The projects: Part 1

One of the most wonderful (and obvious) things about growing a big garden is gathering a big harvest. But sometimes, all of that harvest is ready at once. That`s what happened with our radishes.  Until now we had rarely eaten them in any form other than salad however, so we had to dig a little to use up the bounty that you see above.

Luckily, one of our recent projects is trying to create a website.  And when I say we, I mean Brian is learning a lot and working hard to create an amazing site and I am playing with a camera, working on my food photography game.  It turns out that it`s really easy to take lovely pictures of the fantastic vistas/architecture/art/street-scapes that you come across while travelling.  It takes a bit more wrangling when it comes to pictures of food or other small-ish, indoor projects.  It`s tough to make fluorescent lighting look good, but project time for me tends to be at night so my most major breakthrough was taking pictures by day with natural light.

This is the convergence of radish bounty, website creation, and photography game-upping that created the perfect storm such that we made yummy eats AND there are pictures to show and tell!

First, Brian made this simple and delicious radish and cream soup.





Our next project attempted to use all those radish greens and the preserved lemons we had in the fridge. I made those on a whim and am ever after looking for an opening to use them.  So we made radish top pesto!

And our final pictured project (we also made pickles, but forgot to picture them) we made a sweet and spicy radish chow-chow.  Brian, being a true southerner from a long line of southerners grew up on his grandmothers` chow-chows.  I had never actually tried the stuff.  But I can now tell those of you who, eyebrows raised, are wondering what chow-chow  is that it is delicious and you should get some soon.  It`s like a sweet and spicy relish, often made with fruit - pear is a favorite.  But it`s pretty amazing with radish.  We canned a few jars of this and kept one for immediate eating.  Now, I initially wanted to cut that pile-o-sugar in half, but Brian dissuaded me and he`s right.  Chow-chow is meant to be sweet and spicy.  When in doubt, add more wasabi.  

Next time I`ll show you our garlic braid!  I am VERY excited about the garlic braid!  Til then, you can find the recipes that we used at food52.com.  Here are the links!

Radish Soup

http://www.food52.com/recipes/6634_rustic_radish_soup
Radish Top Pesto
http://www.food52.com/recipes/17651_spring_pesto_with_roasted_radish_mint_and_preserved_lemon
Radish Chow Chow
http://www.food.com/recipe/rosy-radish-relish-241334
Pickled Radishes
http://www.motherearthnews.com/small-farm-chronicles/quick-pickled-radishes.aspx

Central Mongolia - the beginnings

First day on the road. One of very few paved roads.

Our Soviet jeep in the Mongolian landscape.

Tibetan style stupas at Erdene Zuu monastery.

Young monks calling to worship with conch trumpets.

We flew from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, on the 11th where we geared up for our departure the next day. We'd read how awful Mongolian food can be, and seeing as how we'd be eating it for a long while, we opted for Indian in UB. Also, I was feeling quite a lot of trepidation about eating meat for the first time and wanted to put it off a little while longer. I stand by our decision to get foreign food, but let it be known that where there are no chickens to be seen, you shouldn't order chicken. We learned this the hard way. Shannon came down with a nasty bout of food poisoning that eventually landed her in a Mongolian hospital. They got her back into shape for the trip, but gave her some drugs that gave her intense anxiety the next night. We later read in the Lonely Planet in the health section that the greatest risk to your health in Mongolia is a Mongolian hospital. Luckily she pulled out of it safely and now has a story for the grand kids.

Tsagaan Nuur (White Lake) was one of the major highlights of the trip. Our horse guides, Sanbo and Biumbuch, got good and chummy with us, we got to stay with nomads, learn Mongolian games, drink Yak vodka, and we got to eat marmot. Blowtorched marmot. That's right.

The road to White Lake

Cheese drying at a ger on White Lake

Staying with nomads is what we thought we'd be up to the whole trip, but it turns out most families on the itinerary had extra gers where tourists sleep. But in Mongolia you aren't even welcomed in, you're assumed in to any ger you find. Around the lake the families didn't host tourists ever and they had no idea we were coming, but our guides would walk right in, find the dried cheese stash and make a fire and some milk tea even when no one was home. The family would come later and completely casually say hello and go about their business if they were shy or hang around for cards if they were less so. Hospitality is an old custom in Mongolia and was at one time a matter of survival, and probably still is. If you go though, it's polite to either pay 5000 Tougrug for your bed and meals (roughly 3.50 USD) or give a useful gift such as a wind-up radio or flashlight, batteries, duct tape, sewing kit, or crayons and coloring books for the kids. There are lots of kids to give fun stuff to.

Many families settle in small groups when they put up their gers, so the first family we stayed with was in a set of 4 or 5 gers where everyone shared in caring for the livestock.

A family of nomads moving for the winter

The best rainbow in the history of all time ever anywhere

They had yaks, goats, sheep, and horses, and that night we helped the women in a baby yak round up. This was so that the babies wouldn't feed during the night for morning milking. Shannon tried her hand at yak milking next morning, but I didn't give it a go until we got to the waterfall much later in the trip. I was full success though! It's strange, the teats are really slimy because they let the young ones suckle to get it all flowing before milking, and the slime makes them slippery and hard to pull straight down.

Best yak herders in town

Our ger owner, Otoma, milking that yak

Cheeks

Brian, Shannon, and Sanbo riding off into the mountains

There are a ton of photos in these slides, so if you want to see them bigger or slower or download them, click the slide show and it will take you to the website where they're stored and you can look at them closer there.

In central Mongolia lots of the milk products, which makes up the majority of summer food, come from yaks. Even vodka comes from yaks, though it's only 20% alcohol. There's not much water for cleaning either, so the one pot in a ger is used for everything and everything tastes kind of yak-y. Yaky became our descriptor for anything tasting animaly, even once we got to the Gobi and there were no yaks anywhere and the flavor was probably sheep. Yaky instant coffee is hard to stomach, but yaky milk tea is pretty good. Milk tea is green tea mixed with fresh whatever-animal-that's-around's-milk, butter and salt. It's more of a soup than a tea, but it warms a body up when it's freezing and raining and windy out. It's served without question at every ger in Mongolia as soon as you walk in the door.

Back to the blowtorched marmot bit - Biumbuch had shot this thing right before we arrived on the scene. He froze it and we started our horse trek during which he and Gilki, our translator, had a crush; and also he liked us because we played card games and drank vodka and the boys wrestled and had a jolly old Mongolian time. So when we got back he wanted to hang out more and share his marmot with us. He was so proud and excited about the marmot process, bossing his friends around and taking control.

We have lots of video of this part too, but Brian's going to compile it all so it'll be on the blog later. For now, you can see all the steps in these pictures. Again, these are only half the pictures, I'll post Shannon's in a couple of weeks when she gets back from Australia.

After White Lake we went to some caves, a rock formation, Tsetserleg town, and a waterfall before leaving central Mongolia for the Gobi.

If school stays as slow as it has been I'll post the Gobi later this week. We're busy procuring visas and booking flights and eating as much Korean food as possible before our go day. There are only 17 more days of teaching til we're finished. It's hard to believe we've been here nearly a year, and harder to believe that we'll be coming home soon(ish).

It's a good news Monday

Before this weekend we had a pretty slow week, but it was stressful. Arguably the worst thing about EPIK (English Program In Korea) is the one thing that is not nationally regulated - camps and vacation during breaks. The good news about this being up to the individual schools is that during both breaks we've been allowed much more than our gauranteed 7 days plus weekends of vacation. The bad news is that we never know how much time we'll have or when we'll have it because the schools decide pretty late by someone anxious to buy a plane ticket's standards. This is made additionally stressful by the fact that our co-teachers don't want to force the issue with the principles, so they tell us what they think will happen as if it were what the principle has already set in stone. Example: last week Sun Ja told me on Wednesday that I definitely (go home and buy a plane ticket now definitely) would have only 1 week of camp and could travel the whole month of August. But then Friday she said I only had 7 days of vacation and would have 3 weeks of camp and would have to come to school for 8 hours a day when I didn't have vacation or camp, or any other teachers or students around either. That was devastating, but now it's Monday, and the story is I've got 2 weeks of camp and can travel for 3 weeks in August - a compromise I am more than elated with. Such a good news Monday!

So during that slow, ants in my pants week I experimented with the macro on my camera.
Hooters.

Party time.

These are my Philippines jewels.

But, the stamp pad is my favorite.

Luckily, things picked up on the weekend. Thursday was Soo Jeong's last day of teaching with Brian, so we all went to a Giants' baseball game to say farewell. Much to our surprise we saw David and Duck there too. Though it was a full stadium, two 6 foot foreigners were easy enough to spot in a sea of Koreans. And the Giants won! It was a great game and we had a lot of fun. Observe.

Friday David came down to our side of town. We kicked off with a trip to see the fountains at the park near the apartment. The fountains themselves were nice enough to see, but the best part was all the the kim baps running around in the water.

The little guy in the rain jacket was my favorite. Turns out those things don't work so well when the water is coming from the ground.

Once the fountains finally died out we ventured onward. We found ourselves at a Japanese restaurant for dinner and drinks where I was excited to find out I could recognise some of the hiragana written there. Hiragana is one of the 3 different kinds of Japanese scripts, which I've been studying recently because I had all this nervous energy pent up that I desparately wanted to spend on planning trips but was thwarted by the lack of information about when and how much time I would have for said trips. I had to do something, so I started studying Japanese in case we find ourselves teaching there next year.

After Japanese time we went to Keno Eye for a lively round of darts. And the boys, believing themselves to be beautiful people, wanted to see and be seen. Here they are striking a pose fit for magazines. Check that mustache action.

Saturday was bright and sunny at our apartment, so we pulled ourselves together and struggled over to Haeundae where the weather was very strangey. It was hot and somewhat sunny, but mostly there was a very dense, very local fog that may or may not have been man made.

We found out the next day that it had been nakey time on the beach day, an event sponsored by Busan to increase foreign tourism. I find it doubtful, but within the realm of possibility, that the fog was created to engulf the nudity, which we never saw, so perhaps this scheme was effective.

Saturday night Brian and I took it easy, but we still acompanied David to the convenient store for a sit and some people watching. This plan allowed us to get up early on Sunday and go for a hike. We went out in search of a temple called Seokbulsa, but we did not find it. Instead we found an amazing obstacle course and a ropes course. It was also the first time I'd seen the town within the valley up on Geumjeong Mountain.

We spotted this old couple having a Sunday picnic in their garden. I love this bit of rural Korea in the center of Busan.

We never found what we came for, but what we got was better than what we'd planned on anyway. We found a bee keeper selling honey on the mountain. We even found an explosion of pheasant feather souvenirs on the overgrown trail we bushwhacked.

And now it's good news Monday. I don't have my after school classes this week because Sun Ja has a conference to attend, so I'll have time on my hands to plan our Mongolia trip. I can't wait for two humped camels, fermented mare's milk, and nomad nights in gers. We're going to the Gobi!