Some more food

I love eating, and Korea is certainly very food friendly in that just about any large shopping centre will have a food court. like the one shown above. The food ranges in price from 3000 to 15000 won, and covers quite a range of flavours, with the emphasis on those Korean staples such as bibimbap, kimchi stews, ramen noodles or buckwheat noodles. The food is prepared once you order, and is really fresh and tasty, as long as you like hot pepper spiced food!

This is what I ordered from the food court shown above - beef on rice with vegetables, or sobibimbap. It cost 5000 won and came with the two little kimchi side dishes and some bean sprout soup. The cast iron pot is sizzling hot, and as you mix the food it still cooks a bit more. On a cold winter day, it is a really great meal.

Finally, I have to share my latest bread baking - an attempt to recreate the Cape Seed bread, a rich and tasty health loaf. It started when I cleaned up my kitchen cupboard and discovered a whole lot of flax, sunflower, pumpkin and poppy seeds, as well as a small pack of raisins and dried apricots.
The recipe used two cups of rye flour and one cup wheat flour (white), about two spoons of each seed, all the raisins (about 100g) and the five apricots chopped up into pieces, and enough hot water with yeast, two spoons of sugar and one spoon of salt to make a soft sticky dough. This then got placed in a buttered tin and left to rise for the night, and baked for two hours at 180 degrees Celsius in the morning. It was every bit as tasty at it looks!

Snow!

The first snow fell in Korea way back in November, and early in November as well. In fact, we had snow for my birthday, 19 November. And, it was the usual snowfall - and inch or two - that I had been experiencing since coming to Korea in 2007.

However, yesterday evening and the whole of today, the 4th of January, snow has been falling almost non-stop and an estimated 12 inches have fallen so far. Not a blizzard by any standard, but heavy enough to make me say that I've never seen so much snow in all my life! The photo above is an example of how wonderfully snow transforms the landscape - this is the trash dump behind an abandoned restaurant that is now a fairy landscape.

The place where I live has a rich variety of dogs, and here you see one of them next to drift about two foot high. I know that dogs have the fur to cope with the weather, but it still pains me to see the callous disregard the Koreans have for them - the doghouse in the back is not for this dog, who has no shelter beyond the overhang of the puppy coop behind him.

A shot of the pines all decked with snow - a recent article has provoked much scorn from the English community for claiming that the Christmas tree originated in Korea and that they will be seeking compensation from commercial growers of these in the west.

This is the tree they are talking about!

And finally, a shot that I lucked in to - the snow and the branch combined to form an artistic composition that is well worth preserving.