Korean cuisine

I wanted to comment a little on what I found out about Korean cuisine.

To me, the diet really depends on rice, veggies, seafood, and pork. Of course there is plenty more, but those are the staples.

Kimchi is usually made with shellfish or anchovies. Vegetarians beware! Kimchi is on every table, and I only had one vegetarian version the whole time I was there.

There are vegetable trucks that sell local fruits and veggies. They drive around with loudspeakers announcing their product, and how good it is to eat veggies. (At first I thought we were being attacked but Layna said "No, it's the vegetable truck!)

If you order a "toast" that is really an egg sandwich. If you order it with bacon, beware...they don't cook the bacon and just add it to the sandwich.

My favorite dish was patbingsoo. It's shaved ice with red bean, fruit, whipped cream, and condensed milk (basically). You get it all beautifully presented, then you destroy it! Dump it in a bowl, mix, and you get this lightly sweet, very cold, beautiful thing!

A lot of food is cooked at the table. There's a skill to it, and we definately charred some pork. You usually have meat, but then you might cook garlic or other veggies too. You take pieces of meat, that they cut with shears, and wrap them in lettuce or other leaf, and add sauce and veggies. We also had a great pork soup, the pork served on the bone among a bunch of aromatic and leafy veggies.

On Jeju Island, you can see the women out diving for shellfish. I really wanted to buy the sea urchin, but the only way we could eat it was raw. I just wasn't ready to buy a sea urchin from a bucket and eat it right there. Not when I have to be on an airplane in a few hours.

I also had amazing sushi on Jeju. In Korea, there are tons of side dishes. We got an entire table full of raw and fried veggies and fish before we even saw our order come out. Delicious. Raw octopus ain't bad.

I also spent a couple days in Tokyo. We had these panko-breaded pieces of fish, vegetable, or meat. They would bring out 2 at a time, and there were 5 sauces. Each had a sauce to try. It was like an endless tasting menu.

I found that when a local brought me somewhere and told me what to order, it was a great meal. On my own, a less great meal. But all in all, a yummy time!

sadness and sauce

My grandfather's family was one of the many that came over during the Irish potato blight. The Irish made the classic mistake of overfarming one staple. They didn't diversify their crops, so when blight set in, it spread rapidly and destroyed a major portion of their food supply. These days some farmers choose to use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides to control this, but organic farmers must be more creative and use crop diversity.

June was wet and rainy and cold. I left for Korea in July (where it was hot and sunny most of the time), but when I came back I heard that the rain kept going. At the same time, all six New England states where attacked with late blight. This is the same blight that caused the potatoes to rot in Ireland. In this case, though, they attacked the tomatoes. Home Depot, Lowe's, and other stores had to pull their tomato plants. The other farmers held their breaths and hoped for sun.

But sadly, the rainy weather caused the blight to spread and the tomato plants started to die, and the tomatoes started to rot. The farmers heard that the blight hit Lincoln, they warned us, we got a few tomatoes, and then it was mostly over.

Kate said she went to the Northeast Organic Farming conference out at UMass Amherst, and that seasoned farmers said this was the worst growing season in 40 years. So we're all in this together. I've heard that a lot of farms have lost their crops, and a few lucky ones are still going. A few still hadn't had tomatoes 2 weeks ago, because even without blight, the cold summer prevents ripening.

So I took my few sad-looking tomatoes and made up some stuffed peppers. Til next year.

I hear the melons are looking good, so I'm waiting for that!