Food

A lot of things in Korea revolve around food, including for me, this past weekend. As an amateur foodie, I love to cook and try new foods. While I haven't posted much about food on here (except for the ode to the hamburger), I have been indulging in some delicious Korean food. During the week, I generally cook lunch/dinner for myself to save money and eat healthier (plus, cooking is relaxing and a bit like therapy for me). Barely a day goes by when I am not gifted with some delicious morsel of food from a student, be it kul (clementines), dakk (rice cakes), or yogurt. However, galbi (barbecued meat), bimbimbap (rice with mixed vegetables and gochujang-red pepper paste), mandu (dumplings), and soondubu jjiage (soft tofu soup) are generally in my weekend rotation.

Soondubu jjigae, my favorite Korean food.

I was finally able to get to the monthly Seoul Vegan Potluck this weekend with Allie. After having a decidedly un-vegan breakfast, I got to making a fiesta quinoa salad full of fresh veggies. While it was missing avocados (which are ridiculously expensive here) and the beans might not have been cooked at all (I don't eat them...), the flavours were really nice and everyone ate it! I also sampled some truly amazing vegan food. I love meat, and will never go vegetarian or vegan, but good food is good food. I had a delicious veggie burger with homemade bread and onion jam, vegan queso, tofu buffalo wings, and cookies!

My fiesta quinoa salad at the potluck.

After the potluck, my friend Jacque and I headed to High Street Market, where you can get foreign food. I splurged on a bag of Lay's Salt & Vinegar Chips. At 7,000 won for 5 servings, you best believe I am slowly making my way through them. We rounded out the food marathon with bubble tea and ginormous freshly baked cookies (yummmmm). I headed home to fall into a food induced coma (or maybe it was staying out until 5:00 AM at the noraebong....who knows...).

Yup, $7 for chips. They are my favorite though...

The food adventures continued the next day with a Korean lunch of tofu soup and haemul pajeon (seafood pizza/pancake type thing), tacos for dinner, and FROYO (in my best valley girl accent) for dessert. Oh froyo, how I have missed you. Lets just say I'm really glad I joined a gym and can work off some of the gluttony of the weekend. But as the lovely Ms. Shepherd would say, "Marie and I ate our way through Korea". I'm only now understanding how true that statement can be.

xo Julie