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Finding Myself at Home in Seoul: Food – Part 3

20 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Buddhism, Christianity, Chuseok, Community, Food, Korea, Pilgrimage, Spirituality, Thanksgiving, Traditions, travel

Chuseok

We Americans, not really that circumspect about traditions, do have one tradition that most people I know stick to – Thanksgiving.  There are many ways we find to celebrate it.  Even those who are vegetarians or vegans who don’t eat eggs or dairy products find a way to prepare at least one of the traditional items for their Thanksgiving dinner table – turkey, stuffing, cranberries, potatoes, some vegetable like green beans or Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, or just plain pumpkin. And maybe a pecan or apple pie.  But I’ve been at Jewish Thanksgiving with gifillte fish, and at an Italian Thanksgiving with antipasto and lasagna added to the menu.  My brother-in-law is African American and one quarter Cherokee.  His family always makes macaroni and cheese, which they serve alongside everything else.

I remember my mother slaving for hours alone in the kitchen, days before Thanksgiving, and also for hours on that day, preparing the stuffing for a gigantic turkey and then stuffing it into the turkey. A couple of hours later, the delicious aroma of turkey roasting wafted from the kitchen.  I was in awe of her, wondering if I could ever master the art of preparing such a gigantic feast. It seemed such a massive task!  If she ever felt overwhelmed or lonely spending all those hours in the kitchen, she never gave me that impression.  The unspoken message I got from her was, this is the way we do Thanksgiving, and you will also have to do it one day.  Somehow, I did learn to do Thanksgiving pretty much the way she did, and I carry on the tradition, year after year, in Germany.  It is so deeply programmed into me, I feel like I must do it!  But my son Jayden, much as he enjoys eating my Thanksgiving dinners, has never been interested in making Thanksgiving a holiday he wants to observe or pass on.  He says it is probably because he hasn’t spent that much time in America, and although he loved celebrating Thanksgiving with me, his American mother, and his German father, it wasn’t part of the German environment he grew up in.  Now he lives in Korea, a culture with holidays of its own, so he has adopted these holidays into his life. 

I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate one of those holidays with Jayden and his Korean family last September.  Jayden calls it “Korean Thanksgiving”. In Korean, it is called “Chuseok“, which sounds a bit like “CHEWsuck”.  It has something to do with full moon in September, sometimes in October. It is celebrated for three days, and seems to be even more labor-intensive than our American Thanksgiving! However, when I told my young Korean friend Beomsuk about my Chuseok with my son Jayden’s inlaws, he said, “I can see that Jayden’s family is very traditional. I’d say only about 10% of Koreans celebrate Chuseok the way you did it. In my family we buy most everything.”

Chuseok, translated into English, means “the great middle of autumn”.  It would be more accurate to call it an autumn harvest festival than Thanksgiving.  But, when you look at the holiday more closely, it does, in the end, have everything to do with gratitude.  

The origins of the holiday go back to the earliest days of Korea, when it was known as the kingdom of Silla, from around 57 BC until 935 AD.  It was a shamanistic festival held at the time of the harvest full moon, when new harvests were offered to local deities and ancestors.  This tradition has continued among Buddhists, but not in the same way among Christians. I was told that some Christians in Korea don’t celebrate Chuseok at all because of its shamanistic origins. 

The Buddhists, especially the oldest son in the family, get up very early and go to the temple, or else to a special ritual table prepared by the family. There are many, many different kinds of foods prepared to honor, in particular, the ancestors on the male side of the family.  I didn’t see or participate in this, but I saw photos of the ceremonial table, where everything is laid out in a particular order.  At this table, the oldest son in the family participates in a ritual to honor the ancestors on his father’s side of the family.  When I asked what they do for the mother’s side, I got no answer! 

Many Koreans also travel long distances to visit and care for ancestral graves on this day.  I saw people cleaning their sidewalks, driveways and garages in the days before Chuseok, getting ready for family members traveling to visit them.  There were also cartons lined up near the entrances to the home, with gifts of fruit for family and friends.

Christians in Korea have nothing to do with ancestral worship, but I was told that most Christians celebrate Chuseok in their own manner.  Beomsuk told me that in his family and church, they remember and thank God for the lives of Korean Christians who, in years past, shared, or even sacrificed their lives to bring Christianity to Korea.

For me, it is invaluable being able to see how differently some Koreans can live from each other. It is important for me to remember that not everyone celebrates in the same way my son’s in-laws do. However, I consider myself extraordinarily lucky, because I was able to go back to the basics.  I could experience how this holiday is traditionally prepared and celebrated, largely because of the connection in the family to the local Buddhist temple.

There are a number of types of food that are eaten only during Chuseok, or also sometimes also for the lunar new year.  These foods include:

  • pounded rice pastries, similar to moon cakes in China, or mochi in Japan. These are called songpyeon. 
  • pancakes, called jeon
  • fish, breaded and fried. They call this pancakes too!
  • a soup made from the taro root
  • a stew made with beef ribs, called galbijjim
  • baekju – distilled rice drink, similar to soju, but made only from freshly harvested rice, whereas soju can also be made from potatoes or sweet potatoes
  • fruit, especially nashi pears

The nuns at the temple invited me to come and watch them prepare for Chuseok.   When I arrived, they had already prepared songpyeon – those beautiful rice cakes, having made them from scratch.  They treated me to a glass of water and a plate of delicious chewy, sticky, sweet songpyeon

Songpyeon – rice cakes with filling

Koreans like to make their rice cakes into a half-moon shape, which is mostly what you can see here.  They were filled with various kinds of sweet fillings, such as sweet azuki bean paste, nuts, sweet rice,  or chestnuts, The various colors of purple, yellow and green were made with natural coloring, using azuki beans, pumpkin and green beans, each cooked separately to achieve colored water in shades of light purple, yellow and green.  Imagine going to such lengths to color your Easter eggs!

I watched them prepare bindaetteok,  a crunchy kind of savory pancake made with mung beans.  Unfortunately, I can’t digest these, so declined the offer of a serving.  But they looked beautiful, decorated with slices of  pepper and onion.

Bindaetteok – mung bean pancakes

The nuns, other helpers and I washed and peeled taro roots to go into a soup they eat for Chuseok. Taro is a starchy root, shaped a little like a potato.  Asians and Africans eat a lot of taro, but I had never tasted it. I can say it is really hard to clean and peel, and discolors almost immediately! And it doesn’t taste very good, or of much.  My daughter-in-law never eats it, so I’m thankfully not alone in my opinion!

The nuns also made other things for the seventeen families that would be showing up, one after the other, for their ritual rites.  One was a kind of cake made from rice paste, also known as rice cakes. Rice cake-cake! Very pretty, studded with nuts, and rather bland in flavor.  Then there were little fried crackers  made from seaweed.  The nuns were up half the night and early the next morning cooking and preparing the ceremonial table! 

When the day arrived, I didn’t go to the temple.  My son Jayden is not a Buddhist, and his wife, Dahae, doesn’t practice it, so they didn’t go either.  For us, the day began in the afternoon, when we prepared food with Hanna, Dahae’s mother.  We made completely different, non-vegetarian dishes from those the nuns had made.  Together, all of these make up the food eaten at Chuseok.

We made a kind of pancake on little tooth-pick skewers, called ohsaekjeon.  Ours had strips of five different things skewered together, so they are literally “five color pancakes” – Oh for five, saek for color and jeon for pancakes.   Hanna made strips, all of the same length, of green pepper, green onion, Spam, imitation crab meat strips (surimi), and also some slices of leek. 

It was really hard to thread these strips onto our toothpick skewers without pieces falling apart!  But that was part of the fun, listening to amused little chortles as they observed me trying to be peaceful as I battled the strips.

Trying to thread those stubborn toothpick skewers!

Mine didn’t look very pretty, but I did get better at it, after about the 100th toothpick!  I’m exaggerating here, but we made a veritable mountain of pancakes!  Then we dusted them all in flour, dipped them afterward into beaten eggs, the same as if you were going to bread something and deep-fry it.  Then Dahae’s parents both fried the pancakes with a bit of oil poured onto a table grill. 

Frying the ohsaekjeon – five-colored pancakes

When all the ohsaekjeon got fried – and eaten – it was time to move on to the next course.  Fried white fish, which Koreans also consider a form of pancake.  Same procedure, different dish.  Dipping the fish in flour, then in the beaten egg, adding a few strips of scallion, and frying. 

Fried fish “pancakes” – saeongseonjeon

We ate that too as soon as each piece was fried, standing around Dahae’s parents busy frying, eating as quickly as they were finished frying.

We’d been eating for hours, but hadn’t sat down to a meal yet!  Dahae joked to me, “Chuseok is a holiday where we stand around and eat all day!”  I laughed.  It was true, bringing back happy memories of my dad frying Hungarian pancakes on Sunday evenings, while we hungry kids devoured each pancake as soon as it left the pan.  We could hardly wait till one of us finished spreading the pancakes with cottage cheese and cinnamon sugar, rolling it up and cutting it into pieces three or four hungry mouths would devour in ten seconds or less.   

The sit-down meal, a couple of hours later, after the kitchen had been cleaned up from all the frying, consisted of LA galbi jjim, a delicious dish of beef ribs that had been marinating for days, rice and kimchi. 

LA galbi – beef ribs, cut on the lateral part of the rib, eaten this time with rice and kimchi, but often as part of a barbecue, encased in a lettuce leaf with a variety of other things like garlic cloves, a tangy sauce, greens, and kimchi

For this meal we also drank Jeju gosorisul, a particularly high-quality soju (a distilled grain beverage somewhat similar to Japanese sake) from Jeju Island, located in the southernmost part of Korea. This soju, rather than being distilled from rice, potatoes or sweet potatoes, is made from millet and natural yeast. It was so smooth and delicious, I could have drunk it all evening and not had a hangover the next day! Not that I drank that much of it, but it’s supposed to be that good.

We continued to sit around the table, chatting, until dessert.  Dessert was a relief to eat after all this food – simple slices of perfectly ripened, luscious red watermelon. 

The next day we walked to the temple and greeted the nuns.

The temple with its rooftop garden
My little grandson, wearing traditional Korean clothing. He’s not too happy about wearing that hat! Koreans often wear traditional clothing for special holidays, weddings, and when they go to traditional museums.
And here he is at the temple, dressed just like a kid from the Joseon Dynasty!

We were warmly greeted and served the foods I had watched being prepared, some of which I had even helped to prepare, and more.  I sampled the taro soup, ate seaweed crackers the nuns had made themselves, and had a bit of teokk (rice cake) cake, which they had been preparing in the middle of the previous night.

toranguk – taro root soup
Seaweed crackers made by the nuns

teokkaekeu – rice cake cake!

Experiencing the rich gastronomical heritage of Chuseok  was marvelous.  These were magical, extraordinary moments I will never forget.  But, fascinating as cooking and eating the food was, observing the people involved in the preparation, something went deeper inside me.  Here there was something to hold onto forever.  We can learn life lessons from watching people interact, and this, to me, was the richest part of Chuseok .  It is because of the life lessons I seek to learn while traveling that I call myself a mileage plus pilgrim.

This was the second time I have spent time in the kitchen with a community of women.  The first time was in a convent for Coptic nuns in Cairo, Egypt.  In the convent in Cairo, as also in the temple in Seoul, there were lay persons who worked alongside the nuns.  In addition, in Seoul there were lay volunteers helping the nuns.  In both cases, it was the easy-going camaraderie, the comfortable companionship, that struck me. 

I basked in being a part of this group of cheerful, normally kind women.  Sometimes in the afternoon, after we had all cleaned the kitchen together, we would sit in the dining room and chat or do some personal task or other.  I remember sitting at the dining table a couple of times with my laptop, writing in my blog, sharing Coptic worship music that I had discovered on a previous trip to Cairo.  The nuns were familiar with the music, and we could all contribute to the atmosphere in the room. 

In Seoul the women chatted and chuckled sometimes as they sat there peeling taro roots, frying mung bean pancakes, and stuffing cucumbers with kimchi filling. They enjoyed one another.  There was a sense of ease, relaxed companionship as they sat together.  When we greeted one another, we would observe all the corona restrictions, everyone wearing her mask.   But we had all been vaccinated,  and nobody felt sick, so we removed our masks as we sat down to work.  Both our K95 masks and our social masks which only serve to hide our true selves were set aside as we sat down to spend a few hours with each other.  At one point while sitting there with these women, I thought to myself, I don’t know what these women are talking about, but I really enjoy being with them!   I have always considered myself more of an introvert than an extravert.  I really do enjoy being alone, and got through a nearly six-month lockdown feeling pretty good.  But sitting with these women, I knew how much I need to be in a group of others sitting around, doing routine things that leave the mind free to chat or be silent. 

I know that there are also times when people who live and work together disagree.  I witnessed two women disagreeing one day about the best way to fry the pancakes. At least, that’s what I think they were discussing.  I didn’t understand what they were saying, but watching their body language, I think I understood that there was some difference of opinion about the right way to go about doing this.  I smiled and made some comment about how we old ladies are no different from our grandchildren.  They laughed, stopped arguing, and resumed the method they had been using before.  By then we were all laughing, and one of them said to me, “She is like my big sister, so of course I give in to her.”  Aha!  So that is how they resolve disputes here, I thought.  The cook, who is in charge here, has seniority, so they follow her lead. But first after speaking their mind.  This works!  The cook was a shy, seemingly self-effacing, petite woman.  But obviously she was in charge, and because the structure of their group life was worked out, the atmosphere was relaxed and peaceful.  In Cairo the head nun was in charge, and I assume the nuns followed some rule, as many Roman Catholic nuns do, following the order of St. Benedict.  In Seoul there is a head nun who has the say in what goes on. 

I think the feeling of easy comfort while being with a group of women has shown me how much I miss this, that it is an important need of mine, and that I need to find a way to be involved in activities with a group of women.  I am a member of a women’s writing group.  Here there is that same wonderful feeling of community as we sit together over drinks and discuss our work. 

In this age when we have to endure a pandemic and live with lockdowns, the fear of lockdowns, the fear of congregating, quarantines and imminent quarantines, we need to remember how much we need each other.  We need to find ways of building community, even if it is in tiny groups of two or three people.  This is what I have resolved to practice this year, even if I have to organize it myself.   

Watching Jayden’s mother-in-law cooking pancakes and fish with the entire family milling around, helping to cook and eating, I could see that it was here that she felt in her element.  She had her own version of community – her family, with me, whom she added on.  The dining room table, where we were working and eating, was like a human beehive, with human bees milling around, coming, going, and returning for more, and Hanna was the queen bee.  Her pleasure at being surrounded by family was palpable, but she expressed it in words, too. After we had finished eating our sit-down dinner she sighed, closed her eyes and said, “This is what I love – when my entire family is together and we cook and eat together!” 

I look back to the years when my mother cooked Thanksgiving dinner for our large family plus friends, all alone in the kitchen, for hours on end.  Was it perhaps a lonely, overwhelming task?  Perhaps I wouldn’t have felt so overwhelmed about cooking my own Thanksgiving dinners if my siblings and I had worked together with her in the kitchen.  Instead, I carried on the tradition of tackling this feast alone, cooking Thanksgiving and many other dinners by myself, year after year.  I have enjoyed the work, and enjoyed anticipating the pleasure we would all have eating it, but now I think shared time in the kitchen is a better way to live.  I think the time spent with my father as we crowded around him, helping to roll up and eat the pancakes he cooked was at least as valuable as an hour or so at the Thanksgiving table with our exhausted mom, too tired to talk.

I have been told the Korean culture is a “we culture,” whereas our Western culture is an “I culture”.  This past Thanksgiving, keeping Corona guidelines in mind, I invited only two guests.  I cooked the main part of the dinner with one of them and the other, who had less time, came later with a delicious dessert to share.  Then she shared the recipe with us.  What better way to honor those who have gone before us, paving the way for our own journeys, than to honor those on our present journey by doing it together.  No more just metaphorically walking our solitary journeys, as they say you’re supposed to do a pilgrimage.  Yes, time alone is important.  But with these traditional Korean women I discovered how rewarding it is to the soul, as well as to the body, to sit or stand with others while talking, scrubbing, laughing, chopping, listening, stirring, dreaming, mixing, sharing, cooking, and at the end, eating.  The loneliness of Covid and the camaraderie of Koreans, at least those who still do things the traditional way, have shown me the value of doing it together.

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Finding Myself at Home in Seoul – Food: Part 2

29 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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Tags

Buddhism, Food, Health, Kimchi, Korea, Nutrition, Pilgrimage, Spirituality, Traditions, travel

Kimchi

The Korean cuisine is widely considered by nutritionists to be one of the healthiest in the world.  Of course, the first thing they immediately mention is kimchi which, by now, is widely known throughout the world.  The kind most people know about is baechu kimchi, the one made with what is known as Chinese or napa cabbage, known in Australia as “wombat”, with a lot of chili pepper and other seasonings and ingredients. But there is much more to kimchi than fermented cabbage, and much more to the Korean cuisine than kimchi.

After four trips to Korea, I think I have still only scratched the surface of this cuisine.  Still, in this segment I would like to share with you a little of what I have learned, which is already enough to be the chapter of a book, or a small cookbook in itself!

Let’s start with kimchi, since that’s where everybody begins.   Since I arrived in September and didn’t leave until late October, I missed the primary kimchi-making time, which normally takes place after the first week in November.  That is a mega-deal often involving entire families, even extended families or neighborhoods. The mother of my daughter-in-law normally makes baechu kimchi with 100 heads of napa cabbage she and her husband have organically grown themselves in the garden of their country home.  They spend about a week together picking and cleaning the cabbage and making the kimchi together. The idea is to make enough baechu kimchi to last an entire year, until the following November.  This means, though, that by September the supply of baechu kimchi is running really low.  But there are at least 200 other forms of kimchi, according to a Seoulistic, a website I found explaining the history and different types of kimchi. 

When I arrived, it was time to make summer kimchi, known as oi kimchi, made with cucumbers instead of napa cabbage. If you click on the link you can find a recipe explaining how it is made. I had already attended a kimchi workshop in Germany, where we made three kinds of kimchi, one of them with cucumbersh. My teacher, who has spent a lot of time in Korea, urged me before I left to try all the traditionally fermented things in Korea I could get onto my tongue! “A good place to try all of that is at a Buddhist temple”, she said. Dahae, my daughter-in-law, has an aunt who is a Buddhist nun, and her mother, Hanna, sister of one of the nuns and also a devout Buddhist, spends much of her helping out at the temple. I hit the jackpot when one day, Hanna said, “The nuns wanted to know if you’d like to help them make kimchi. They’ll be making the summer cucumber kimchi tomorrow. Would you like to help? Is the Prime Minister of Korea Korean? That was on my bucket list! But I didn’t want to push myself onto anyone, so didn’t know how I could try out fermented temple food. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days there, making cucumber kimchi, watching them make two other kinds of kimchi, and eating their delicious, nutritious vegetarian temple food, which includes many fermented roots and greens I have never heard of. And then, over the next few weeks, to visit and watch them cook on several other occasions.

Some of the roots and greens the nuns make at the temple
Freshly prepared temple food. Cabbage, greens,and zucchini
nun seasoning radish kimchi with chili pepper powder

We made buckets full of cucumber kimchi, which the nuns shared with Hanna and others. Cucumber kimchi from the temple appeared every evening on the dinner table.

a bucket of oi (cucumber) kimchi
stuffing the cucumbers

During my previous trip to Korea, I met Beomseok, my niece’s boyfriend. They have since broken up, but Beomseok and I have remained friends, calling each other nephew and auntie. Beomseok is a Protestant Christian from an entirely different background than Dahae with her Buddhist relatives. When I told him about making cucumber kimchi at the temple, he said, “Nancy, you are privileged to experience something very few people get the chance to have.”

Finding Myself at Home in Seoul – Food – Part 1

23 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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Tags

Comfort Food, Family, Food, Korea, Pilgrimage, Relationships, Spirituality, travel

Comfort Food

“What shall we eat for dinner?” Jayden asked me.  “Shall I cook up some pasta and vegetables?  I think there’s a little bacon in the fridge.”

“No!  Let’s eat something Korean!  I’m in Korea for the first time in two years.  Is it possible to order something when we’re in quarantine?”

“Yes, we can. What a good idea!”  He made a quick phone call to Dahae, his wife. Dahae was stationed at her parents’ home with little Lian, observing the quarantine regulations. As far as we understood the regulations, I was allowed to be with no one but Jayden until I tested negative for the coronavirus with a PCR test at an official testing location. Having just arrived from the airport, and it was 6 pm, there was no testing possible until the next day. So, from where she was staying at her parents’, she went online and ordered for us from Bonjuk, a chain restaurant in Seoul with a good reputation for porridge and bibimbap.

Jayden ordered  mushroom bulgogi bibimbap.  Bibimbab has become one of my go-to recipes when I’m in a hurry and want something nutritious and satisfying.  A few years ago I wouldn’t have called a stir-fry of various vegetables, rice, and a fried egg with a flaming red sweetish hot sauce my idea of a favorite dish, but as Jayden once told me, one acquires a taste for Korean food only gradually.  I’ve had plenty of bibimbap over the years, so this time I wanted to try something new, even though bibimbap is also one of Bonjuk’s specialties.

I decided to order something I hadn’t been able to eat during my previous visit, but have been seeing on the K-dramas on Netflix – porridge.  In Korea, porridge seems to be something people eat when they’re sick, like the chicken soup we in the West eat.  But there must be more to it than that, because perfectly healthy people seem to be eating it all the time in restaurants all over Korea. It wouldn’t be a staple on the menu if people only ate it when they were sick. There aren’t THAT many sick people, I hope! I ordered something called “seven-vegetable porridge” – “ilgob gaji yachae joog”.

I sat back and relaxed.  Jayden was no longer a pixel image on a screen.  I could touch him, feel the vibrations of his voice, and bask in his presence.  I would have him all to myself for more than twenty-four hours!  We talked, and talked, having the leisure to discuss anything we felt like for as long or briefly as we wanted. Jayden has learned a lot about being a gracious host by living in Korea.  In Korea, you treat your parents and elders with special respect.  It felt good to be waited on, hand and foot, by my son, who poured me a glass of cold barley tea after I declined the beer he was drinking.  Alcohol does not agree with me after a long flight.  I didn’t even miss it – I was at least as soothed by the conversation and barley tea as a glass of beer would have done.

Two years ago my conversations with Jayden were not soothing.  “I was in the middle,” he tells me now, “and that was not a comfortable place to be.”  None of us were comfortable that trip, and I understood least of all why Dahae wasn’t talking to me.  After much anguish and many more conversations, I have come to understand that I had somehow inadvertently hurt my daughter-in-law in a major way, but her culture wouldn’t allow her to talk to me about it.  But we managed to talk things out anyway, albeit years later, to clear some of the misunderstanding, and to restore our relationship. More than restore it – it has been resurrected into something much more beautiful than anything either of us had imagined, and has a beautiful, glorious, vibrating life of its own! I will write about relationship difficulties, the misery of cultural misunderstandings and the miracle of resurrection in another post. For now, suffice it to say that it felt wonderful to be sitting with Jayden, knowing that Dahae and I were also on the best of terms.

A restored relationship and relaxed environment are like candles and tablecloths, providing the setting so that comfort food can live up to its name, something that can comfort and cuddle the soul. When the setting is right – the relationship is sound, and everything is relaxed, then comfort is elevated to sublimity. Food is a fascinating substance, I think.  One would think it was purely a materialistic thing, made up of nothing more than various combinations of molecules, chemicals balanced in various proportions.  But food has spiritual properties as well.  It can heal people, body and soul.  Even when relationships ae struggling, they can be restored while sitting at a table, chewing on molecules.  Hopes and dreams can be ignited.  Food is a wonderful medium for us spiritual seekers as we journey through life.  Comfort food is so much more than just some dish we like to eat.

I asked Jayden recently which dishes come to mind when he thinks about comfort food.  Chile con carne, lentil soup, and kimchi stew, he said.   What an interesting combination, I thought!  These are all products of the cultures he has lived in.  Chili con carne and cornbread are something I often cooked for our family as he was growing up, something I passed on from my American heritage.  I had never thought about that before, but I suppose I could call it comfort food too.  I do remember being literally warmed and comforted with chili con carne on the day my siblings and I scattered the ashes of our dear sister, who suddenly died much too soon. We threw some of the ashes into the icy waters of Lake Superior on a bitterly cold December day. We buried more of them in the garden of one of her best friends. After we were finished she treated us, fingers almost too stiff to remove our mittens – to chili and cornbread. We sat around her wood-burning stove in her little house, listening to the wood crackle, warming our fingers around our bowls of steaming chili.

I enjoy the mushiness of the kidney beans, and the rich Tex-Mex spiciness, contrasted with the warm, slightly sweet, tender texture of cornbread, with  butter melting into the bread as soon as you spread it on.  I guess we could call it an American dish, but I suspect some elements of it immigrated up from Mexico into Texas, spreading across the United States and then exported to the rest of the world.

Lentil soup is a staple of German cooking, something I often used to serve for lunch, just opening up a can I had bought at the supermarket and warming it up in time for lunch. I learned to make lentil soup, however, from the Jewish mother of one of my boyfriends, long before I met my husband.  I suppose my lentil soup is a sort of Jewish-Italian version.

Kimchi stew is something Jayden learned to love while living in Korea. Like chili con carne, it is tangy, but not overly so, because the cooking tames the spicy acrid taste of the kimchi.  It comes with tender chunks of pork shoulder, and often soft tofu.

My choices, like Jayden’s, are a product of the places I have lived, also not limited to the things I ate as a child.  But childhood foods are definitely some of my favorite comfort foods.  Waffles with butter and maple syrup.  Mushy, cooked oatmeal.  Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  But also creamy German noodles called spaetzle, mixed with fried onions and tangy gruyere cheese melted into it.  I find it interesting to discover that food I first tasted in Germany could also be among those that warm my soul.  Germany has become a part of me I marvel at discovering, as I realize that I must have assimilated to some degree, adding a German dish to my list of comfort foods.

The food arrived.  My order had a pretty pink drink with it, a little sweet, and a couple of pickled things on the side.  I took a picture of our dinner, slid my spoon into the soft mush, brought it to my mouth, closed my eyes and started wrapping my tongue around this soft, creamy custard.  There was no dairy nor meat in it, but it was creamy nonetheless, cooked for who knows how long until it was so soft there was nothing really to chew.  I could simply let it warm my mouth and later my tummy as it slithered down, warming the rest of me as it melted into my body.  I took another spoonful.  It was not purely bland, although my body had been unconsciously craving the blandness this dish provided.  There were tiny chopped vegetables mixed throughout it, and there was a slightly nutty hint of sesame oil.  I was hooked.

  Before Jayden and Dahae had met, I’d never imagined visiting Korea, let alone tasting anything from this country. And now, six years into their marriage, I was incorporating the Korean version of chicken soup into my own repertoire.  Vegetable porridge, jachae jook has become one of the foods I will turn to when my body and soul cry for comfort.   

Vegetable porridge

Mushroom bulgogi bibimbap

You can find recipes for vegetable porridge and bibimbap on the recipe page in this blog. 

Is It Still Home? My Trip to America – Texas 4

13 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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America, Christianity, Food, Georgetwon, Grieving, Home, Pilgrimage, Retirement, Senior Univeristy, Texas, travel

Today is a “down day” for Rhett, but Natalie has it all planned for me, and it sounds good! I am opening up more and more to life in Texas. Natalie has written articles in a local magazine about various aspects of life in Georgetown, and from what I have read in snippets here and there, Texan life as it is lived in Georgetown sounds wholesome, a quality that appeals to me very much. I like the fact that the Christian faith is presented in this part of the country frankly, unapologetically and naturally. Of course it isn’t the only religion in America, but this faith and life philosophy is represented by a huge number of Americans. Why not be matter-of-fact about it, not overly defending it, but not castigating it either? Of course, in New York City, where I’ve just come from and where I lived for so many years, most people I knew don’t go to church, and there are probably many more non-Christians as well as people who practice different religions in New York than in Texas. Maybe for that reason, faith as expressed in organized religion seems to get pushed into the background of conversation and in the pages of newspapers and magazines.

We meet Natalie’s cousin Sandy for lunch. “Here we are – at Dos Salsas – the best place in all of Goergetown for chicken tortilla soup,” she suggests. The soup is delicious. My Peter would have loved it. I wish for a moment he could be sitting with me here eating chicken tortilla soup. We chat while eating, and I learn a lot about life for the retired in Texas from Sandy, who is taking courses at a “senior university”. She is taking one course in memoir writing and another on espionage during the Cold War. All students and professors at this senior university are senior citizens. I have never heard of such a thing – a university for senior citizens? “Oh,” Natalie and Sandy chime in together, “Georgetown is a mecca for senior citizens. You should see Sun City. This is a part of Georgetown where only senior citizens are allowed to live, and they have their own university.” I feel a pang of longing tugging at my heart. How I would love to take a creative writing course in English. Courses are offered in German here. But I don’t write in German. I could take an online course – I have a friend who has done this. But how nice it would be to have classmates you could share your writing with, people you could interact with face-to-face. Sandy says there are courses on all sorts of subjects. I’m not sure, on the other hand, what the big deal is about all these courses for senior citizens. I have no problem being in a learning environment with younger people.

Natalie and I leave Sandy and drive into the Georgetown town center. There is a main street in this town, and charming little shops and boutiques. I am reminded of Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent, where he travels from one small town to another, all over the United States, finding an appalling dearth of charm. The town centers, he says, have all disappeared, giving way to strip malls, chain food restaurants and shopping malls. He would be happy to discover Georgetown. Unfortunately for me, the day is rainy, so we have to walk through the streets with umbrellas.

Natalie is an expert on Georgetown, having researched and written so many articles about her town. She tells me that in 1976 an ordinance was passed in order to protect all the historic buildings in the town center. The roads and many buildings were also restored during this time. In 1977 the historic district was placed on a National Register of Historic Places.

Historic Town Center of Georgetown, Texas

Natalie takes me to the courthouse. What’s so special about a courthouse? I wonder. But I dutifully follow her into a splendid wood-paneled courtroom. “This is the room where the first trial against the Ku Klux Klan was won,” she says. “This trial took place inthe 1920s, and the room has not changed since that time.” She recounts the tale of what were actually several trials. The Ku Klux Klan practiced hate crimes against more than black people, she says. In this particular case, there was a white traveling salesman, Robert Burleson, who happened to be in Georgetown when the Klan targeted him, flogging and tarring him. Perhaps he held more liberal views than those of the Klan members. They were prosecuted by the young District Attorney, Dan Moody, who won a series of trials against the Klan. The jury gave the Klan members the maximum possible punishment in all cases, and from that time the power of the Klan in Texas was weakened. Moody went on later to become the Governor of Texas.

Courtroom in Georgetown, Texas. The first KKK trials to defeat the Klan took place here in 1923 and 1924.

We stroll along Main Street. Natalie takes me into a consignment craft shop. It is beautiful, with tasteful objects like quilts, pottery and gifts sewn by artisans from around Georgetwon. “This shop is run by senior citizens,” she says. “You have to be over fifty years old in order to display or sell your work here.” Even the women working behind the counter, volunteers, are over fifty.

Craft shop with articles created solely by senior citizens

I find a bib someone inscribed with “Spit happens.” This is just too cute. I buy it for my future grandson, who will be born in a few months, along with another small item, a cotton flannel padded burping cloth with a pattern of old-fashioned locomotives. I chat with one of the volunteers at the cash register, a German woman who now lives in Texas. It’s fun speaking German in this strange setting!

We continue along Main Street, browsing for a few minutes in a chic boutique. There seem to be no chain stores in this town. Everything is local and tasteful. We stop in a toy store/ice cream parlor. “You know how you were just speaking German? This place is run by Germans,” Natalie says. The toys are the kind I would see in a German toy stores, wooden Brico trains, wooden puzzles, and plenty of Playmobil and Lego. “The ice cream is a big drawing factor,” she says. People love to shop here and the kids get to combine it with ice cream.” There are unusual flavors here, like amaretto cheesecake, and more traditional ones like chocolate or strawberry. We each order a dish of ice cream and sit down and enjoy being kids again for a few minutes.

I am impressed with Georgetown. Yes, I could imagine living here!

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