09. 04. LUNCH

갈치조림: hairtail stew

Again the word “jorim” strikes us. It’s still not a stew at all, but I’m still going with it. We met in a small group for the last time after the previous day’s seminar, and we climbed a mountain to get to the faculty restaurant where we battled moths and mosquitoes and enjoyed the breeze and fantastic food. I am not that bad at separating the bones from fish, but I am still working on perfection. I got some quality counseling too as an added bonus — it did help, but I think being able to come home made everything better. Wow, I can’t stop talking about that. I swear I’m not usually this mopey about going home, you know, but it’s just that this summer vacation has been great, with all its stupid health problems and yelling and sweaty subway rides and bad movies. And I love home. Whether that word is a building, a room or a country.

08. 30. LUNCH

a super supreme pizza from god knows where

Or I’d have known if I’d paid any attention at all, but I was in my room doing something while my brother ordered the pizza. I’m not trying to be vague, but honestly I’m sure I was doing something besides staring out the window or spinning in my spinny chair. I just can’t remember. Eh, it was probably ONTD or rewatching early episodes of Flying Circus. Anyway we like getting the super supreme pizza because most pizza places have something of that name and it usually tastes the same. I’m at least sometimes willing to look up the menu online to see if there is something more appetizing, but my father and my brother are all about either delegating the duty of talking to a salesperson or just getting whatever the super supreme might be. I also hate talking to salespeople, I’ll have you know. I just figure that they won’t even remember me no matter how big a fool I accidentally make of myself, and even if they do, I won’t see them again, and even if they do, what are they going to do about it, huh? Yeah. Anyway I remember that I had to leave for the translation seminar, so I stuffed a couple slices in, inhaled, brushed my teeth, then sped out the door. Still I was half an hour late, but aren’t I always.

08. 25. LUNCH

grilled pine mushrooms (송이버섯) and garlic

Awesome, pine mushrooms! I prefer button mushrooms because they require less work beforehand and because they’re more useful for the massive tiny chopping that I do when I do anything with them, which is incredibly rare seeing as how I’m getting lazier and lazier. But I think I’ve been telling myself that because pine mushrooms are simply more expensive. I’m getting mental images of that one chapter in Pyuu to Fuku Jaguar when they get matsutake sent from home and they have no idea what to do with it because it’s so precious and then they end up making this huge block of gum out of it. But this entry is quickly turning maniacal and so I must stop myself. Let’s talk about my brother’s unwillingness to grill things that really need to be grilled before they are ingested, like garlic and onions. He did it again, and again I couldn’t really say anything because, you know, he didn’t have to grill anything at all, and he went through the trouble, but augh the garlic was so raw and nigh inedible.

chicken and stir-fried anchovies (멸치볶음) with rice

All in all it was a bit of a humble meal. It’s a bit odd because what with the free time I have and the fact that I’ll be leaving soon, I should be feeling an overwhelming urge to cook things, but I’m not. At all. I think it’s because I’ve learned more happily than usual that anything I can manage to make, you can buy better. Wait, except for scrambled omelettes. I am still a beast at that.

08. 24. LUNCH

grilled eel

We had to grab a quick lunch (again with all the rushing) before we got on the cable car — incidentally, for hours I was trying to remember how The Fray’s Cable Car went so that I could amuse myself by the mere act of recalling, but I could only think up the tune for How to Save a Life. It wasn’t until ten minutes ago that I realized that what I was remembering was, in fact, Cable Car, and that How to Save a Life merely sounds exactly the same but is — deceptively enough! — a different song. Seriously, Nickelback, look what you have started. Look at this tragedy you have wrought. But those matters aside, I have always wanted to try eel without that special eel sauce that eels always come with, and I didn’t think it would be during this vacation but I managed it. Yay! Gosh it was so good, the sauce looks spicy but it wasn’t, it was sweet-tangy with the slightest kick and eel is so much better when it hasn’t been lying limp and marinated in a refrigerated paper container for half a day. It’s so chewy and fresh and I don’t think I can ever truly go back to the way I have previously enjoyed eels, oh woe, oh sob. There’s just so much more flavor this way, you can never taste the eel itself when it’s marinated with the other kind of sauce.

grilled eel and rice

And then we took the cable car and we went up the mountain and we looked down at the sea and I thought of Zach Braff because The Shins came up on my mp3 player. And I thought, Zach Braff, know that wherever you are, I am thinking of you. And then I thought that maybe he and John Mayer might actually be the same person. That was altogether too much thinking to have done up on a mountain looking down at the sea.

08. 23. LUNCH

막썰어회: butchered sashimi

And here I use the term “sashimi” with all the grains of salt in the world. This “style” of preparing raw fish is mainly for people who are happily consuming alcohol near the sea. I was rather pepped for all the seafood eating that we were going to do, since we were traveling south to where all there is to do is eat seafood and look at the sea, so needless to say, I was a little upset when we decided that we had half an hour until the tour boat departed and that we had to eat whatever we could as quickly as possible. Actually I was pretty damned upset. Despite knowing that this sorry-looking excuse for an establishment would only ever really cater to people who were happily consuming alcohol near the sea, I was convinced that I would rather eat here than at the Chinese restaurant down the block. Actually I would have starved in protest rather than eat at the Chinese restaurant down the block. I do love my Chinese food, but seriously, that’s pointless. It’s so pointless that I don’t even have a decent metaphor for how pointless it is. And there we were, with our father parking the car some ways away, and I tried to be assertive and ask what they had on their menu, and the lady was like, Sea cucumbers. And conches. Which is fine, but not a meal. So I was like, What about fish? And she made this ridiculously vague hand motion towards a full tank, and said, Some stuff like this. And I was like BUT WHAT KIND OF FISH IS IT because it was unrecognizable and she kept saying, Just fish. And I was like AUGH AUGH AUGH. But apparently we were really busy — why, in the first place, was that even necessary? I’d have just bought tickets for the next boat, they have one every ten minutes, Jesus God — so I ended up mumbling that we’d take a fish. Thirty dollars. I was sullen until the food arrived. No, that’s not true, I was sullen all the way through. Besides, it wasn’t even the fish from the tank that we got, it was two much smaller fish from out of the blue and I have no idea what those were either. The only reason that all this wasn’t sketchy was because this was on the waterfront and like hell it would have stayed open long enough for it to get so filthy, if anything funny were going on with its food. Which didn’t stop me from sulking.

boiled mussels

On top of which, the lady had an accent so my brother couldn’t understand her and finally he muttered out loud, I have no freaking clue what you’re saying, so I was rather embarrassed and what she was actually saying was that since we were busy, she would skip the spicy soup part of the meal, and inwardly I was just like OKAY THAT IS FINE JUST GIVE ME MY FOOD SO THAT I CAN EAT IN MY MISERY, and nobody was being the slightest help in the confusion and I was still sulking. I’m no connoisseur, and I don’t take much objection with the fact that the fish was just cut up instead of being sliced according to the natural grain of its flesh, et cetera, et cetera. What I hated was that we were in a hurry when we had no need to be, that the lady wouldn’t tell me the name of the blasted fish I was eating, and that the broth that the mussels were in just tasted like tepid water. All this while the lady was walking back and forth emphasizing that all ingredients were naturally and freshly caught. As I neared the end of the meal, I felt a little sorry for her since she obviously didn’t know what to do with customers as lost as we were, and because the fish was actually good. The mussels were okay, but nothing above average — I could get behind that fish, though. Despite still not knowing what it was. Anyway I was sulking a bit for a good deal of the boat ride as well, up until the man sitting in front of us let us open the window and my brother got seasick. This does not make me a terrible person.

08. 22. LUNCH

fugu skin and mixed vegetables

I HAD FUGU. I couldn’t resist beginning with excitement, but honestly it isn’t anything to write home about. I was on vacation down south (no, not that far down south) from the 22nd to the 24th, and we stopped by our father’s residential city on our way so that we wouldn’t end up skipping lunch or something equally ridiculous. And there’s a semi-famous (= well-known but only in the near vicinity of the surrounding neighborhood) fugu restaurant there, so I couldn’t say no. But this story is not going to be very thrilling because we didn’t even have fugu sashimi — the lunch sets don’t come with that option, curse the stars — and isn’t a great deal of the fish not even dangerous anyway? Anyway, this lightly boiled fugu skin dish was the best out of the entire meal, I think, the skin is so chewy and fun and we had no idea what those vegetables were but they were also enjoyable.

deep-fried fugu

This is when I started realizing that what people say about how fugu would be a good deal less popular if it weren’t poisonous is all solid truth. Basically it tastes like any other whitefish out there. So it tastes like cod. Surely there is some distinct flavor of its own, but deep-frying isn’t really the most effective way to call forth the subtle nuances of the gustatory sensations, so yeah, it tasted like cod. And I’m not the biggest fan of cod — it’s good when it’s made into pancake form (tee hee) but the fish itself isn’t all that interesting. I’d much rather have whitefish as sashimi than cooked. But the fried fugu was crispy and really hot and by no means was it bad. It was just, you know, it tasted safe.

복어지리: clear fugu soup

It’s boiling! It’s boiling! So in the grand tradition of all fish-related restaurants, we got a huge pot of soup. Except this time we didn’t even order sashimi so — you know, the actual meat on the fish is supposed to be prepared as sashimi, and the leftover bits get tossed into the soup, so in this case — it’s a higher class of soup than customary, I guess, but we were just missing out on fugu sashimi. Which saddens me a little. But the 지리 was pretty good.

복어매운탕: spicy fugu soup

This was better, though. You can probably tell from the picture, but it also comes with dumplings (ten-o’clock) and noodles (three-o’clock). You can also see some of the fugu in the twelve-o’clock direction. I like the bits near the skin the best, since the meat isn’t as packed and dry as it is in other places. I feel like people who like chicken breasts like whitefish, it’s pretty much the same thing, flaky and boring. I mean come on. Seriously. But it was a good meal, especially for the paltry price of eight dollars — I’m not complaining! But one day I will have fugu sashimi and then properly state that I’ve had the blasted fish.

08. 21. LUNCH

묵: awesome possum jelly

Seminar weekdays are super great. Today we went to get duck, and before it descended upon our tables we had the usual assortment of side dishes. This looked so good that I had to take a picture even though I think I didn’t actually have any of it since it was on the other side of the table. Wiki lists the name of the food as “muk” but that just reminds me of Pokemon and it looks like it should be pronounced wrongly. So I am going to call it awesome possum jelly. Besides, we couldn’t quite figure out what it was made of, it definitely wasn’t acorn and didn’t seem to be green soy either. Speaking of green soy, I am this close to going off on a tangent about green soy sprouts and the name of the food derived from them and the scholar-politician who gave his name to the food and the era of criminally romantic turmoil that he lived in, but I will restrain myself.

steamed and stuffed duck

This is before it was carved to bits, but inside the duck there’s a huge mound of sticky rice and chestnuts and pumpkin seeds and pine nuts and dates and other good things. But really I’ve never been a fan of making rice sweet with things like chestnuts and dates, and I was in it for the meat, so I went mostly for the duck. It was really good, but the reason I love duck is because it’s so dark and greasy and rich — this way of cooking it made it taste much closer to chicken than anything I was used to. It was good, but I did enjoy the next item on the list more.

barbecue duck

Oh, yay. This was more like it. We’d actually thought that the steamed duck would be enough for the five of us, but thankfully we were wrong and we had to order half a barbecue duck in addition. Truth be told, I think I might have been a little sad without it. Of course after the eating was done, I was disgustingly full — miraculously enough, I actually gained a significant amount of weight from that one meal, no lie. I’m still burning it off, maybe another day or two and I’ll be back to the pre-duck equilibrium, but what the hell, duck. What the hell. (The great thing about ducks is that no matter what you say to them, they will quack back at you. It is so cute.)

08. 20. LUNCH

a Pizza Hut nonalcoholic sangria

These are actually pretty decent. The fruit slices are terribly sour (and I don’t mean to be dryly continental when I say that — they actually are terrible in how sour they are) and the liquid is a bit more layered than I’d like, but overall it’s nice and sweet and fruity. Besides you never end up finishing the drink so there is certainly enough of it to be worth the money. I was at the mall again with a friend, catching The Dark Knight for the second time. People saying “um so tdk is cool you guys but don’t take your girlfriend okay if you are on a date with her then go see wall-e instead” offends me. Wow, I just realized why I don’t have a boyfriend. It’s because I like all the wrong movies. Insight! Psh, as though it were that fixable a problem. Anyway, I did like Wall-E, but TDK is pretty damned amazing. But I’m going to be honest here and say that I nearly failed to make it through my second watching. It was just as good, and many, many things were clearer, but the entire thing is so enervating and from Dent and Dawes getting captured on, it’s just one long soul-sucking spiral of GLOOM. Which is the way it’s supposed to be, and it’s very effective in that you are completely exhausted by the end of it. Or at least I was. I feel kind of bad that I only got in three watching of Red Cliffs, though, if I got in two for TDK.

garlic gorgonzola pizza

The lemon honey dipping sauce that comes with this is terribly sweet. But overall I am liking this new “fresh gourmet” menu that they’ve got going on, the size could be a tad larger for it to be satisfying but it’s thin and it’s really good. Now all they need to do is unify the two different styles of ordering pizza, so that you can order whatever the hell you want on your pizza or ask for garlic and gorgonzola without sounding like a stupid twat. And you can do both, without having to change continents in between! Revolutionary! Seriously people, how difficult can it possibly be to offer both ways. In closing, I would like to state that I tagged this post also under “alcohol” because there isn’t a separate tag for drinks and really, that sangria should have had wine in it.

08. 19. LUNCH

냉면: cold noodles

What is with all this blurry, honestly. It’s offensive. I think after this things get a bit better, though. I had this in the basement food court of the department store attached to the mall because my mother insists that they have better food there than at the food court at the mall itself. I think this is true, but cold noodles weren’t really the best choice to exemplify the fact. I didn’t even know they had paella, or I would have been all over it like yellow on paella. My brother and I had just watched the X-Files movie, which we weren’t really keen on with a burning fiery passion but we thought it might be good for a laugh and we all have fond memories of the voice actors who dubbed for foreign series. “Scully, Scully, it’s me, Mulder.” “Mulder! Where are you, Mulder?” Oh man, golden times. Anyway the movie was predictably ehhh. But as xkcd has it, the science they use is every bit as interesting as the headlines sound — which is probably a bad sign for science but incredibly hilarious. There was a woman sitting in our row who snickered at all the right spots, though, so that was encouraging. Until the movie continued in that vein and she, my brother and I all fell silent because we were like “…Are you kidding me.”

08. 17. LUNCH

새우볶음밥: shrimp fried rice

This meal courtesy of my mother. Not a whole lot to say about it, but that it was good, and Grandma was here for it, though she’d had lunch at church already. Things are peaceful. Somehow in the meanwhile I managed to get that blasted Harvest Moon DS game to the marriage point — it’s so hard to get back into HM once you pause playing, there are way too many things to keep in mind and if you can’t remember what you’re doing in real life, how do you expect to keep it together in a game? But after something like half a year on and off, the boy is wed and the crops are flourishing and what have you. I can finally quit without feeling like a quitter. The same cannot be said for Gyakuten Saiban OH GOD THE FRUSTRATION. I know how to get to the end of the case, all the evidence is in and it’s the last court session for the trial, but the emulator keeps crashing. KEEPS CRASHING. It’s not at the same point so it’s not really the fault of anything in particular, but I save state, save the game on the cartridge, save it all the ways I know how and SOMEHOW everything is deleted once the emulator crashes and I have to restart from the detective phase of the third court session and it is DUMB DUMB DUMB. What am I supposed to do about that? Ugh I don’t know. Maybe I should just download Apollo Justice or whatever the actual name is for the 4th game. By the way the English version kind of blows, everyone sounds a bit mean and the humor definitely drags compared to — no, wait, I can’t compare it to the original, I’ve never even played — well, compared to the unlicensed Korean version, at any rate. Mitsurugi I miss youuuu help me fix whatever is wrong with this game please.