The Pit Of Despair

        In the beginning, I thought Korean food wasn’t half-bad.  Sure, the flavors were different, and maybe kimchi wasn’t ever gonna be my thing, but I figured I’d grow to like it the more I experienced it.  I was wrong.  I realize I might be generalizing here, but Korean food is absolutely awful.  Most meals, I eat a pile of rice and a small spoonful of the mystery meat du jour.  One dinner, they mixed in tons of beansprouts and other vegetables with the rice, and I ended up not eating anything at all.

Pretty standard Korean meal.  You can tell I didn't take this picture because there's WAY too much food on the plate.

     
        With such wonderful breakfasts as “Vegetable gruel and French fries,” is it any wonder things aren’t going so well here?  And of course, there’s always kimchi.  Kimchi is a pickled lettuce dish that’s flavored with Korean spices and can be prepared about 100 different ways.  Fun fact: Every Korean has a normal refrigerator and a refrigerator solely for storing kimchi.  It’s that big of a deal.  And I’ve found that in every variation, it’s totally inedible.

Kimchi!  Not how I want to start off my day.  Or end it.  Probably not in the middle, either. 

 
        Of course, part of the problem is that I’m eating cafeteria food three times a day.  If I was a foreigner and I went to a college dining hall in America seven days a week, I’d probably think American food was pretty sick, too.  But since I’m in this position for the next week or so (and I can’t go out for every meal) something needed to be done.  Lucky for me, I saw that cooking classes were being offered at night.  If you want something done right, do it yourself, you know?
        Now I had been taking Korean language classes at the time, so I had a huge decision on my hands….just kidding.  It took me all of .5 seconds to drop language and sign up for cooking.  So that first night, I went into the cafeteria, which I've taken to calling the Pit of Despair (coincidentally, the name could also be applied to my toilet.)  Anyway, in the back corner of the caf, there were a bunch of stations set up with vegetables and meat and sauces.  The food hadn’t even been cooked yet, but it just looked good.  About fifteen other people showed up, and then the main chef gave a demo.  She was cooking a beef dish called bulgogi.  It basically consisted of throwing everything in the pan and then stir-frying it.  It seemed idiot-proof.  But then again, this is me we’re talking about.
        Here’s a story:  Once, I actually ruined a can of tomato soup by burning it.  That seems impossible, right?  But somehow, someway, I overcooked the soup.  It caramelized and ended up tasting kinda like that weird black ash you get on the outside of marshmallows when you’re making s’mores.  It was awful.  The only thing I’ve ever really been able to cook is pasta, and that’s because I do it about twice a day.  Anything else is just asking for disaster.
        Thankfully, our cooking class was split up into groups, and I got paired with people who knew what they were doing.  They let me chop up a red pepper, and then for the rest of the time I “supervised.”  In the end I got to eat some pretty tasty food.  As usual, all my hard work was rewarded.

Cooking team!

        Since then, I’ve gone back pretty much every day classes have been offered.  The food has all been really good, and I’ve even started doing crazy chef things like “stirring” and “sautéing.”  Now, when I go to the cafeteria during the day, I have the urge to run back to the kitchen and be like, “OUT OF THE WAY.  IRON CHEF NOAH MORIMOTO COMING THROUGH.”  I haven’t gone that far yet, but if they serve one more dehydrated fish corpse (skeleton included) I might just have to take matters into my own hands.  Anyway, at least I’m not starving anymore.  You adjust to your circumstances and you make the best of it, and life usually turns out alright.  But good god, kimchi is disgusting.