A hearty hello to everyone reading this! As I sure you can surmise, this newest entry is yet another recounting of a Korean dinner filled with hilarity and well, unappetizing cuisine.
I do feel it necessary to make a quite disclaimer that I'm sure I've made in past entries. A) I'm a picky eater even in Canada (but I'm getting better). B) not all of my eating experiences are misadventures, on the contrary, most of them are ordinary and/or delicious. It just so happens that the bad ones are way more entertaining to recount. Case in point, my Pig Skin Experience. Another thing I can add to my list now is Chicken Neck. mmmmm. To be honest the meat off a chicken neck tastes like regular dark meat, it's the fact that you're nibbling it off what quite obviously is a neck...it's kinda freaky. But I digress.
This story takes place at yet another teacher dinner, this time sponsored by the parents. I figure that no matter what is placed in front of me, I at least have the rice and soup to fall back on. Well, as you will see, I was terribly mistaken.
My coteacher and I walk into the dinner late (fashionably of course. She happened to be avoiding going because teachers generally don't like socializing with the parents. It's that whole "My child is perfect so if they fuck up in life it's obviously your fault" thing. It exists everywhere). We sit down and I survey the spread of food on the table. My stomach immediate sinks and my brain says "oh. Dear. God. My worst nightmare". Spread out over the table is an elaborate assortment of seafood - all of it raw. Those who know me know that I despise seafood even when it's cooked. I scan the table again for SOMETHING that I can eat so as to remain as inconspicuous as possible (the Koreans watch you like a hawk to see if you're eating enough food, it can be endearing, but in this case it was foiling my plan). Across the table I spy one lonely dish of broccoli. YES! victory. I steal the broccoli and spend my time making it seem like I'm eating a lot.
Let me describe it in another way...I opted to eat KIMCHI instead of the other foods available. Okay, I'll admit it, sometimes I like kimchi. There, I said it. Luckily for me the kimchi at this meal was pretty good.
I watch all the other teachers and parents enjoying their raw food and think about how I wish I could just dig in, but I can't. I don't know, I guess I'm a visual eater, because seeing these various shellfish and clammed creatures un-housed and piled on plates in mucous-y blobs doesn't get my mouth watering.
There was one plate that had pieces of some kind of squid on it. When a lady reached to pick up a morsel with her chopsticks I noticed that these little guys were still moving. Instead of horror at the prospect of eating something still alive, I immediately took pity on this poor creature who was minutes away from death by mastication. What a way to go. And then, I thought, what if a rigourous chewing didn't do him in? Then he would have to contend with a stomach acid bath. Talk about rubbing salt into a wound. I shook my head and looked away.
Anyway, I patiently waited for the rice and soup so I could fill my belly. The server brings it out and what is the soup? Not the delicious soy bean soup I was expecting, but a watery bowl of more clams! AWESOME!
My one saving grace was the plate of cooked eel they brought with the rice. Eel, when cooked, is tasty...I recommend it.
Naturally, I couldn't hide my not eating anything for very long. After being here for 7 months, I am now OK with telling Koreans when I don't like something. Instead of a look of horror and disgust, I was given a look of pity which read : Poor foreigner girl. She can't handle our Korean food, what a pathetic existence she must lead.
I may have exaggerated there.
There you have it, another awesome dining experience. Thankfully I have entered a stage in my relationship with my coteacher where I can be my silly self and she's a bit silly too - so we talked and joked the whole time, giggling to ourselves quietly in our secret language called English.
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1 comment:
After reading that, I suppose you wouldn't exactly mind a Tim Hortons or two in that neck of the woods, eh? I did read about those two cup-winner girls, who had actually concocted a plan to SHARE the SUV... until their parents got involved, each set wanting the SUV entirely to themselves. Leave it to the grown-ups to set a good example. I don't know how it all panned out, but I think it'd be an incredible stroke of irony for the vicious victor to get into some kind of terrible SUV pile-up the next day.
I'm really intrigued by this raw seafood feast that your table was eating. What kinds of seafood were they eating raw? Did they dip it in any kind of sauce? In Chinese cuisine, "steamboat" is common, which is just like fondue but with raw meats and a giant pot of soup in which to cook the meat. I've never heard of an entirely raw seafood meal before -- dunno how much of it even I could handle (and I've been known to nibble on my share of chicken neck from time to time).
Eat safe and be well. We miss you.
Jon
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