I miss variety

That is the one thing I really miss about America. There are a million stores selling a million brands of a million products. You could buy almost any type of fruit or vegetable year round, shop for clothing of any size and brand, or buy things online for incredibly cheap prices.

In Korea, not so much. Every town has the same cell phone stores, book stores, clock stores(they are really into clocks here)and bakeries and they are all selling the exact same products. You might find a little more variety at your e-mart or homepluses, but the bulk of what they sell is exactly the same as what everyone else is selling.

There are foreign markets in Seoul that sell some a lot of products that you cant get anywhere else, put the prices are high and the selection is limited.

There are places that sell foreign sized clothes, but the last pair of jeans I looked at were $150.00 and looked pretty shoddy. And forget about a good pair of running shoes. Unless you want a stylish pair of rocking elevator shoes.



Oh well, I least I can afford to buy shit over here. Back in the good old US all my money went to rent, food and heat.

Icoop

I had my co-teacher help me sign up for a website called Icoop. It is a online grocery store here in the ROK that sells organic local products and offers free home delivery.

The site is all in Korean, but they have pics of the products, and I either use a dictionary or babble fish to translate what the items are that I am buying. Although babble fish sometimes gives me some pretty weird translations. For example I wanted to know what this product was, and Babble fish told me "The mouse eye which stir-fries conga base". While that was amusing, it was not particularly helpful. One of them was "burning nose powder", another was "Seven music truths?", but usually I can at least get the gist of the product.

There are two prices for everything on the site, if you just get a normal enrollment, the price you see is what you pay, if you get a paid membership(13,000 won a month) you get 20% off. There is also a deposited of 30,000won which you get back whenever you quit the service. With a few exceptions, the prices as listed are about the same, or a little higher than the grocery stores in my town. With the 20% off all the prices are cheaper than what I have been paying.

We have been buying 5 Kilogram boxes of Asian pears, and on the website they are 13,500 won regular, I pay 11,600 with my discount, and we have been paying around 13,000+ at the store in town. My kids go through 5 kilograms of apples every 2-3 days and we have been paying 17,800 for a box (usually they have 3 kilo boxes for around 12,000), on the website they are 20,500 and I pay 16,200.

I am saving at least 1,000 won on pretty much everything I buy, and feeding 5 people it adds up. After buying 13 products it makes it worth it I figure.

A whole new world

After the orientation last week, my new buddy Gary wanted to go to the foreign quarter. He wanted to pick up some ingredients to make some Jerked chicken. In Korea you can pretty much only get salt, pepper, garlic, onions, red chilly pepper, and a dozen types of soy sauce and rice vinegars.

Thats the funny thing about living in Korea, they dont use a hell of a lot of other spices. I had to go to about nine stores before I even found baking yeast, and I still have not seen a single bottle of vanilla extract or leaf of basil since I moved here. Things that are so common, they are available at every single store in the US are completely absent here on the peninsula.

I had not even realized it, but we have pretty much been eating stir frys and rice at every meal for the last two months. Not anymore, I am tired of using onions, garlic, red chillies, and salt at every meal. I decided to break out of the mold last week. My first step was acquiring cilantro. That was located in the foreign quarter, fresh cilantro at that, they also had dried cumin one of the basic spices for Mexican and Indian food. Then I found some garbanzo (chick peas) beans in the same store. That coupled with lemons would recreate our meal plans.

Now I had the ingredients for a food revolution. I first had to soak the chick peas overnight, but that did not stop me from making salsa! We had salsa, beans, and rice with a tofu-potato scramble that would knock your socks off! It was devoured in mere seconds.

Last night the chick peas were ready, I soaked some sesame seeds in water, then ground them up (tahinie), I cooked the garbanzo beans in the rice/pressure cooker. After adding garlic, olive oil, and salt I ground them all up to a creamy consistency, and boom! we had the delicious diarrhea like substance known as hummus. Beautiful hummus, once a staple in our lives, its as common in the northwest as rain in winter but it is all but absent in this strange foreign land.

Then I took some flour, water and baking powder, and created the simple flatbread known as tortillas. My wife asked me where I bought them! LOL! ROFL! LMAO! No, like god himself I created the tortillas in my own image, pasty and white.

So to recap, salsa, hummus, tortillas add those with a nice tofu potato scramble(yes again) and some salad and we had...well not really burritos, but more like a nice soft shelled taco thingy! And it was good!

My youngest normally eats like a bird, she will have a little salad and some rice, and maybe a little tofu but not much else. She kept asking me "Daddy can we have more than one?" Of course I told her yes, and she proceeded to eat like 4 burrito-taco thingies. I had to make a second batch of tortillas and more salsa.

My family devoured that stuff like a swarm of locusts. And I saw that it was good, then I rested.

I was so happy to make something not using chilly pepper, garlic, onions and vinegar for dinner, but then I realized that I actually used all those things in the salsa and hummus...