food

HIYA!

I've finally made peanut butter. It's real easy and it tastes good. Just like the stuff in stores. I was thinking to buy peanut butter from the US - through the mail - because I really like it, and it's a useful food for the way I like to eat. Then I saw a peanut butter maker online. Thought, "Ah, now I've got it. I'll just make my own. Much cheaper and everything." Then I saw a recipe that said you can use a blender. I've read this many times but the times I've tried it it never worked. I've never wanted to use additional oil though. This time I broke down and added the 1 teaspoon of oil that the recipe said to use. So I did. One cup of peanuts and one teaspoon of oil. Blend away. Comes out peanut butter. Actually, it's not real real easy. It's gooey and the peanuts don't blend so very easily. At least not in the tiny blender I used. Anway, I won't buy a peanut butter maker anytime soon.

Korean food, for the most part, is okay with me. But I prefer to eat the way I've been eating for quite a few years. Mostly raw. I find the food to be very spicy. Not spicy hot so much as very very full of flavor. It's so, so, so, rich, I guess. I don't know really how to explain what I don't like so much.

There are some wonderful foods that I eat fairly often. There are these little buckwheat pancakes that the lady who sells them on the street rolls us with some shredded Giant Japanese Radish, a bit of sesame oil, some sesame seeds, and some soy sauce. MMMM. I once went to a vegetarian restaurant and had a potato pancake. Also really really yummy. I want to learn to make these things so I can make them at home. I've steamed potatoes and sweet potatoes, next I'll steam some pumpkin because I love all these foods steamed.

I have lunch at the temple every Sunday. It's organic and vegan. Tastes okay for the most part. There's this little pancake thing that they put vegetables in that I like.

Fruit is really expensive here so these foods help keep the cost of fruit down. Just yesterday though I got a really good bargain on a box of grapes. A 5 kg box. I will let you figure how many pounds that works out to. About 12 pounds?! Yeah, must be. Wow. I gave away a bunch to my boss and the rest I'll eat up in a few days. They're not organic, nor is most of the fruit that I buy here, but in Thailand I learned to wash produce using a bit of baking soda and water. Let the produce sit in the solution for 20 minutes then rinse well. So I always do that.

I just bought some vegetables yesterday at the fresh outside market not far from the school. It's a kind of mallow. Very nice. And cheap. Might be organic even. But I still wash it. Many Koreans, it seems, don't know this. I got some seeds from a friend at the temple and planted them yesterday. She said I could plant them now. But I read on the internet last night that they're a summer vegetable. That's in the US. So I don't know how well they'll do over winter here.

First day of rain we've had in a long time. I'll go out and plant some vegetables that I dug up from the temple. Wild vegetables that I ate a lot of in Thailand. Koreans don't know it, just like Thais don't know it. But we ate it a lot when I lived at the temple in the north of Thailand.

This is all for now.

Ah, I got some organic vegetarian kimchi from the people at the temple and I eat it often. I like kimchi pretty well. I want to learn to make it. They'll make it later this fall. I'll help.

And the landlord's son gave me some of the Korean miso that they've made for their own use. A lot. I like it okay but doubt that I'll eat it all up in the one year I'll be here. My boss says it's "proven" to be good for your health! Something about cancer, I think he said.

Troy.