CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Caveat: Chupe de pescado al estilo alasquense

I made chupe de pescado. This is a South American dish, a type of fish chowder. I had it frequently in Chile, and later I had it often at a Peruvian restaurant in Newport Beach, California, when I was working there one year. So I made some. I thought it came out pretty good, given my own handicapped taste-buds.

Here is the picture after everything is made.

Here is my serving for dinner.

Arthur pronounced it "acceptable" - which is praise, in his language. Wayne liked it too.

Here is my recipe, adapted from various found online.

Mi receta de chupe de pescado blanco al estilo alasquense:

INGREDIENTES PRINCIPALES

6 patatas
2 cebollas picadas
1 zanahoria rallada
1 cucharada de pimentón dulce
½ cucharadita de orégano
4 cucharadas de mantequilla
2 tazas de pan rallado
3 tazas de leche o leche y crema mixtas
1 taza y media de caldo
ajo picado al gusto
sal al gusto
pimienta al gusto
½ kg de pez blanco (eg hipogloso)

PREPARACIÓN DE LA RECETA

En primer lugar, pelamos y cortamos las 6 patatas en trozos y las ponemos a cocer en agua salada. Reservamos.

Salteamos en mantequilla las cebollas en un cazo con el pimentón dulce, orégano y zanahoria hasta que las cebollas estén tiernas.

Añadimos 2 tazas de pan rallado, las tres tazas de leche, la taza y media de caldo y agua a partes iguales, sal y pimienta al gusto, el pescado.

Añadimos también las patatas, tapamos todo y lo dejamos a fuego lento hasta que el pescado esté hecho, aproximadamente de 5 a 8 minutos.

El chupe deberá quedar tan espeso como una bechamel, pero si no nos gusta tan espeso, podemos añadir un poco más de leche.

[daily log: walking, 3km; tromping, 100m]

Caveat: Blackberry Pie

I got one full day off before the slew of appointments resume with Arthur.

So we took a walk up to the tree farm. There were a lot of ripe blackberries along the road, so he and I picked berries, and brought them back to Juli's house. Juli made a blackberry pie.

Blackberries remind me of my childhood, since my home in northern California was surrounded, as Juli's home is, with abundant wild blackberries.

My body is still sore and achey from my storage unit adventures last week.

[daily log: walking, 4km]

Caveat: Valdivian Nostalgia

When I lived in Valdivia, Chile, in 1994, I stayed at a guesthouse (casa de huéspedes) while I took classes at the Universidad Austral, which was a kilometer walk across the river on the island. That was a very cold several months, living there, because it was the Chilean winter, August-October, and the Chileans don't believe in any kind of central heating, and the guesthouse wouldn't allow electric space-heaters in our rooms.

It only snowed once, but it was always hovering right above freezing, with neverending drizzle and rain and overcast skies. So I would huddle in the guesthouse's dining room, by a wood stove there, when it was lit. The landlady's cooking was a unique style in my experience. She was German-Chilean, but several generations removed from Germany. I have no idea what to call her cuisine. What was memorable were the single-dish meals she served, made of pasta or rice, always with some kind of tomato-based sauce, sometimes with meat, generally with beans, and always with a fried egg or two on top, which I would mash into the concoction before eating. It wasn't particularly delicious, but it was always reliable and filling. I don't know if this cooking style is common in Chilean homes, or even, specifically, southern Chilean or German-Chilean traditions, or if it was more idiosyncratic to that guesthouse's landlady. I did experience something similar at a hotel restaurant in Punta Arenas, but with ñoquis (gnocchi), possibly due to the strong Argentinian influence down there (Punta Arenas is only connected to the rest of Chile by road via Argentina), as I think of ñoquis as being very characteristically Argentinian.

Sometimes, in the years since, I have made various half-hearted efforts to recreate what I think of "Chilean tomato glop with egg". The other day, I can proudly say, I came as close as I ever have to recreating the look and feel of the original. I was finishing off a batch of rice, using a fresh tomato and onion and some leftover chopped ham, I added in half a can of Mexican canned beans (yes, you can buy that in Korea) and two poached eggs. I can't comment on the taste aspect, given the radical transformations my taste-buds have undergone in the intervening years. But anyway, I was happy with having accomplished it. So I took a picture.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: Waar Wacht Je Op?

Last night in my PM1-M cohort CC class (cloze listening of pop songs), I felt like I was living in some kind of Lord of the Flies rendition of hagwon life.

You see, this one boy, Eric, was opening a packet of snack ramen. The kids eat the dried ramen noodles dry, sort like potato chips, with the flavor packets opened and sprinkled over the broken up noodles. What they do is they open the packet enough to get out the flavor packet, which they extract and add into the noodle package. Then they hold the noodle package closed and mash up the noodles inside, so they're all tiny fragments and the flavor granules are distributed. It's like do-it-yourself Doritos, maybe.

So Eric had done this work. And then he tore open his now mashed up and flavored pack of dried noodles eagerly, with a plan to eat his snack. Normally I'm pretty tolerant of kids eating snacks in my class, despite an official rule against it, because I know the whole business of attending night class for elementary age students means sometimes they are hungry and haven't eaten since an after-school snack or something.

The other boys (the cohort is currently all boys, just by luck of the draw) were eyeing his snack jealously and hungrily. Unfortunately, Eric opened his packet too aggressively. The noodle fragments, stained orange by the spicy flavor granules, flew all over the room, landing on desks, chairs, floor, and even in Eric's hair. The boy sat with a stunned and despondant look on his face.

But the worst was when the other boys, seeing their chance, swooped in and began grabbing up all the scattered noodle fragments. They didn't seem to care that the bits were on the floor, chairs and desks. They ate them. In less than a minute, most of the bits were gone. Even the ones in Eric's hair. While Eric still just sat, looking stunned.

I said, "Really? Really? You guys are eating off the floor? It's like a pack of dogs!"

In fact, I wasn't that scandalized - I could barely contain my laughing. But given my in loco parentis role (more loco than parentis, perhaps), I felt obligated to be upset by the performance.

Anyway, we got it cleaned up. It took up about half the class time, though. I guess the boys were not annoyed by this.

---

Quite unrelatedly, what I'm listening to right now.

Sticks & Big2, "Waar Wacht Je Op?!" Don't ask me why. I just listen to weird things, sometimes. Why not a little bit of Dutch hiphop?

Lyrics.

[Intro: Sticks]
Waar wacht je op?
Waar wacht je op?
Waar wacht je op?
Sticky Steez!

[Intro: Big2]
Hé Sticks, go get 'em!

[Verse 1: Sticks]
Je krijgt deez nuts, Dries van Noten
Breek het open, pistachenoten
Een piece of mind en een piece van mij
Voor de fun en fuck de police d'r bij
Nou als ik niet beweeg, breng ik niets te weeg
En wat zijn mijn woorden waard als ik ze niet meer weeg?
Ik deel mijn lief en leed, en het gaat fucking flex
Maar men ziet liever leed en beef-dvd's
Ik ga next-level, van rap battles naar HMH
Ga aan de kant Jett Rebel en Chef's Special
En Kensington en Go Back To The Zoo
En hoe lauwer de beat, hoe gekker je doet
Ambitie maakt dat ik move met m'n shit
Ambitie maakt dat jij grooved op die shit
'T is hard werken om je vrijheid te behouden
Maar de up-side: het kan allemaal van jou zijn
Nou waar wacht je op?

[Chorus: Sticks & Big2]
Get loose met je poes, als ik dit niet doe zijn we helemaal floes
(Waar wacht je op?)
En iedereen doet mee, met de Sticky Steez en de Biggie 2
(Waar wacht je op?)
Geen plan, gewoon gaan, de leeuw laat je echt niet in zijn hempie staan (Waar wacht je op?)
En de beat goes on (Lachen toch?) En de beat goes, on
(Waar wacht je op?)
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou...
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou...
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt

[Verse 2: Sticks]
Nou als het moet, bos ik op bam bam ritmes
Chaka Demus & en de Pliers in een 5-0-1 levi's
Met een witte Air Max, met een pipi' achter mijn oor
Geeft niks, het is the latest greatest
Nadenken is de vijand van vrijheid
Check deze Twan, volgens mij zijn we highlights
Daar moest je bij zijn, anderen willen dat me zijn maar zijn te klein als Royce da 5'9
Voor de clubs ben ik te nuchter, lever de track af, breek de tent af
Zoek rust midden in de drukte
Heel het leven is een trip beter stap je in (Waar wacht je op?)
Record wat, breng het uit de dag erop
Deel de hele taart uit, zet er slagroom op
Er is genoeg voor ieder, er is genoeg voor ieder
Waar wacht je op?

[Chorus: Sticks & Big2]
Get loose met je poes, als ik dit niet doe zijn we helemaal floes
(Waar wacht je op?)
En iedereen doet mee, met de Sticky Steez en de Biggie 2
(Waar wacht je op?)
Geen plan, gewoon gaan, de leeuw laat je echt niet in zijn hempie staan (Waar wacht je op?)
En de beat goes on (Lachen toch?) En de beat goes, on
(Waar wacht je op?)
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou...
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt
Het maakt niet uit wie wat zegt, het is aan jou...

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Always a First Time for Something

If you have watched this blog over many long years, you know I happen to like pea soup.

My mother likes to cook sometimes, so when she asked if there was anything I was craving, I told her I hadn't made pea soup for myself in a long time. I think I just got lazy, after the cancer thing dulled my tasting ability, and I just haven't bothered in recent years, since everything I make that I crave ends up being a bit disappointing.

Anyway, we bought the ingredients and she made pea soup. In fact, I already knew it wasn't something she commonly made - I grew to like it after I was living on my own - it's not anything like a "nostalgia" dish from my childhood. But I was quite surprised when she announced, after we were eating it for dinner, that it was the first time she'd made pea soup. 

It was a good pea soup, I think.

[daily log: walking, 2.5km]

Caveat: Stanville

Yesterday morning, I went into Seoul. I travel so rarely, these days, even to just go into the city for a half-day - it was the first time I've left Ilsan since returning from my North American odyssey last November. 

My friend Peter is on the Peninsula, now that he's a grad student specializing in Korean Studies, he has reasons to come back to visit, and apparently he managed to make it quite affordable. We met in that area around Dongdaemun that I have always called "Russiatown" - it's one of my favorite neighborhoods in Seoul, with much of the same "international" or cosmopolitan feel of, say Itaewon, but without the pretentiousness or gentrification, and fewer "fratboy" tourists, as the US soldier-on-leave crowd in Itaewon always seems to come off as. Nevertheless, I would say that "Russiatown" seems a bit gentrified, lately, too.

Anyway, my old standby, the Russian restaurant of the ever-changing name but fairly constant menu, was still there. Peter pointed out that it was in Russiatown in 2009 that we met for the very first time. I don't think I blogged that particular trip to Russiatown - I went rather frequently back in that era. Anyway, Peter and I had lunch at the restaurant, and then met a friend of his (colleague also enrolled in the same graduate program at Johns Hopkins, apparently) and went to Hongdae briefly, where I got to visit the Korean Language hagwon where Peter studied last year some. Peter is trying to persuade me, I think, to get more serious about my own regrettable progress in the language. Certainly I feel jealous of his amazing competence in the language relative to my own.

Then I went to work, taking the Gyeongui line subway route that follows the old railroad mainline to Ilsan Station. The line is several years old, now, but it still doesn't form part of my default mental map of how to get around.

Here are some pictures. I think Russiatown looks much more prosperous than it did 5 or 8 years ago. Still, there is much Cyrillic signage - not just in Russian but other central Asian languages typically written in Cyrillic, such as Mongolian, Uzbek, Kazakh and others. As I chatted with Peter, I coined a new name for the neighborhood: "Stanville." This reflects the Central Asian character as opposed to strictly Russian (all the "-stans" of the former Soviet sphere).

Борщ и Голубцы (borscht and cabbage rolls).

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Oats!

I have had cravings for oatmeal (just the regular old oatmeal in a quaker oats can, or those instant oatmeal packets that abound in the US) for a very long time. But unlike almost any other product imaginable, I have had difficulty running across it. I don't even recall seeing it at Costco or at the foreigner's grocery at Itaewon. I really want some variety in my porridgey foods, rather than just Korean 죽 and 누룽지, which are both rice-based. 

Finally, the other day at HomePlus, I noticed this on the TESCO "foreign foods" shelf (the British TESCO is an international partner for HomePlus): "Scottish Oats" (at right).

I bought some, and had some. I am happy for the variety. 

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Olive Therapy

As many know, I still have some issues eating "normally." Aside from the fact that I don't have much sense of taste, which means that food just isn't as interesting as it used to be, I also have some issues around the fact that major portions of my tongue lack a sense of touch - it's permanently numb, like it will get after a visit to the dentist when local anaesthetic is used.

This creates eating problems because it's surprising the extent to which we rely on our tongues to manipulate food in our mouths during the process of chewing and moving the food to the back of our mouths in preparation to swallow it. I can't always do this as easily or as successfully as I might hope. That is why my favorite foods now are the sort of soupy or sloppy things, pasta with sauces, soups, porridge, etc., that are "swallowable" without too much tongue movement. 

A month or so ago I bought a can of olives, because I like to chop them into my pastas sometimes. But I made a mistake - they were unpitted olives. I nearly threw them out, but in fact, I do like olives, and I can still enjoy the bitter/salty flavor of them somewhat. 

So I decided to try eating them. 

Things with seeds or pits or bones that end up in my mouth are things I normally dread - if you think about the gymnastics you do with your tongue when you find a watermelon seed or a fish bone, you will understand what I mean.

But sitting at home, I would nibble around my olives and eventually I got brave and, looking at it as a kind of physical therapy, I would try to eat the olive and spit out the pit, in the "normal" way. 

It's kind of like forcing myself to do exercise that is unpleasant but hopefully good for me. I have this idea that I can build up my tongue coordination through diligence and practice. 

So I sit at my desk in the late mornings, with a bowl of unpitted olives, and exercise my tongue. 

It gets sore, on the tip, where there are still some nerve endings (which is what the doctors so miraculously saved, and which is why I am not handicapped in talking, for the most part, despite the loss of nerves in most of my tongue). 

[daily log: chewing, 6 olives]

Caveat: Soup for Nostalgia's Sake on the Field of Justice

I don't get very ambitious with my cooking, much, these days.

Mostly, every time I buy some food item or attempt to cook some food item, out of craving or whatever, I am inevitably disappointed. Eating just isn't fun - not even the the easiest-to-eat foods, like omelettes or noodle soup (국수) or rice porridge (죽) - at best, they are utilitarian and serve the purpose of providing me with sustenance with minimal discomfort. 

So mostly I just don't bother. I have my instant soup mixes and my pasta and my eggs, and I prepare them always the same way and with the least effort required, because putting in extra effort or attention to detail offers no noticeable improvement in quality-of-experience. 

Last night I was feeling nostalgic. I had run into a former student, Eunjin, on the street the other day, and she shocked me by running up to me and hugging me (note that Koreans are not, normally, notable for effusiveness in this manner). She is in high school now but she had always been a remarkably motivated student in the years I taught her. She told me she hated English now because of how it is taught in high school, but she missed my classes. That was flattering, I guess.

Then my former coworker Ken stopped by work last night. He's left the English teaching biz and is working for Samsung in some businessman-type functionality. This is probably good for his bank account and his ambition, but may be contrary to his core inclinations. Anyway, although I don't think of him that often, in seeing him I realized I missed the constant dialogue and banter I'd had with him during our years working together.

Anyway, I was feeling nostalgic, and when I get nostalgic, I sometimes find myself cooking, for no good reason whatsoever. 

I made pea soup. It wasn't exceptionally fun to eat, but the act of making it was enjoyable, if that makes any sense. 

---

What I'm listening to right now.

Philip Glass, "Satyagraha (Act 1, Tolstoy)."

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: Like a Salmon

Trying to understand philosophy is like trying to hold a salmon. See below... 

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Birria

Sometimes I get weird food cravings. I have moved in the direction of ignoring them, because every time I go to satisfy one of those food cravings, I'm deeply disappointed. My food memory is intact, but my actual taste and "mouth-feel" mechanisms are essentially permanently rearranged since my surgery. 

Today, for whatever strange reason, I found myself remembering and craving the birria that I used to buy as a lunchtime snack at one of the puestos on San Cosme (in front of the subway station) where I lived in Mexico City. I suppose that birria (a kind of goat-meat soup or stew - which it is depends on consistency, and the kind I got was always more brothy than stewy) would be hard to come by in Korea in any event. So it's just as well that I mostly let these cravings just pass by. But it's a fond memory in any event.

Here's to birria - the picture is a random picture found online that matches what I used to get pretty closely.

It's strange...  the random stuff that pops into one's mind.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Caveat: Spinach and Smog

I really have this desire to eat more healthily than I do. In trying to do this, however, I am challenged by my constant frustration around eating, which constantly leads me down a path of least resistance, seeking out "comfort" foods (which nowadays mostly means foods easy-to-eat: pasta with some mild sauce, bland rice concoctions, etc.).

Today, inspired by a mound of spinach at the supermarket, I decided to try something, and made some quite passable blanched spinach with mushrooms and a few bits of zucchini and onion sauteed with garlic and butter. A whole bag of spinach wilts and reduces quickly to a single bowl full. I've always rather liked spinach, but previous recent efforts were frustrated by textural issues. This time, by de-stemming all the leaves and chopping it slightly and letting it wilt more, I achieved a squishy but still mostly fresh texture that was quite manageable.

Well, anyway. The days are warming, somewhat, from the depths of winter. They have been accompanied by the terrible smoggy haze I associate with early spring in Seoul, which is probably due to a combination of the fact that winds prevail from the west this time of year with the fact that yucky-smoggy China happens to sit directly to the west. The sun in the afternoon sky was just a pale, glowing, peach-colored disk.

What I'm listening to right now.

Warpaint, "Love Is To Die."

[daily log: walking, 2 km]

Caveat: 선날떡국

Yesterday, I spent the Lunar New Year's day alone. I wasn't invited anywhere and wasn't in the mood to go out exploring on my own - I think I've got a relapse of that cold I had through much of the first half of January.

But I didn't feel depressed or left out. I was happy to spend some quality time with my own soul.

The Korean tradition is that you should eat a bowl of 떡국 [tteok-guk = rice cake soup]. I decided to fulfill this tradition even though I was alone. I had on hand some 사골곰탕 [sa-gol-gom-tang = bone marrow broth] which several of my Korean acquaintances are always insisting I should be consuming for my "health" (in the broadly interpreted, pre-medical conception common in Korean discourse) and of course I always have the plain white 떡 [tteok = rice cakes] on hand because their soft and can add calories and bulk to a broth or soup. So I put the two together with some custom seasoning of my own and some chopped onion and parsley, and voila, rice cake soup al gringazo.

Eating this on New Year's morning is supposed to give good luck for the year.

---

What I'm listening to right now.

Erasure, "Gaudete." This is technically a kind of Christmas Carol, or sacred song from the Advent calendar which fell on December 15 last month for 2013. So posting it now is a bit late. I suppose Asian Lunar New Year is a kind of secular Advent, meant to celebrate the same Winter principles of renewal and beginnings.

Lyrics.

Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete!

Tempus adest gratiæ
Hoc quod optabamus,
Carmina lætitiæ
Devote reddamus.

Deus homo factus est
Natura mirante,
Mundus renovatus est
A Christo regnante.

Ezechielis porta
Clausa pertransitur,
Unde lux est orta
Salus invenitur.

Ergo nostra contio
Psallat iam in lustro;
Benedicat Domino:
Salus Regi nostro.

[daily log (11 pm): like a log]

Caveat: Capsaicin Resistance Training

I really miss eating spicy foods so much. And I have felt frustrated with the slow pace of my recovery. I think sparing spicy foods completely for so long has meant that I've lost my resistance, partly, so lately in an effort to somewhat "force" my recovery, I've been sprinkling a very light dose of red pepper on my food sometimes - trying to build up a resistance. Last month I made some pre-packaged instant curry and tried to eat it and it was a kind of painful disaster - even trying the "mildest" flavor available in the store. On Sunday, I did the same thing and it was tolerable. So that's a kind of food victory. If I can work up to the "medium" flavor of the packaged curries, I might brave a trip to my favorite Indian restaurant a block from here, and have "real" curry - as opposed to the rather lousy Korean-style you can get in the curries from the supermarket.

It's frustrating craving things you can't have.

Tomorrow morning, I go to the hospital for outpatient CT scan and such. I'll get injected, detected, inspected and hopefully rejected - to paraphrase and repurpose Arlo Guthrie's famous meditation on the draft.

It's a follow-up appointment, at the 4 month-iversary of the end of my radiation treatment. I'm past the bad cold I had for almost a month, and I've been feeling healthier, but I still have some weird paranoia about my overall health. I've always suffered from what I call meta-hypochondria - which is to say, I worry constantly that I'm sick in some way but then always and inevitably dismiss those worries as hypochondria. The problem is that sometimes those worries are in fact legitimate, such as my eventual cancer diagnosis last June. So meta-hypochondria is just as bad a condition as hypochondria, probably.

So I feel worried about what they might find. And then I feel dismissive about it. Or both, at the same time: cognitive dissonance. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Words for Korean Vocabulary
순한맛 = mild flavor
/ 순하다 = to be mild, to be bland, to be smooth, to be tame, to be docile

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Perhaps too soon for svekolny or borsht

Before my mom leaves on Thursday, I really wanted to go to my favorite restaurant and eat real food, instead of just eating around the edges of real food at various places which is my current capacity. So we went to Seoul and did some souvenir and gift shopping and also visited my favorite restaurant, which is the Russian place that keeps changing its name near Dongdaemun.

We ordered lots of things. I was more-or-less able to eat some svekolny and borsht, but having some dumpling and kefir where perhaps pushing a step too far. The biggest obstacle: my mouth's sensitivity to acidity and spice in foods is less than it has been, but it's still a big problem.

Anyway, we had some Russian food which was very delicious, we bought some books and other things in and around Insa-dong, and we walked around some.

Tomorrow I work, so today was really my last chance to be "tour guide" for my mom and Jacob. They'll fly back to Queensland on Thursday.

Here's a picture at the Russian restaurant.

[daily log: walking, 2.5 km]

Caveat: Never trade a question for an answer

There is an episode of a webcomic called "mused" (by a Greek guy named Kostas Kiriakakis) that I liked, that is far too long to reproduce (copy), here. I recommend this episode, entitled "A Day at the Park." It's about questions vs answers.

Caveat: Two Months Cancer-Free

Two months ago on the 4th of July I had my tumor removed. Piece-of-cake.

This radiation thing, on the other hand... eheh.

But that's the deal-with-devil I made, I think. 화이팅.

---

Last week I made a giant batch of pea soup - before what was left of my ability to taste food disappeared over the weekend. I finished off the leftover pea soup for lunch today with some cubes of ham cut into it, and imagined it was delicious.

I just make myself eat, because I know there's a lot of concern about patients losing weight during radiation, and especially because of the sores in my mouth potentially disrupting my ability to eat solids. So far, I just kind of buckle down and push the food in, chew, swallow. It's doable.

Talking is just as difficult as eating, now - in that respect, this is quite different from my experience last month with recovering from the tongue-reconstruction surgery, where I recovered the ability to talk almost effortlessly and painlessly, but re-learning to eat and swallow were quite challenging. Now, it's just that everything is so sore - tongue, inside of cheeks, gums, inside of lips, throat, etc. - that eating and talking are equally difficult and unpleasant. But, as I said, it's doable.

I took a longish nap, after lunch. I guess I needed it. I always get hit really hard by tiredness around noon on my radiation days. The result was that I didn't go to work. I guess I could go now, but I had a talk with Curt on Monday about my not going in so much due to how I've been feeling about the treatment, and he was OK about it.

I'm not really sure I have the right mental constitution to handle having an entirely "optional" job, though. It's easy to say, "Oh, I'm just not up for it."

But then... my friend Seungbae wants to meet this evening for dinner, because it would be his chance to say goodbye to Andrew before Andrew goes back to the US at the end of this week. So that's another reason to skip work. But I have that same guilty feeling skipping work and going to see a friend in Seoul as I used to get being "sick" from school as kid when in fact I was taking a mental health day of some kind or another.

I'm not sure I'm really going anywhere with all of this. Just rambling on, letting everyone know where things are at.

Document everything! ...My life of obfuscating, radical transparency!

Eheh. Whatever.

---

What I'm listening to right now.

Parov Stelar, "If I Had You."

---

Here is a picture of magpie (까치) I tried to capture while walking back from the hospital this morning through the park, with only mediocre success.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Right Across the Street

Right across the street from my new (and very former) apartment building is a rather authentic Italian restaurant - the menu is in Italian and Korean with barely a handful of English on it anywhere.

Back when I lived here before, the same location was some kind of mass-seafood joint that was open 24 hours, but during the intervening years between 2009 and now, the neighborhood has upgraded quite a few establishments.

So I've been meaning to eat there. This evening, Andrew and Hollye and I went there and had one funghi and one rucola pizza, and a largish seafood salad thing. Here is a picture.

The place has a slightly cheesy decor - which, if anything, makes it seem more Italian in some ways. On the bench seat behind us, there were some cushions and some teddybears. Andrew befriended one of the bears. Maybe.

 

Caveat: A Random Adventure And Random Usefulness

Earlier today, after breakfast, I was feeling energetic and restless, and I said to Andrew, I'm going to take a walk. He came along, of course.

We walked over to the new "Onemount" mall that's been built on the west end of Lake Park, a few blocks from my apartment. There is a waterpark inside the mall. That's pretty common in Korea - waterparks, I mean. But there is also a "snow park" in this mall - ice skating, manufactured snow, an indoor sledding slope. That's not so common. I think some hot day I'm going to pay the entrance fee and try it out.

Then we walked into Lake Park. That's a common enough walking route for me. The air was stormy and thundery and deep gray overcast. It was beautiful. And there was enough of a breeze that the heat wasn't so stifling.

I knew there was a "toilet museum" inside Lake Park - I'd seen it before. But I'd never actually visited it, although it's a kind of famous (or infamous) landmark in Ilsan. Today it was open as Andrew and I walked past, so we visited the Toilet Museum.

Then we saw some men running one of those sewer-exploring robots - just something in maintenance going on unrelated to being next to the Toilet Museum. We watched them for a while - they seemed disorganized.

We walked toward the southeast end of the lake. That area looking toward the highway bridge over the lake always reminds me a little bit of Minneapolis' Uptown area.

Then we walked around the end of the lake and ended up going to HomePlus, where I bought some vitamins and exotic tea and a few other things.

Then spontaneously I said, "How about instead of going home for lunch we go to that Indian Restaurant that I like that's near here?"

Andrew seemed to like this idea.

So we had Indian food for lunch: samosa, vegetable raita, malkhi dal, some mutton curry, lots of garlic naan bread. Very delicious.

It was pouring rain so hard when we left the restaurant that we stopped in a cafe and had coffee and talked for a long time.

When the rain had let up and we finished our coffee, we hurried home and I quickly got ready and went to work.

Work felt good today: I felt useful. I did a substitute teaching in one class, because of a scheduling mistake. Then I corrected some student essays and helped fixed the scheduling mistake.

I like feeling useful.

Caveat: Cooking

One thing having a visitor (namely Brother Andrew) here has done is that it's ignited my cooking bug. I love to cook, but I often get into lazy ruts of way-too-simple foods when living alone and cooking only for myself. Having someone here, I start getting creative.

Yesterday I made a really tasty tuna salad for lunch, with chopped almonds and an aging nectarine, and ginger and mayo and blackberry vinegar and some leftover curry spice. We slathered it onto Russian rye bread (bought in Russiatown on Wednesday), sliced and toasted. It was hard for me to eat (the toast too crumbly = tongue steering crisis) but very good.

Then for dinner last night I made wilted spinach - in a pan with a few tablespoons of oil, I fried up some onion and chopped almonds (yes I'm getting rid of too many almonds) and lots of garlic and some spices, then added the spinach and turned off the heat. The spinach wilts in the garlicky juices but doesn't "cook." I boiled some tricolor rotini pasta and chopped in some tomato and added a cup of store-bought alfredo sauce from a jar and ground nutmeg.

It was highly delicious - my best cooking since leaving the hospital.

Caveat: Put-in-face

This was a milestone day because it's the first day I didn't really take a nap.

I was pretty tired this afternoon after Andrew and I walked around a bit too ambitiously this morning, but when I lay down to nap, my mind was racing and so I decided to just try to forego the nap.

I'm trying to get away from the wake-up-every-2-hours hospital style sleeping pattern. Maybe (hopefully), I've exhausted myself enough that I can sleep a full, more-or-less normal night tonight.

I made some pasta with broccoli and red-sauce, with some butter and basil added. Andrew ate it ("put it in his face" in his parlance), and even smiled. And then he did dishes.

 

Caveat: Spinach Salad

I was craving salad.

I was craving the making of things.

I was trying to get back on my regular schedule, with the "dinner" meal at around 11 pm, because that's when I get off work, normally.

So after a 4 km walk with Andrew in the misty, humid hot darkness around part of the lake at Lake Park, we came back, took the stairs to my home on the 7th floor, and suddenly, I was in my kitchen making salad. Ah the joys of normalcy.

We have a lot of leftover fruit from the hospital. I decided to start with a chutney instead of making a dressing. I chopped some apple, carrot and nectarine into a squirt of Korean blackberry vinegar and a few tablespoons of grapefruit juice from a small juice bottle I'd bought earlier. I added some powdered ginger, some dried mint leaf, and a dash of clove. stirred together, it makes a simple chutney.

I washed off fresh spinach and added a few teaspoons of sesame oil, sliced in some cherry tomatoes and then ussd a few spoonfuls of this chutney to make for a perfect salad.

The stems proved challenging to my chewing mechanism - the eating was, like many eatings, a slow slog. But it was a damn good fresh spinach salad, and the making of it was even more satisfying, still.

caveat: fruit

ever since my major surgery i have been craving fruit: apples, peaches, blueberries, apricots, even fruit i dont normally prefer, like plums and grapes. andrew and my friends have been accommodating, too, so ive been eating a lot of fruit.

this evening my friend seungbae stopped by and brought even more. i consumed a peach and some watermelon.

what i wonder is what this craving represents. ive always believed that strong food cravings generally mean the body knows about something it needs. what does the fruit represent?

what im listening to right now.

[link to track to be added later.]

Foster the People, "Helena Beat."

caveat: and on the 8th day, they gave me some food

its not that i forgot the tastes. but with a reengineered tongue and mouth, my face must have been like a babys that first time you give them some new thing to eat. its not the taste thats blowing their minds but rather their efforts to sort out how to control this new object placed there. theres a lot to sort out . . chewing, but not so much as to chew the tongue, then steering the pieces gradually backward and toward the right tube at the back so as not to choke. imagine youve lost all of that automatcity . . . every bite takes several minutes to sort through. i still bit my tongue once.

they gave me juk (rice porridge), fish broth, some finely chopped beef with cabbage and carrots, some fake crab salad, white kimchi, and greens. i managed about 30 percent of the total, focused mainly on juk and fish broth.

caveat: last supper of korean hospital food

i ate everything but the kimchi (too spicy for the wound in my mouth). fish, pickled greens, tofu with soy dressing and slivers of vegetables, rice, some kind of earthy tea, and front center a diverse mushroom soup. koreans have a wide variety of various fungus they eat. the food was good.

[sent from samsung galaxy tab.]

Caveat: April Miscellany

April Showers:

It was raining. I saw some early spring blossoms on this tree - I haven't seen much blooming yet around here, so this is like a "sign of spring."

April Towers:

I was walking along the Juyeop esplanade thing, homeward, and noticed a new tower had sprouted down at the south end of things, across the western end of Lake Park (behind the big flagpole in right upper quadrant of photo). I guess it's been a few months since I walked this route - I wonder what that new tower is?

April Porridge:

As has become a sort of Saturday evening tradition, lately, for me, I made some 죽 ([juk] = korean rice porridge). But I tried something new: I toasted some black sesame seeds first in a dollop of sesame oil, with some of the rice gluten powder that makes juk juky. It turned everything brownish and gave it a very toasty flavor.

Caveat: Venting... with Calories

The week isn't over yet, but, despite promises that the workload would lessen with the advent of the new school year and a new schedule, I've put in more hours this week than at any time since I was covering for both Grace's schedule and my own last summer - and that was only temporary, whereas this state of affairs is looking more and more permanent.

And I have a full day's of work ahead of me tomorrow, too. I'm burning out. This was the kind of stress-driven burnout that lead me to abandon LBridge, in 2009. I'm considering long-term options.

Meanwhile, I came home craving something disasterously caloric. I made a cheese, mushroom, onion and tomato omelet. It was really good. Not really very healthy, though. This is why I get fat when I'm stressed (and hit 260 lbs while being a computer programmer, last decade), and why having a high-stress job doesn't work for me, health-wise. It's not workable for long-term sustainability.

Ok, enough complaining.

What I'm listening to right now.

Young Empires, "The Earth Plates Are Shifting."

Caveat: 야채죽

I tried making my own 야채죽 [ya-chae-juk = vegetable rice porridge] today, from scratch. I've never made it before. I've never watched it being made. I was put off by the various recipes I found for it - most required lots of soaking and cooking and blendering, etc. I figured it should be simpler than that.

I chopped up some veggies: mushroom, carrot, squash, onion. I added some pine-nuts. I stir fried these in some sesame oil with some seasoned laver (김 [gim = seaweed]) which provided enough saltiness, along with a dash of soy sauce and a dash of ginseng vinegar (I don't know why I added the last - because it was there?). I took out the veggies from the fry pan, added water to the pan, making a broth, and then added some already-cooked white rice.

I stirred the rice and broth and mashed up the grains vigorously in the pan with the boiling water on a medium heat for about 5 minutes, and it got creamy, like rice porridge (juk) should. Then I added the vegetables back in, stirred, put in a bowl, topped with garnish of some additional gim, and voila. Prep time was only about 20 minutes.

 

I won't say it was as good at the juk you can get at the joint downstairs. But given the fact that I made it, as an experiment, with no recipe and having never done it before, it was pretty darn good. And vegan and nutritious, too.

Speaking of vegetables...

What I'm listening to right now.

시인과 촌장 [si-in-gwa chon-jang], "가시나무 [ga-si-na-mu = thorn tree]."

가사:

내 속엔 내가 너무도 많아
당신의 쉴곳 없네
내 속엔 헛된 바램들로
당신의 편할곳 없네

내 속엔 내가 어쩔수 없는 어둠
당신의 쉴 자리를 뺏고
내 속엔 내가 이길수 없는 슬픔
무성한 가시나무 숲같네

바람만 불면 그 메마른 가지
서로 부대끼며 울어대고
쉴곳을 찾아 지쳐 날아온
어린 새들도 가시에 찔려 날아가고
바람만 불면 외롭고 또 외로워
슬픈 노래를 부르던 날이 많았는데

내 속엔 내가 너무도 많아서
당신의 쉴곳 없네

바람만 불면 그 매마른 가지
서로 부대끼며 울어대고
쉴곳을 찾아 지쳐날아온
어린 새들도 가시에 찔려 날아가고

바람만 불면 외롭고
또 괴로워
슬픈 노래를 부르던
날이 많았는데

내 속엔 내가 너무도 많아서
당신의 쉴곳 없네

Caveat: Yerba Mate en Corea

No es lo que pensaría. Sólo que hice compras ayer y ví en el supermercado yerba mate (en saquitos de té).

Lo compré por lo novedoso que era.

 

Caveat: Blueberry Vinegar

Korea has this consumer product called "drinking vinegar." You dilute it with water, and enjoy the acidity of it, I guess. Lately, I've been drinking it.

Is this another part of my periodic flirtations with "becoming ajeossi"? [ajeossi = "uncle" AKA generic middle aged Korean man].

Well, whatever. Today is Korea's Memorial Day holiday, but I'm going to a work-related social function.

See you later.

 

Caveat: Culinary Misadventures

I've posted before about my habit of sometimes pursuing rather random culinary undertakings. Today I attempted to make a vegan curry from scratch (even making my own curry powder). I attempted to use some tofu I had... I breaded it and fried it up in a style similar to abura age (as in kitsune udon). When the tofu was fried it was quite tasty (see picture below), but when I added it to my curry, it got rubbery.

And the balance of spices in my curry was off, too. So it was a rather atrociously mediocre creation.

Maybe next time.

Caveat: Riceball & Tortilla

Frankly, "Riceball & Tortilla" sounds like the ill-conceived name of a 1970's TV dramedy with a politically-incorrect ethnic twist, perhaps in the buddy-cop genre (e.g. Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey).

Instead, it's the name of a fast-food joint in my neighborhood. One of my coworkers brought me something from there - a 주먹밥 (which I've blogged before) but coated in something vaguely resembling corn meal instead of seaweed - I guess that's the "tortilla" part of the name. In Korean, it's named 주먹밥&또띠아 전문점 [ju-meok-bap & tto-tti-a jeon-mun-jeom = riceball & "tortilla" specialty shop].

Here's a picture of the container. I ate the actual riceball before taking a picture - sorry.

It's not bad. I like the kind with seaweed on the outside, better.

Caveat: Frontier Psychiatrist (with Curry)

What I'm listening to right now.

The Avalanches, "Frontier Psychiatrist." This song was on the radio in 2001, I think. I associate it with living in Burbank, California, and driving on the 134 toward Pasadena to visit my dad. I imagined going to visit a frontier psychiatrist, who would help me in some difficult-to-define but appropriately frontiery way. The video is pretty entertaining, in and of itself - I can honestly say I never saw it before right this moment.

I made a Tomato & Yogurt Curry from a pre-mix ("seasonings only") package, earlier. This is quite adventurous, since the directions on the package are entirely and solely in Korean (see right).

So it was a cross between a Korean Language lesson and a cooking class. I wonder if this has potential as a means of motivating me to study Korean better. I kept confirming my understanding of instructions and vocabulary with a dictionary and/or googletranslate, worrying I wasn't making it right. But the basics: veggies and potatoes (I left out the meat called for in the recipe), boil in the first packet of mix, add the second packet, then the third, serve over rice. Here it is.

Dot dot dot. Life, it turns out, goes on.

 

Caveat: Lentil Chili

I made lentil chili. I ate some.

I've been reading Milton's Paradise Lost. Hard slogging. Can you believe, I never read it before? It was always a hole in my literary foundations.

 

 

What I'm listening to right now.

Absurd Minds, "Deception."

Caveat: Ya es muy tarde

I made curried broccoli, using some Thai green curry paste and spices and onions and coconut milk.

Después, lo comí.

 

 

 

 

 

What I'm listening to right now.

Pastilla, "Colores." La letra:

Ya es muy tarde
No es tan tarde
Espera un poco
Espera un ratito
Dame tu mano
Nada importa
Etamos solos
Yetás mojada.
(coro)
Cuando todo es de color
El azul es el mejor
Cuando quieras descubrir
Y tu piel quieras abrir
Cuando todo te va mal
Piensa solo en mi voz
Toma una navaja
Y córtate las venas.
Por la mañana
Abres los ojos...
Y te levantas
Te tomas un baño
Llama un taxi
Hacia el estudio
Todos te esperan
Yestan enojados
(coro).

Caveat: Spirit Wrestlers

I finally ran across some beets during my most recent visit to the Orangemart supermarket across the street. Grace had told me that they had them, but I had never managed to see them until this time. Maybe it's a kind of sometimes thing.

I love beets. And beets make me think of borshch (or borsht or borscht, Борщ). So I made borshch. I didn't follow a recipe. I'd been reading a while back about a way of making it where you oven-roast the beets and potatoes first, to carmelize them slightly and give them a stronger flavor. I don't have an oven - I don't even have a microwave - but I was trying to think of ways to achieve a similar carmelizing effect.

Here's the recipe I made up as I went, with occasional illustrations.

I peeled and cut up one large beet into thin bite-sized slices. I did the same to one carrot and two smallish potatoes. This seemed about right for one "batch" which I imagine will be three servings for me.

I sliced two small white onions and added a few cloves of crushed garlic to a pot and began to fry them in about a tablespoon of canola oil (I have a several-years' supply of canola oil, as several bottles came embedded in my Seollal gift-set from my boss this year). I added the chopped beets, carrots and potatoes, and some spices. I used ground bay leaf, thyme, oregano, dill seed, a dash of salt, black pepper, a squirt of lemon juice, a teaspoon of brown sugar (to bring out that carmelized beet and onion flavor, right?).

Then, I "stir fried" it all on a low flame. I didn't add any additional liquid. I figured when it started to burn, I would add the liquid, but I wanted to try to get the carmelizing effect. And much to my surprise, it didn't start to burn, for almost 30 minutes. The onions and beets and the lemon juice seemed to provide enough liquid to prevent the stuff from sticking to the pan. I stirred it a lot.

The stuff cooked down a lot. It bubbled and smelled delicious.

Finally there was some crusting on the bottom of the pot, so I added a half cup of red wine (which I keep for cooking and use when recipes call for vinegar). Then I added a cup of tomato juice - which is a great instant, convenient vegan substitute for any recipe that calls for broth or soup stock. This bubbled up and boiled I periodically added some additional water, for another 30 minutes.

The recipe is purely vegan up to this point.

I broke that rule because I put a pat of butter on it and sprinkled some dried thyme, for serving it. I didn't have any sour cream or yogurt on hand, which is what you're supposed to put on borshch.

Borshch always makes me think of Doukhobors. Doukhobors are like slavic Quakers (and there's an important link to Tolstoy). I like Doukhobors. If I had to be a Christian, I would have to be a Doukhobor, maybe. The name means "Spirit Wrestlers."

The personal connection, for me, was in the summer of 1989 when I made a road trip with my brother and father in the moonwagon (my dad's 1949 Chevy suburban) from Minnesota to the Kootenays region of British Columbia. My father spent some time during his childhood there, in a Quaker semi-utopianist community named Argenta, that was linked to the one his parents had founded in Southern California. There are a lot Doukhobors in that part of Canada, and we visited someone who served us home-made Doukhobor borshch, which is one the most delicious meals I have ever eaten in my life, perhaps in part the context, but truly good food, too. Ever since, I keep trying to reproduce that experience, which is why I so frequently obsess on borshch-making.

And as a stunning non-sequitur, I offer: what I'm listening to right now.

Mexican Institute of Sound, "Yo digo baila." Y además:

Mexican Institute of Sound, "El micrófono." Que chango tan chistoso, ´nel video.

Mejitecno. Jeje.

There is really nothing quite like sitting in a cozy apartment on a frigid February day, in Northwest South Korea, eating homemade borscht and listening to Mexican techno.

Spirit wrestling.