My closest friend here so far is Cathy, a graduate student at my university. (Cathy is her English name for use in school and with foreigners.)
We took a walk through Duryu park in downtown Daegu after having lunch together. A couple of kids in traditional party outfits grudgingly posed with me for a picture.
A couple of weeks later, Cathy and I went to check out "Herb Hillz", which to our best reckoning was an herb garden where you could tour, eat lunch and also do crafts. It turned out to be a bizarre hybrid of herb garden, amusement park and zoo. (We avoided the zoo section.) The herbs were kind of a sad selection for anyone coming from Portland, but it seems that the idea of cooking with herbs is exotic to Koreans, and (meaning no disrespect) most of them have no knowledge of even the most common culinary species. North American style flower kitch is also very much en vogue.
But that didn't mean I couldn't learn a thing or two from Herb Hillz. Here's how to make a bouquet of roses out of fall leaves in 14 easy steps. (Tell me how it goes if you try it--we don't have our fall leaves yet.)
In addition to craft workshops, restaurants, animal parks and woodland landscaping with fairytale-themed topiary, there was actually one area of the park that was more like what I had expected (though it had only a dozen species of plant in it, most of them humble folk such as salvia and marigold):
Cathy and I enjoyed a delicious meal of "herb" bibimbap (rice mixed with salad, basically--a staple of the vegetarian diet in Korea). We couldn't find any herbs in it per se, but it was tasty.
We also sampled rosemary cookies, which DID have rosemary in them, no doubt. We watched other people making stools and door knockers in the woodworking shop:
and we decorated some sage-scented candles with pressed flowers, which was a lot of fun.
Despite Herb Hillz being not quite what we had expected (I guess the "Z" should have given it away, in retrospect) we had a great time.
My food life here has been steadily improving, and last week it peaked with my first "temple" style meal, which I ate with three of my coworkers from Korea and Australia. Temple food is not necessarily served at a temple; it is rather a style of cuisine that originated with the Buddhist monks. It is noticeably lacking in both meat and hot pepper sauce (YESSSSS!!!) and includes a savory variety of vegetable side dishes, most very plain and simple, some quite unusual, and all good for you. My colleague Ellen, who showed us the place, promised to send a copy of the photo she took of the meal. When she does, I will post it here. It was pretty cool to look at (for example, our rice either came in thick stone pots or wrapped in lotus leaves.)
The restaurant was very beautiful architecturally, made in unfinished light wood. It had an adjacent tea house decorated so beautifully, I wanted to move in.
My colleagues Sydney, Ellen and I posed for a picture (Nick, from Australia, took it for us).
The combination of the beautiful meal, a jaunt to the mountains where the restaurant is located, and some time spent with my wonderful colleagues left me feeling fantastic, despite a tense week at work. Every Wednesday afternoon should be so enjoyable.
No comments:
Post a Comment