the herb, Thai basil, which tastes like licorice candy in the best way.

With our bellies bulging, we were ready to stretch our legs at Gyeryongsan Park. This lovely park has paved lower trails for casual strolls, as well as higher, more remote foot trails for the dedicated. It is also home to a couple of Buddhist temples that are over 1000 years old. It's interesting living somewhere with such a long history. It's the first time I have lived in such a place, and having such a deep connection between the people and land seems like a powerful thing. I could go on about that thought for quite a while. For our weekend strolls though, this aged land rich in history makes for some lovely scenery and a sacred escape from city life.

Apa balancing and walking on the path's thin borderline. Notice that tree - a crepe myrtle - reaching over the building on the right.

One popular thing to do in parks like this is to build a mini cairn. It's an old Buddhist practice, but for us common folk it's kind of like throwing a penny into a fountain. Taking small rocks, you balance them on top of one another and make a wish. We built one together and Apa made the wish - that we will give him a grandson soon.

As a casual but curious observer, the mountains of South Korea remind me very much of the Appalachian mountains we have back home. As far as mountains go, they seem old - time has worn away their high, jagged tips, leaving behind gentle curved profiles that seem more inviting than treacherous.

And I see familiar faces among the plants, types that are invasive and nuisances back in South Carolina. Mimosas and kudzu blend in here, their original home. Crepe myrtles grow to be glorious ancient trees, rather than just kept in check or abandoned in old shopping center parking lots.

You can't tell how large this tree is from the picture on the right. It's the same location as the picture of Isaac and I up above. The lowest branch hangs above our heads. It is glorious.

I can't wait for fall to arrive to enjoy the beautiful mountains of Korea even more. I heard a joke that is almost completely true: South Korea is 70% mountains and 30% coffee shops. So there are plenty of mountains that will be filled with color as autumn arrives, and plenty of coffee shops to energize and relax in before and after hikes. I look forward to exploring both.

What's for dinner?

Isaac is an indiscriminate eater, loving all kinds of food from savory chunks of meat to strawberry ice cream. I am a reluctant carnivore, most content eating veggies and nibbling on creatures with low or no intelligence like fish and eggs. My husband has considerably broadened my food palette, and I'll eat and even enjoy meats when courtesy calls. But on my own, I still tend to stick to foods my pet rabbit would enjoy too.

So as a new wife, I am now learning what it's like to buy groceries and prepare food for Isaac as well as for myself. Unfortunately for my new groom, my only experience cooking is with foods that I enjoy eating. Compounding my rookie skills: different kitchen, different selection in grocery stores catered to different diets and cooking styles. I am starting to get more comfortable with it though. I've learned that the rice maker and the two-burner stove are my MVPs. 

I couldn't resist showing off our adorable squirrel rice paddle. We have a microwave as well, but I'm a bit of a reheating snob and prefer using the stove for that. I'll say it's on the second string though. There is no oven, but there is this fun dish-drying device. It has some function to help dishes dry more quickly - heat or air flow - but I just use it like a normal drying rack. It hangs above the sink.

So those are the players, the tools helping me learn grown-up skills.

Much of what I cook looks about the same. Ingredients cut up into small pieces, cooked in a pan, over rice. Simple and tasty.

There is some trait in my family, I think on Dad's side, that allows us to eat the same foods again and again and enjoy them just as thoroughly each time. I truly look forward to each daily variation of mixed rice that I make. A little Isaac voice in my head tells me to eat more protein so I try to include egg, tofu or mushrooms each time. For flavoring - often I leave it naked, other times soy and honey, lately diced kimchi.

 That is what my lunch looks like about every day. So what's for dinner? Poor Isaac. I'm learning.

One bit of Korea we incorporate into our meals are side dishes (banchan). Kimchi is the most famous and basic of these. Traditionally, families and neighbors make large batches of kimchi and other side dishes together and then split them. I go to the market and grocery store. We have cabbage kimchi and radish kimchi, both having the spicy and sour taste that make kimchi so delicious (and that make our entire refrigerator smell). I also like danmuji, sweet pickled radish, which is probably the favorite of most kids too. Once you have a taste for them, you realize that Korean side dishes truly complement almost any meal.

We both love breakfast foods. The day does not begin until I have eaten breakfast, and although Isaac somehow avoids eating a morning meal, he thoroughly enjoys the foods usually associated with it. "American Breakfast" has already become a regular on our dinner menu. And surprisingly, kimchi has squeezed its way into this meal too! Diced kimchi makes a stellar hashbrown mix-in.

A huge helping of spicy chicken with some veggies was easy to make, throw some side dishes down too and dinner is done. From left to right, that's cabbage kimchi, sweet radish, radish kimchi and seaweed in the middle.

I made two separate spaghetti sauces for this meal, and went a bit too crazy on the veggies and ended up making what looks like spaghetti salsa. I bet you can guess which one is Isaac's by its meaty hue. The garlic bread was on sale from a small bread shop across the street.

Korean-style curry is an easy and savory dinner option. Chop up veggies, add water and spices. I tried to get cute this time and topped Isaac's plate off with a spam heart.

Here are glamor shots of kimchi hashbrowns and curry.

Whenever we have a house in America, I think I will cook kimchi hashbrowns for all of our guests. They're so good.

Isn't the purple colored rice lovely? It's a mixed grain variety, and I don't think we will ever return to plain ol' white.



Did you notice that all of our dinners are on the floor? We have a dining room table, and we did eat at it one time. But we prefer eating on the floor. It's just one of those things we've always done together.

All of these dishes are pretty simple, but I'm just a rookie. I also still try to stick to my lazy goal of cooking everything in just one pan. I've got a lot to learn.