Last night I tried my hand at cooking my favorite soup, sundubu jjigae. Due to some menu and schedule changes, I ended up with all the indgredients in my fridge. And I needed to use them or they would spoil (especially the "sundubu", which is un-formed tofu, reportedly only lasts a couple of days). No big deal, I think. I've cooked Korean food several times now, and this soup comes in a package with instructions. Well, of course they are in Korean! You should have seen me trying to translate the recipe with my dictionary. I got most of it, but had to ask one of my friends online about a few phrases. Come to think of it, a recipe in English uses some not-so-common words and phrases, too. The difficult phrases for me were putting the tofu into the water "spoon by spoon", and also adding the vegetables and other items "according to your taste". I don't have photo of the result, mainly because I was too hungry to take time to get my camera! I also ate this for breakfast this morning - this has to be my favorite Korean breakfast of all time.
Soup Seasoning Packages
Looks Easy, Right?
At my favorite bar, the owner has introduced a live jazz band. They play three days a week, and are really good. Here they are playing the classic Brazilian Bossa Nova hit, "The Girl from Ipanema" by Antonio Carlos Jobin.
Live Jazz Band
Today I had an unusually long wait for the elevator, and was studying the gas meter to the nearby apartment. I was surprised how hi-tech it looked. It's been awhile, but the last time I looked closely at a meter in the USA it just had the numbers in the window. This unit has some connection to the meter, and also a servo motor connected to a shutoff valve. I guess they can read all the meters from a central location in the building. As for shutoff, I guess that may be for emergencies, like a fire (althought in that case I think it would be best to shut it off as it comes into the building). Maybe we have these meters in the USA, too. Anyway, pretty cool.
Hi-Tech Gas Meter?
Anyone living in Korea surely is familiar with this sight - almost daily advertisements attached to your door. These are the ones I've been lazily "saving" for the past couple weeks. Any time one shows up, I just move to the inside of the door. Every once in awhile, I will show them all to CH, and he tells me the ones to throw away (usually 90% of them), and the ones we keep are usually menus for nearby take-out restaurants. Even those places for some reason keep delivering menus to us - for some of these places we must have 4 or 5 menus.
Two Weeks of Advertisements
With credits to Jim Unger, here is my favorite Herman cartoon that I have been laughing at the past few weeks. I got Mrs. Stumbler to scan it for me (thus naming her as my accomplice in copyright violation - we'll go to jail together). It especially applies to one of my Korean friends, who told me he only likes to eat Chicken. ( if you can't read the caption clearly - it says "Chicken for breakfast, chicken for lunch, chicken for dinner, what do you expect?" )
Favorite Herman Cartoon
Finally - I just looked out the window, and it's snowing again! Great!
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