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I had a craving for vegetable soup, so today I printed a recipe from the internet and proceeded to try to make it. As I'm writing, it is simmering, which according to the recipe it should do for at least 1 hour 45 minutes. That's almost how long it took me to prepare all the vegetables! Here you can see almost all the vegetables ready to put into the soup (well, I added 2 cubed tomotoes that aren't in that photo)



Most of the above is standard vegetables, but I should explain about a couple of them. While I have seen it for sale in the park, in general I don't think corn is featured in many Korean dishes. I bough three ears of corn at the local shop, and decided to try to steam them. Since I have that huge 24cm pot from the king crab feast, I decided to give it a try. I was impressed - the corn cooked really well, although it was hard to cut off the kernels with the cob so hot. Next time I'll wait for it to cool down first. Another vegetable that I have not seen in many Korean dishes is the green bean. After I washed and cut them, and since the water was already boiling in the pot from the corn, I decided to steam the beans, too! Let me say, that was the most successful. I don't remember if I've ever eaten fresh steamed green beans before, but that is the way to go. I am not a super big fan of the green bean, but the couple of bites I stole were delicious. Of course, in hindsight, I wonder why I even bothered to cook them at all, since they will be boiling for 1 hour 45 minutes in the soup. Anyway, I'm probably 100 years behind the times, but I recommend steaming after my simple experiment. Also, if I could read the Korean instructions, my electric rice cooker can also steam vegetables without the fuss of getting out the big pot.

Next, I needed some tomatoe juice. I put 6 tomatoes in the blender, and voila! I had instant tomatoe juice. All my life I have had an "allergy" to tomatoe juice, because at some point in the long ago past I drank something called V-8 juice and hated it. I mistakenly equate V-8 juice with tomatoe juice, and just wouldn't drink either. Well, the tomatoe juice that I blended up today looked COMPLETELY different from V-8, so I tasted a little bit. It is not at all bad. I think if it were served very cold, I would even like it. But, this batch was not for drinking, it went into the soup.



Side comment - in the USA people will often debate, "is the tomatoe a fruit or vegetable?" Well, in Korea, it seems to be universally thought of as a fruit. Maybe that is why I've seen it sold frequently at juice shops? I remember sometimes Young Stumbler #1 would make fruit drinks in the blender, but I don't recall using tomatoes.

Also, I cheated a little bit. This is not entirely vegetable soup - I added some of the Australian ground beef that I have left over in my freezer. Gotta use that up. And I have seen "vegetable" soup served in a restaurant before that had beef or ground beef included. Speaking of beef, as of Friday I believe USA beef went on sale at some of the local stores again here in Korea. I'll keep an eye out for it next time I need some, but for now I'm well stocked.



There it is above as it begins to boil. The recipe had one unusual step in the cooking process. After 45 minutes of boiling, I'm supposed to take a few cups of the soup, put it in the blender and mix it up, then pour that back into the soup and let the whole thing boil another hour. Sounds fun, I like the blender.

I have no idea how this will taste. All the time I was cooking, I kept thinking over and over again... "I have no idea what I'm doing", but that didn't stop me. Taste report next post.

Edit: The soup turned out wonderful. I want to give credit to an interesting website on which I randomly found this recipe. I made a joke a few posts ago about whether cook books were obsolete or not - well, this website is quite a move in that direction. You search for a recipe, and when you like it you can save it in you personal virtual cookbook. The site is called the Cooking Cache and the recipe I followed is called Basic Vegetable Soup. I even wrote a "review" of the recipe. Enjoy.

Alternate Title: The Stumbler Brings His Chopsticks to Biology Lab

I've been wanted to try some more sushi-style seafood besides tuna, which is very popular here. There is a chain restaurant that specializes in only tuna sushi, but I wanted to branch out. Also, in preparing a list of candidate sightseeing locations for the Stumbling Parents' trip this Fall, I realized that after all this time in Korea I have never visited the famous Noryangjin Fish Market, which surprisingly is pretty close to where I live.

I had a short outing there yesterday, and brought home some seafood to eat. Alas, I forgot to bring my camera to the market. But fortunately, I discovered an excellent article from another Blogger, the FatMan Seoul. He appears to have quit blogging, but his articles are still around. You can see great photos of the fish market here.

While the purpose of my trip was to buy a crab to eat, I ended up bringing back shrimp and various strange see creatures as well. Next time, perhaps with the Stumbling Parents, I'll have to try out the on-site "restaurants" that cook your purchase for you.

Here's the crab being rinsed off prior to boiling. By the way, this was a King Crab, which according to FatMan's article comes from Russia. This was my first time preparing a live crab, so it was a little freaky cutting off the legs of a wiggling critter. But, I guess it is no different from when I fillet fresh fish.



Here is an annotated photograph of the various "other" seafoods, before and after preparation for eating. I did my best to translate the Korean names into English. Some of these might sound more familiar to my American friends as subjects of study back in high school Biology class, not from the local restaurant menu.





Now here are the more normal foods. This is the crab and shrimp (which are probably well hidden under the crab). You can see it was a tight fit for Mr. Crab. My biggest pot is only 24cm diameter, but the crab was much larger. That is why I had to cut off most of the legs to make him fit in the pot.



Here are the cooked shrimp. These little guys were HUGE, and they were not even the largest shrimps available at the market. No, I don't eat Tootsie Roll Pops with my shrimp, I just put that on the plate as a size reference.



Next time, if I can pass up the crabs and shrimps, I really wanted to try some of the many fishes. Although I have in mind a fried fish fillet, not sushi. I'm sure one of those restaurants will oblige me.

Edit: Reviewing the annotated photos, I may have a mistake. I'll have to do more research - I'm sure of the names of the critters, but I may have two of them swapped in one of the photos.

Edit#2: Correction Made. I had two of the seafoods in the bowl under running water swapped around. The annotations are now correct.

I was taking a short walk this morning, and saw the strangest sight. In the park area of the new Hyperion II apartment complex, I noticed something out of place. On close inspection, two of the trees had IV bottles feeding them some kind of tree medicine! Actually, someone had pulled the IV line out of one of the trees, probably a case of arboricide I think.



Here's a close up that's a little more clear:



Lately, I've been disappointed in my cell phone camera, despite the fact that it has 3.2 Megapixel resolution. In all fairness, I think it takes pretty decent photos in good light. Only in low light situations does the quality drop off. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems that the low-light quality drops off a LOT faster for my cell phone camera than my normal digital camera. Part of that reason is the flash, but the cell phone camera also has some kind of "flash" system (it seems more like a light than a flash). But my uneducated opinion is that the fundamental reason is size - there is only so much light you can gather with the very small lens system in a cell phone compared to a larger camera.

Finally remembered to take a photograph of Trevor at his new bar in Mokdong, Beer O'Clock, or as I jokingly call it "O'Beer O'Clock". About 2-1/2 years ago, when my colleague John and I moved here to Seoul, we ran across Trevor and a couple of his friends one night at the corner 7-11 store. They were at a table outside the 7-11 drinking beer, and this was our first time in Korea to see what we jokingly called the "7-11 bar". Since then I've noticed that this is a common thing, especially when the weather is nice. Trevor hails from Canada, but we won't hold that against him. Since that time John and I sat down at the 7-11 bar with Trevor, he has quit his teaching job, married a very nice lady MY and bought a bar that is popular with the foreign population here. You might think that is only Canadians and Americans, but surprisingly I've met folks from all over in just a few trips to his bar. One night alone, we met guests from Korea, America, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa! Quite the international watering hole.



As you can see from his website, he reportedly makes a mean sandwich on Ciabatta bread, although everytime we've eaten any food there it has always been a spicy chicken dish from the restaurant upstairs. The name translates as "Fire Chicken with Cheese". It's so delicious and I don't know any other place to buy it. But next time I'll have to try this signature sandwich.

As I was downloading the photo of Trevor and MY from my cell phone, I ran into this photo from a few weeks ago. I saw this spray bottle at the local mart:



The name of this product translated to English is "CHRIS COATING". Since The Stumbler's name is CHRIS, I was a little surprised. Why do I need coating? All joking aside, I still don't quite know what this product is for. It was in the automotive section, but I don't know why a coating product would be identified as "CHRIS" coating.

Since Wednesday was the 4th of July, a distinctly American holiday not celebrated in Korea, I decided to bring a little bit of the 4th to Seoul. I began by shopping at Costco this week, stocking up on hot dogs (actually Brats - thanks to The Stumbling brother-in-law for introducing them to me), hamburger (Australian), cheese, buns, watermelon, etc. On Tuesday night I downloaded a recipe from the internet on how to cook potato salad (are cookbooks obsolete?). Then I peeled, cut and cooked my potatoes and eggs, putting them in the refrigerator overnight (the recipe said the potatoes needed to be cold). So CH and I had our own very small 4th lunch party. Of course, I cooked too much food, so I'll be having leftovers for a few more days.





When shopping, I saw a small cheap charcoal grill, and was tempted to get it. However, two problems - I didn't see any charcoal for sale, and also I don't know where I could set up a grill since I live in an apartment. Maybe I could go down to the sidewalk or park and cook, but I think that would draw a lot of attention. So, the meats were cooked in the skillet. Also, I added minced garlic to the hamburger meat before cooking. That came out really good - I've heard of doing that before in the USA, so I can't claim that as my own idea.

Since I was shopping at Costco, the meat packages were pretty large, and I need to freeze some of the extra. Which brings me to the final part of the story - the lack of wax paper here in Korea. I asked many people about it, and went to two large stores, and just couldn't find any. At the last store, in broken Korean I explained to the two clerks trying to help me "you put wax paper between the hamburger patties or chicken breasts before you put them in the freezer". Once I established that they didn't have a clue what wax paper was, I told them "okay, I give up. We use wax paper in the USA for this purpose, what do you use in Korea"? They told me that they either use plastic wrap or foil. Well, I remember from my childhood (one of my jobs often was making and freezing hamburger patties) that plastic wrap will stick to the creases in the hamburger patty. But, I thought foil would not have that problem. As I was just beginning to pack up my extra meats for freezing, I realized that foil would be a bad idea. If you need a little help separating the meats, you can't put it in the microwave oven if foil is used as a separating layer. So, for now I just gave up and used ordinary printer paper, which is probably full of bad chemicals. I guess I'll keep on my search for wax paper in Korea.

No No, the Stumbler is not going bald. Rather, Young Stumbler #4 recently removed her long locks of hair...

I visited a place recently that is known for what is called "Live Cafes". I can't think of a single word or phrase to describe this in English. The one I visited was like a large restaurant with all the tables arranged to have a good view of the stage, where singers performed. My impression is that these places are where the older singers perform. I wanted to say "past their prime", but I don't think that would be fair. The singers I saw, and others that I hear about who play at these locales, are still excellent singers. This place is called Mi-Sa-Ri, and I think there were at least a dozen or more of these Live Cafes along the main street. Who knows how many more smaller ones there might me. The first act was a group whose name translates to "Treble Clef". The main singer was quite the performer. His manner and moves were so funny. If I had seen him on a silent film, I would have thought "this guy is only an actor, surely he can't sing", but in fact, he has an amazing voice. I really enjoyed that group, and while they performed some slow ballad songs very well, they excelled at the up-tempo songs.



The "main" act of the evening was 민혜경, or Min Hae Kyung. At first, she came onto the stage and sang two slow ballad songs. Her expression was a little odd, to me it looked like she was very tired. But, far from it. Suddenly the remaining songs showed that she was very full of energy, and was surprisingly fit and active for a singer who is probably a little older than the Stumbler. Her voice was very good, and I really enjoyed her performance. I think after seeing her for the whole show, I conclude that she naturally has a pretty serious expression on her face, and that is why I thought she was tired at the beginning of the show. A great singer with a lot of spunk still in her.