Saturday, January 12, 2008

What's in Anne's fridge today?

Here's some profoundly interesting stuff - what's inside my fridge today. Top shelf from left to right - plain yoghurt, small bowl containing shredded carrots, some kimchi, some tofu, some leftovers including a piece of fish, sauce etc.

2nd shelf - walnuts, coffee, minced garlic, sweet spicy sauce

3rd shelf - parsley, baby bok choi, some kind of veg, ground pork, dumpling wrappers. In the back is a jar of mango pickle and citron tea (it's sort of like marmalade that you add to water)

In the bin - various veg: carrots, green onion, Napa cabbage...



And on the door of my fridge:

Top shelf - eggs, maybe some cucumber, pieces of lemon

2nd shelf - dijon mustard, maple syrup, week old milk, mayo, ketchup and hot sweet sauce

3rd shelf - bottle o' white wine, olives, water, fish oil pills

Bottom shelf - oyster sauce, Patak curry paste, fish sauce and some Krafty parm.





The internet doesn't get any better than this I tells ya.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

I *heart* eggs

Seems like a dorky thing to say, but in the past year or so I've really come to deeply appreciate this simple food. In Canada I was always scared off by the cholesterol mafia but here in Korea eggs are just good eats.

When you buy 'em in the store here, tis not a dozen but a box of 10. Almost all eggs for sale are brown. Often as not they're not refrigerated either. At pretty much any convenience store you can buy a single raw egg to chuck into your instant ramyeon or you can get ready to eat boiled eggs. They always come with tiny packets of salt for dippin'. At the jjimjilbang (a kind of public sauna) I've been going to recently in the hottest room trays of eggs are baked on top of the central heater as people lounge and sweat on the floor below.

As far as eatin 'em, for breakfast I now usually eat one egg (normally scrambled but occasionally in an omelette) with a side of black beans boiled in sweet soy sauce (검은콩조림) some seaweed salad, some sliced cucumber and a piece of cheese. Sounds weird but it is amazingly tasty. Throughout my solo travels around Korea this
past year I pretty much lived off the corner store eggs and triangle kimbap. And my new latest thing is 'gye-ran-bbang'(계란빵) or literally 'egg-bread' . This is not a loaf you pick up at the backery, this is street vendor food and particularly popular in the winter. Basically a tray similar to a muffin tray is filled with a sweet bread batter, on top of which is deposited a single lovely egg. Together the batter and egg are steamed into a lovely and delectable fusion of sweet squishy bread and, well, egg!! There's a vendor right outside my gym and it makes the most delightful post-workout snack, and holds me over till I can get home and throw some dinner together.