"Go to cooking school", they said, "it'll help you learn how to cook Korean food".
Wrong... so wrong and the harsh reality of what went down today couldn't have been more far from their expectations and assumptions. I love Korean food but my motivation and interest to cook it quickly jumped into the minus numbers because I did attend Korean cooking class. Today Snickers and I attended cooking class and KBS was there to catch my plummeting interest level. And oh boy did it ever nose dive!!!
We attended a Korean cooking class across town, right by where I used to live when I first landed here. The class was being held at this little building and when we opened the door to enter into it we were greeted by what appeared to be a single room store that had been turned into a kitchen.
"This is well-being food", said the cooking teacher as she dipped her hand into a bowl of sugar and then threw a fist full of sugar in with her other ingredients. Perhaps it was well-being food, that massive bowl of veggies, before all that sugar. But the sugar wasn't the first or the last of it. In went excessive salt and lots of oil. The sauce for our tofu dish was about three different oils and as good as it did taste it was definitely a little bit of tofu with an overdose of oil and I knew I'd be paying the price later for it. I tried to play off being full from our lunch we ate about an hour before attending the class but who am I kidding?! I'm Amy; I'm always hungry.
I played it off as it I wanted to watch Snickers' cook and that I was too full from lunch to eat but then I definitely jumped into the scene when the teacher brought up a most sensitive subject -- babies and my lack of one. "But you have to have a baby... just have one" she said and with that it was like it was game on and I opened my mouth to speaking, hoping that I could seriously hold the strainer on my mouth and not say what I really wanted to say.
I live in Korea, am surrounded by Koreans, and am constantly pushed to be so cookie-cutter Korean just like so many them. I've been married for five years and not a week goes by when someone doesn't bring up the baby issue. But today, right in front of all those in the class AND with the TV cameras rolling, it was not the place or time to bring it up. This was a cooking class not let's-discuss-your-personal-choice-to-reproduce-or-not class.
I am not less of a woman or less of a wife because I don't have a baby and I think that's perhaps what those who ask me about not having a baby fail to realize that what they're asking, what they're saying, implies that I am. So I turned the table and called her out on her so-called well-being food that in my eyes was so far from being well-being. I thought it only fair that while we were being honest and giving our opinion that I mentioned to her why I would never eat the dishes she's cooking.
"If her food is so well-being than why is she so overweight?" Snickers asked me.
Both Snickers and I found just how not well-being it was no sooner than when we arrived back at Hulk's. I spent a good hour hugging the toilet and, while I was hoping to puke it all out, Snickers was in the next stall trying pooping it all out and complaining of stomach pains. See, I told you it wasn't pretty. I ended up spending the rest of the evening curled up in bed in a fetal position with my body absolutely cursing me for having taste tested that food.
"Go to cooking school", they said, "it'll help you learn how to cook Korean food".
Ya, didn't that prove to be just a brilliant idea. I've never been more anti-Korean food than today and I totally regret going to that cooking class because I do love Korean food, I just didn't know it had so much sugar, salt and oil in it. That class spoiled Korean food for me. Even the kimchi had sugar and salt in it! Perhaps ignorance is bliss because now I'm seriously going to question everything I eat in this country. No more eating kimchi by the plates, hell no.
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