Korean & American dishes

We frequently have meals which include kimchi, bean sprouts, garlic shoots, mushrooms, mint leaves, and little fishies...


but as of this weekend, we added something to our menu (for special occasions)! Spaghetti!!!
Yep! There is an "E-Mart" here in Wonju...similar to a Wal-Mart style, but opening at 10am, not open 24 hours as we discovered upon arriving at 09:58 and watched with intrigue as all the employees went through a greeting & bowing practice before the store officially opened. Then we were the second ones effusively welcomed through the entrance gate inside. It was a good thing we weren't running on time, or we'd have been waiting quite a bit longer! As it was, we found a treasure of many foods we have not seen since leaving the U.S. Now, most of these, we will still probably not touch very often because of the price...a 16oz sour cream was about $12.00! Whew! However, the spaghetti sauce & noodles were not too bad, so we bought it and then loaded the sauce up with yellow & red peppers, mushrooms, onions, garlic, and bulgogi(meat) of our own, topped with some hot peppers. Yum!

Another thing that E-Mart had available which we passed up was ground beef (had looked all over and could not find it in other stores). But it was $1.50 per 100 grams, and since there are about 450 grams in a pound, that is equivalent to nearly $6.75/lb for ground beef!!! And other beef meats such as steaks and stuff were even higher. Beef is terribly expensive here! And we really don't like pork(which happens to be the cheapest!), so our options are pretty much down to fish and chicken which can be found readily. The chicken is also a bit pricy, but much better than the beef, so we'll be doing more chicken.

I haven't cooked much fish since coming here because in DaeSan the only way we found to buy it reasonably was entirely whole: eyeballs, guts, and all. I wasn't all that thrilled or so courageous to tackle that without any lessons, so we ate our fish at school, where we had it often anyway. Now that we eat all our meals at home (except John gets suppers provided...lucky him!), I want to keep fish in our diet, so I am determined to learn how to prepare it edibly. This is where 2 blessings come in...our "new" oven, and E-Mart's reasonably priced pre-cut & gutted fish! Yea!!! Still has the bones in, but we're used to that now. So I will keep you updated on how the fish venture turns out!

In case you're wondering, we have chicken in our fridge right now, so I didn't buy fish this trip. I am going to become a much better organized cook since I am finding out that in order to operate cost effectively with one small fridge, I must plan every meal and coordinate the ingredients to go with each one ahead of time and shop accordingly. I remember reading from somewhere that this has always been the best method to use anyway..... :) :)