Korean Food Part One

Nothing can really prepare you for the amount of rice Koreans eat. It’s hard to imagine and practice eating the same thing three times a day, in large amounts. And a plain thing at that. Even in Kenya they had a small variety of staple food, and didn't eat the same thing for each meal. But in Korea, it's rice and kimchi, morning, noon, and night.

When I was staying with Heather the first two weeks I was here, I was eating breakfast and supper at her place, and lunch at work. They tried to accomodate me as much as possible, and not give me the same thing all the time, which was nice. But I was still overriced.

And they still love the stuff. If you ask Korean kids what their favorite foods are: "Rice!" "Kimchi!" Blech.

The Korean way of meals is to eat your own bowl of rice, and share kimchi and numerous other side dishes, which are placed in the center of the table. In restaurants, you typically get a bowl of soup, and often at home soup is part of the meal, too. Having just two or three parts of the meal like we do is kind of boring for them, I think. Maybe it's because they have to eat all that rice. It all balances out.

Speaking of balancing, I have no idea how the hell all these Koreans aren't wicked fat. If each meal consists of one bowl of rice, which measures about a cup, that's six servings of carbs per day, just with that one thing. They also eat potatoes, noodles, and baked goods. I've never had so much trouble keeping a decent diet. I guess everyone gets enough exercise in these parts.

Evidently the only spice in Korea besides salt is red pepper. If you look at this link, you'll notice the first four spices are hot or red pepper, and most of the others are just different versions of salt:

http://koreanfood.about.com/od/spices/a/CookingSpices.htm

I freaking hate red pepper right now. Even though I'm at my own apartment now and I mostly buy food that I would buy in the US, I still eat too much of that stupid stuff. At work, they have a service that sends a bowl of rice and six side dishes to work, and lately three or four of them have been laden with red pepper sauce. So I have a little trouble with work food. I've been lucky enough to have a light schedule at work so far, so I've been coming home and eating a meal between my first set of classes and when the food comes to work. Starting next week, though, I will be in class almost straight from 1:30 to 9, and won't have time to come home for a snack. I'll have to bring something with me, I guess, because I can't go from 1 to 6 without food. I'd die.

The funny thing about red pepper is that Koreans think their food is too spicy for Westerners. Countless times Heather or her family has warned me about the food I'm about to eat, and then I start in and have a hearty inside laugh about how not spicy it is.

There is some occurence of curry around here, though. Heather's mom made me rice (really?) with curried chicken and vegetables a couple times, which was wicked good. I also get bowls of ready-to-eat vegetable curry soup at the grocery store.