Me and Nutrition

How goes my initial plan to eat as much Korean food as possible? Well, I went out for Indian with a friend on Sunday, and I've been eating somewhat too much 7-11 type snack food, but overall I've been doing pretty well.

I'm trying to conserve money until I get my first paycheck in 2-3 days. I've been eating one big meal around lunchtime and one smaller meal in the evening. Breakfast and dinner have been heavily influenced by the Paris Baguette next door to my building, which sells baked goods which I suspect may be full of preservatives and starchy stuff. But I am also eating many bananas and oranges -the oranges are the small kind that Koreans call 귤.

On days when I eat lunch by myself, it's usually one of the following:

Sundubu - tofu-like bean curd in a boiling broth, with veggies and an egg, served with a bowl of white rice and various vegetables.

Bibimbap - white rice, vegetables, spicy sauce and an egg, and sometimes meat, served in a bowl, with soup and veggies on the side. Dolsot bibimbap is the same, served in a very hot bowl that makes everything warm and toasty. Hei bibimbap (or hei dopbap) is bibimbap with raw fish as the meat.

Jaeyuk dopbap - fried pork in spicy sauce with lots of onions, with white rice and various vegetables.

Udong - Noodle soup that contains unidentifiable fish pieces. It's considered Japanese food so the vegetable side dishes are fewer in number.

Mandu - Steamed dumplings containing meat and kimchi, served with ingredients (soy sauce, vinegar, chili powder, and a weird salt substance that I like to believe is pure MSG) with which you can make your own dipping sauce. It's considered cheaper food than any of the above, so it comes with fewer side dishes.

These are not all the dishes available at the cheap little diners, but they represent the stuff I've grown to like the most, so these days I'm getting the bulk of my nutrition from them. And when you go out with a group of people, of course, a whole new world of Korean dining opens up...