Baby's first kimchi

This weekend was an amazing weekend of food. On Saturday, Timber and I visited the home and kitchen of one of our Korean friends here, who taught us how to make proper Bi Bim Bap (rice and veggies with red pepper sauce). Sounds fairly easy, yes? But it took around two and a half hours just to prepare each of the 7 vegetables involved in the dish, as well as a side dish of ji jim, a type of green onion pancake. I have a profound new respect for perhaps Korea's most popular dish, which is maybe second only to bulgogi. On Sunday, I made my first kimchi, pictured above. I've found that for foreigners, kimchi is either a love hate relationship and for Koreans it is a life or death situation. I've never known such passion for any dish. I, however, got my kimchi recipie from a cookbook and made a traditonal type of daikon radish kimchi that has become my favorite here. It is easy to make, apparently chock full of vitamins and reportedly may save me from nasty things like SARS, cancer, swine flu and perhaps even death. It won't be completely ready till morning after it ferments overnight, but I can't wait to test it out on a Korean co-worker tomorrow at lunch.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this kind of kimchi is that daikon radish is called "mu" in Korean, and there is a popular commerical on TV here that chants "mu mu mu". It makes me giggle every time I think of it and is yet another way kimchi makes me happy.

Tonight, we went to dinner at Bella Cucina, an excellent Italian restaurant with a couple of lovely friends and had one of the most delicious and properly plated dinners ever.

At the moment, Timber is making "massaged pork" for lunch tomorrow, another kind of Korean food she learned to make from our Korean mom friend here.

I am one spoiled lady.