how much rice are we getting?

My friend's parents are farmers and grow rice.  When she asked us we wanted a bag and that she would get us a good deal, we said absolutely.  Check out what we got...

O. can't believe it either - 20 kg (44 pounds) of lovely, organic, white rice!!  Seeing as we eat rice every day, sometimes at all three meals, it actually isn't as crazy as it seems...right??  Although, next to O. it does look awfully big....

Something else that we eat every day, and sometimes at all three meals, is kimchi.  Koreans eat so much kimchi that they have separate refrigerators just for kimchi.  They take their kimchi very seriously here.  :)  For more information, see the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi

Just to let you know, that is one 4 kg (8.8 pounds) bag of kimchi with two 800 gram (1.7 pounds) free bags of kimchi taped to it.  In addition to rice and kimchi, Koreans also seem really fond of taping free things to all manner of grocery items.  At the store today there were rolls of paper towels taped to bags of frozen dumplings and every time I get milk there is usually a smaller container of milk or some yogurt drinks taped to it.  

And just to give you the full picture, here are some pics of the kimchi fridge in action.  Don't you all want some kimchi now??

our bags are off the boat...just not in our apartment

Not even in our town.  Or as S. is pointing out, not even in our province.  After MANY torturous phone calls he finally got some information about our bags.  They are on the other side of Korea, supposedly waiting to go through customs.  My bet is that they tried to open one of the bags to see what was inside, and now are trying to figure out how to put all that yarn, I mean stuff, back in the bags.  You would be amazed at how much yarn fits into the small corners and spaces of luggage.  

So, our bags are in Pusan, not Cheonan, and more importantly not in our hands.  Sigh...what do you do while you wait even longer for all of your clothing (including all of my underwear unfortunately) and yarn? You make mixed drinks.  O. discovered the apple-lychee fruit drink and mommy discovered that mixing it with soju makes for a really nice way to spend the evening waiting for news about long-traveling luggage.  Of course, it does mean that I mention my underwear, or lack of, in the blog as well.  Oh well, you already know too much about me anyway.  Cheers!

PS Starting tomorrow, I'm going to give you a tour of our neighborhood, including our very own LYS - that's right, I found a YARN STORE!!  And, S. wants you to know that I will also be showing you things around our neighborhood that have nothing to do with yarn.  

  

no raspberries, just apples and strawberries

After a book the night before that had raspberry cookies in it....the following conversation. (Pictures from our trip to Independence Hall this week follow...in case you want to skip the baking talk! ^^)

me: So, let's make some peanut butter cookies.

O: No, raspberry.

me: We don't have raspberries.

O: Let's check in the frigerator.  

cue sound of laughter from nana and tata on the phone as we had this conversation a couple of times before actual baking commenced.

me: See, we don't have any raspberries. 

O: We do. 

me: How about peanut butter cookies?

O: Raspberry, we can buy at store. 

me: We'll have to get raspberries later then.  We have strawberries. 

O: Let's check.  Ooooo, apple and strawberry.  

me: Ok, we'll make strawberry cookies. 

O: No, apple AND strawberry. Now we need recipe.

So, we made up cookies, improvising along the way, with little chunks of apple throughout and strawberry jam on top.  Peanut butter cookies will have to wait for another day!

what's a mul so?

O: What' s a mul so?

me: I don't know.

O: In korean, what's a mul so?

me: I don't know, we'll have to look it up.  It does sound Korean. 

O: It's a water buffalo.  Mul so. 

me: That's right, it IS a water buffalo.  How did you get so smart?

O: I love water buffalos, they're my favorite.  

S: Because they give you mozzerella cheese?

yes, we're still in korea

I'm not sure how this happened; I take my camera when we go out, I take pictures, I upload them to my computer when I get back...and then I post nothing but a pile of pancakes.  They were yummy, but they were pancakes for goodness sakes.  (just to warn you, there may be some shocking language coming up - my spacebar is deciding to only work like 30% of the time I hit it, and my backspace button is working at negative speed.  I think my very old computer is trying to tell me something, but i'm not listening...la, la, la...  Also, they are doing some sort of work upstairs  and it sounds like the drill is coming through the ceiling which is awesome for putting a 2 year old down for a nap when he already doesn't want to.  sigh...there may be some swearing, but at least you know why now.)

Anywho...last weekend we went to Taejosan Park which I think is the same park that has the big Buddha statue. We went to a different part of it, and stumbled onto a traditional women's drumming concert.  Very cool indeed. 

We also saw a bunch of guys playing a sport unique to Korea, as far as a I know.  It is a cross between volleyball and soccer - as soon as I can figure out how to get the video off of my phone, I'll upload that here too.

After the concert we decided to walk into town to try to find somewhere to eat before taking a cab back home.  We immediately went the wrong way down the mountain and ended up walking past ricepaddies and gardens and all manner of restaurants and shops.  (Including a place where you could buy stone statues of motorcycles, buddhas, frogs and the largest phallus we have ever seen.  wanna see it?  click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rseiple/StatueStore?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbXyYmf47nvzQE#)

 

It was starting to get dark and we didn't know where we were, so we ended up stopping at a restaurant called Kogi Namu which is basically ""meat tree."  Poetic, huh?  There was a guy making/tending charcoal and the barbeque that some of the people were cooking smelled amazing.  Unfortunately as we looked at the menu, it was also amazing in price.  We held out 30,000 in won (which is about $25) and the waitress fed us for that amount of money.  They gave us free coffee at the end of the meal, and with the help of a 5th grade boy called us a cab.  They were so concerned that we wouldn't have enough money for the cab that they actually offered to give us the meal for free at one point.  All in all, an awesome day.

pancakes

We just finished cleaning up after introducing our new friends to the wonders of pancakes.  When we went to the library last week, I found "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" which is hilarious even when it's in korean.  Our neighbor read the korean, and I explained the O. what each page was about.  Well, our four year old friend has been dying to try pancakes after seeing the picture of a huge one that lands on top of a house in the book and I've been trying to figure out some way to make up for all of the amazing things that our neighbor has done for us.  So, pancake making morning it was!

I used our favorite recipe from here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Buttermilk-Pancakes-II/Detail.aspx

We never have any buttermilk; instead I use enough yogurt and milk and just kind of eyeball it to make faux buttermilk.  I also don't have any of my measuring cups or spoons since they are STILL ON THE BOAT...so we improvised using some plastic kids cups and our soup spoons.  The kids loved mixing and measuring and being chefs for the morning.  The four year old took a couple of bites of the first one, said it was really good, then wanted to go back to playing with cars.  O. and S. each ate a whole pancake and we sent them home with a couple more.  What a nice way to spend the morning.  

how was the zoo?

Friday  night, after work. 

S: So, how was the zoo?

R: Well, it wasn't really a zoo, more like 4 cages in a row.  There were chickens and ducks and some rabbits and peacocks.  

S: Huh.  

R: O. brought his elephant with him too.  Oh yeah, and there were two monkeys.  

O: Remember when I fed the monkeys?

S: You got to feed the monkeys?

R: Oh yeah, remember when you fed the chickens and peacocks too?

O: Remember when I fed the monkeys?

S: We sure aren't in the U.S. anymore if you were allowed to feed the monkeys. 

R: Well, we had to climb over the fence.