What do I eat?

I was fortunate enough when I went to Greece to LOVE everything I ate.  Strawberry's by the pound at the markets, 1.5 euro gyro's topped with french fries around the corner, nutella crepes down the street. 

I've only been here for 5 days but my menu has sure been limited.  The first day we got here Andrew and I thought we would try and surf the menu's at the local restaurants (this was a common thing in Greece). But before we were even halfway through our first door, we were encouraged to sit down and were faced with a menu 100 percent in Korean.  Our ordering tactic has now been limited to pointing at the pictures on the doors and nodding.  It turns out, our "first Korean meal" was most likely a Chinese dish. It included many small dishes that we had no idea what to do with, shrimp, octopus, a black creamy sauce, and the woman working the restaurant cutting my food with scissors. You can read more about our first meal at - Andrew's Blog. -- click to see!

At the end of this meal we also attempted to say "thank you for this delicious meal" - chal meo-geo-sseo-yo.  I learned several days later that if you don't pronounce the "chal" just right, you are actually referening to something along the lines of "do you breast feed?" 

The next day we decided we would try to jump right in and start cooking like Koreans.  HA HA HA.  Not only do we know nothing about cooking Korean food but we can't read Korean.  All the labels and directions to cook things are all in Korean.  I wish we had a device that we could scan the Korean in, like a bar code and then the English version would then appear.  Many times now we have had to "guess" how much of an ingredient goes into something, and how long it is cooked for.

Not only is that new but they way Koreans cook is quite different.  It may be different in larger apartments where families live, but we have one small toaster oven and two small stove tops.  The options for our stove tops (gas stoves) are high heat and off.  No matter how slow I turn it down to get it on low, it always blows out while cooking.   As I was telling Andrew today - new kitchen, no oven, one heat, new food, no directions, or ingredients ... I feel like I should be on/win some international cooking show contest for beginners.  After all, I have made chicken and dumplings that were edible.

I also realized that my love for sweet pickles may have been something I was bred to love. Being that I was in the womb while in Korean, and Koreans put sweet pickles on EVERYTHING!  We even got them with our pizza tonight.

While on the street today I also bought 6 large and juicy pear apples from a vendor selling them out of there truck.  Next time I seem them I will have to take a picture because they are almost overflowing the back of the truck.  I was hesitant to buy them since I am looking to avoid traveling sickness from food, but I am glad I did because it's quite succulent.. as you can see.