Food

One thing we really enjoy is the food in Korea. Not only is it cheap and plentiful, but it's healthy! We've probably been scaring some of you with the strange food we have mentioned but most of it is actually pretty normal. On Sunday we went to Gyereong mountain. After a 4-5 hour hike we were pretty hungry (even though some people shared their lunch at the top with us!) and so we stopped at the bottom for some food.

After going through the usual 'Andrew translating/Tara deciding' we decided on mushroom soup/stew. It was about 10$ a piece, a little pricey, but the mushrooms are really tasty here.

This is what came out:

Starting bottom right we have kimchi. This is the staple Korean food, fermented spicy cabbage. The next column to the left of the kimchi is various types on vegetables from cucumber to mushrooms. A lot of them often look the same but they always taste different. The next column we have more vegetables, a vegetable/seafood/egg type pancake (they are really good!), and some fried fish. Further to the left we have more vegetable dishes, a large salad, and then a bunch more vegetable dishes. I'm sure it would be easier to remember the names than to remember what they all taste like. Oh yeah, and I forgot, the burner was for the mushroom stew which hadn't come out yet. Oh and some rice too. Starving as we were, we barely finished half of this.

All the food from restaurants which is unused is placed into large bins. The bins then supposedly go to feed livestock. So something ends up eating all this stuff that we don't. Anyway, this has been the typical experience we have in Korea. The night before we had a really elaborate meal. There were 4 of us and it all cost under 60$ complete with 4-5 course sushi/fish meal (including several unidentified seafoodish foods, and some live octopus!), tons of side dishes, and drinks.

Since we only have 30 minute dinner breaks, during the week we usually go to a small 'fast-food' restaurant called "Kim-bap-na-ra", which basically means rice and seaweed country. This restaurant serves various noodle and rice dishes. Their specialty is kim-bap which is like a sushi roll with vegetables, egg, and ham/tuna/beef or other meat inside. We usually order a dish called bibimbap. I'm pretty sure this means vegetables and rice. It is really just that: a bowl with rice and raw vegetables with an egg on top. For 3$ it is pretty tasty. It comes with soup and 5-6 vegetable side dishes.

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