Here's to your Health

I was planning on a different topic for this week, but breakfast this morning changed my mind.

I like Korean food. For one thing, it is much more healthy than that chemical soup we call food in the US. I don't care what your religious preference is or even if you are an atheist, you can use whatever name you will, but you can't improve on God. Period. Call it nature, the great force, whatever, what God made is good, what man makes is bad. Pure and simple. American food is a man-made concoction that destroys what God made. It's no wonder Americans are the fattest, sickest people on the planet.

Korean food is, for the most part, natural and unadulterated. I like that.

This morning we had a soup made from the lowly mugwort.

The Koreans love to forage and you will quite often see Korean ladies wherever there are plants growing, picking the makings for their next meal.

Mugwort is one of my favorites. My wife makes a soup by coating the leaves with flower, then dipping them in egg and dropping them in boiling water. She adds some cut up green onion, and in just a matter of minutes a delicious soup is on the table.

Of course, we had the rice and kimche too, which are staples of the Korean diet. We also had some tweji kalbi, or pork ribs, which just added a little more to an already great breakfast.

May seem like a strange breakfast to Americans, but it is healthy, filling, and makes a great start for a great day.

The 3 Car Rule

Newcomers to Korea are often intimidated by the driving habits of the locals. Actually, driving in Korea today is relatively safe. When I first came it was a totally different story.

However, if you are going to drive here, you need to know the rules of the road, Korean style.

Korean law is the same as in the US. We drive on the right side of the road, and most of the traffic laws are the same as at home. It is the interpretation of the laws that leaves somewhat to be desired.

First, there is no real traffic enforcement. Cameras are used to catch speeders, however there is a sign a few hundred meters before the camera warning the motorists to slow down or get caught. So, traffic kind of undulates. It slows down for the cameras and speeds up after.

Traffic lights are rather interesting. Green means go, yellow means speed up, (kind of like in the US), but red only means stop if there is lots of traffic and other cars are at the intersection. Buses and taxis routinely go through red lights, but the average driver does the same. It is a lot better now than it used to be, but the propensity to run the red light has resulted in what Westerners call the three car rule.

It's very simple.

When your light turns green, wait for three cars to run the red light before you enter the intersection.

While this is a bit of an exaggeration, it's not far from reality. On more than one occasion when I have been guilty of pushing it just a little bit and entering the intersection just as the light turned red, only to look in my mirror and see the car several car lengths behind me following me through the intersection--long after the light had turned red.

I was talking to someone about it the other day, and we were waiting at the intersection to walk across the street. When the light turned, sure enough, we counted three cars that went through the red light before it was safe for us to cross.

Once you learn how the rules work, it's really quite easy to drive here. You just have to practice defensive driving and understand that the car beside you may just decide to cut in front of you and make a right turn.

The important thing is to not lose your cool, and don't get too upset. All you will do is to give yourself an ulcer, and the next driver will probably do the same thing.

The $10 Bowl of Rice

Rather expensive, right? Well maybe not. Let me explain.

Rice in Korea today isn't what it was a few years ago. In the past, rice was rice. You ate rice, and you ate other things with rice. You NEVER put soy sauce on your rice. Only foreigners would do such an unsavory thing as to flavor their rice.

But times change.

It has always been the custom during the first full moon after the new year to mix several grains with the rice as part of a special meal. Typically the rice was mixed with four other grains--sorghum, millet, black beans, and sweet beans, and it had to be shared with three other families to ensure good fortune for the coming year. Now, my rice always has beans in it. Big beans, little beans, brown beans, green beens, and even little black somethings that look like they might be bugs, but I'm sure they are seeds of some sort. It's supposed to be more nourishing than plain rice.

I don't complain, because I like rice, and the beans add a little variety to an utherwise bland offering.

But this bowl of rice was different. I watched my wife fixed it, and what she did was to take a fresh crab and scoop out the egg sack along with the liquid and put it in the bowl with the rice. Then she proceeded to mix them all together into a not so tasty-looking brownish mess.

Now I have learned to eat a lot of raw things in the 20 years I have lived in Korea. Raw beef, raw fish, raw octopus, raw squid, raw oysters, and probably a few more I wasn't aware of. I have eaten raw baby crabs (picture) after a few sips on the local brew known as soju. They take the baby crabs, cut them in half and serve them with a spicy sauce in a bowl with the dinner. You use the chopsticks to pick it up, insert the cut part of the shell in your mouth, squish it down with your teeth, and then you kind of suck the raw meat out of the shell. It's actually quite tasty once you get used to it, but the soju does help.

Well this was the first time for raw adult crab. Female no less. It had to be female because the eggs are the real delicacy. But they are expensive. In fact, my wife informed me that these crabs cost 10,000 won, which is just over $10, each. For a home cooked Korean meal, that is a lot of money. Even most restaurant meals are relatively cheap, unless you eat in a Western style tourist restaurant.

After eating the rice, we then picked the rest of the raw meat out from the legs and claws. How did it taste? Actually quite good. It was a little salty, since crabs are a salt-water crustacean, and it obviously had the slight seafood taste that all crabs have, but there was just that undefinable something that made it really good. I enjoyed it, and since February is crab season in Korea, we had it several times.

As an aside, the Korean typically eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and supper. The meal consists mainly of a soup, some rice, and side dishes which consist of various vegetables with some meat thrown in every so often. Trust me, you haven't lived until you have had hot spicy soup, rice, and kimche (a pickled, spicy cabage dish) for breakfast. It really starts the day off with a bang.

The Korean ExPat

Welcome to my blog.

I had a blog several years ago about living in Korea, but the infamous "Google Slap" killed it. I just never started it up again, so the past couple of years have gone unrecorded.

I've been encouraged to start blogging again, so here it is with a little different twist.

I have lived in Korea almost continuously since 1987 so I have seen a lot of change in the country, both for the good and the bad. Through this chronicle I will talk about daily experiences, good and bad, of life in a country that is very different than my native America.

People ask me why I chose to live in Korea, and I have to honestly answer "I don't know." Korea was never one of the places I had a desire to visit, in fact, other than the Korean war I knew absolutely nothing about Korea.

I was in Saudi Arabia on another contact, and when it came time to return to the US I decided to visit my sister who was in Korea with her husband. I got here, liked it, and stayed. Perhaps when you read this blog, you will begin to understand why. It's not something I can really put into words, but the fact is, I really like Korea, I enjoy living here, and I plan to stay.

Your questions and comments are welcome and encouraged. I will try to answer questions in future posts, but no guarantees.