Trip to Korea - Third Day

Sunday was bright and cool and sunny and bound to be a better day.  After my usual (for here) breakfast of a banana, microwave poached egg and white rice, I ventured out to jog in the sweet sunlight. It was gorgeous--and imagine what I saw!

Gardens!  All around two sides of us, gardens!  Two sides of the complex face streets with buildings and stores and stuff, but the other two sides have streets that face onto old run-down buildings and lots of empty space dedicated to soybeans, peppers squashes and a variety of other garden plants of species unknown. I saw something that looked a lot like leeks; some cabbage-like greens; something tall in the distance that could have been tomatoes.

They seemed chaotic, not laid out in neat, long rows like I do at home, but I didn't be so rude as to walk amongst them to see for sure.  They were just growing wild and happy and free, tended at times by an occasional farmer seen far off in the distance. Only one house--a fancy place with solar panels and a possible greenhouse to the side--had a garden that looked fairly organized.

So the one thing I didn't expect to see this trip is practically all around me!  I like this place where there aren't any fences and soybeans grow next to bus routes and people spread their chili peppers out in the open to dry.


 
After a while we walked to the Korean market to pick up mirin and rice wine vinegar so I could teach my son how to make Mirin Glazed Salmon. (Spare your laughter at the idea that I could teach anyone how to cook anything.)  At the Korean market we saw all the same produce that we'd bought at the Army Commissary Grocery--and it was a thousand times fresher and riper.  What idiots we'd been to waste money and time on California produce!

Bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes, carrots--all beautiful and ripe.  All fresh and local and lovely. Sigh.

Nothing we could do about it. We went back and made a bit of a mess of the salmon. Tasted okay, but looked hideous. We forgot to make a side dish--my fault. I'm not a good enough cook to plan meals and work intelligently out of my element.  But the whole point was to give the son confidence in his cooking, and I hoped it worked well enough.

Good day. Except that the Number One Grandson put an entire bar of soap in the guest room toilet and flushed it.  It went down--but not far enough down. Many hours of plunging and fussing were expended, trying to make it flush again.  Eventually Edward found a coat hanger wire that we could use to push it out of the trap. You can't imagine the relief we felt in seeing a toilet flush!