Adventures in Persimmons

Persimmon season is upon us here in Korea. They look so beautiful. The sky has been a deep clear blue lately, and the autumny-orange persimmons look so cozy surrounded by a few dark green leaves. Angelika and I walked into town yesterday via the rice paddy back roads, and the persimmon trees were my favourite view along the way. Then, this morning, the lady who cleans our building (you may remember her from the canned peaches enounter) knocked on my door and presented me with a HUGE persimmon. It’s twice the size of any I’ve seen on the trees around here. I wonder if I like eating them? I guess I’ll soon find out.

Adventures on Thanksgiving Weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I feel fortunate that I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving with some moist turkey, sweet cranberry sauce, savory pumpkin soup and a slice of pie. I don’t exactly know what the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Korea does, but I’m more than happy to eat the food at the dinner they host every year.

It also gave me a chance to get back to Seoul and see my travel agent there. Hooray!! I’m going home for Christmas this year!!! What a lovely Thanksgiving gift.

We stayed in a Yogwan in Seoul, which is like a small motel. Some of them are quite clean and cozy and comfortable. The one I managed to pick out was not. Ewwww. I woke up with 12 mosquito bites on my arms, and some of them are swelling up like red, puffy quarters, nickles and dimes.

The weekend went by super fast and now I can’t believe it’s Monday already. I think that since I’ve had 2 long weekends in the past three weeks, actually having to go to work on a Monday seems a little strange! Even so, I hope all of you reading this from Canadian soil will enjoy your holiday.

Adventures in Free Food!

Like many people I know, I grew up big and strong by eating Church Basement potluck dinners, (and I capitalized it, since I think someone should use it as a brand name for a line of microwave dinners~ wouldn’t you buy something called Church Basement 3 Bean Salad, or Church Basement Baked Beans??). The point of all this —well, to be honest, this is going to be the point-before-the-point, so if you’re feeling overwhelmed already, you might want to bail out now— The PRE-point is that I love free food. Think about it. I’d never make a Spinach Pie in my own kitchen, but if you serve it to me at your house, chances are I’ll love it. Or, when I’m going through the supermarket, and there are free samples of stuff -stuff I KNOW I don’t like and I’ll never buy – I still take the free sample! And then I stand there with a thoughtful look on my face and murmur things like “Hmmm, it’s not so bad. Maybe I’ll add it to my list next time” but I know I won’t. I just don’t want to hurt the feelings of the nice lady who’s handing out the Dixie cups full of free food. So that’s my pre-point. I love free food. I think maybe judging by the size of the congregation on Church Basement pot-luck days, other people do too.

Now, onto my main point. Even better than getting free food, is giving free food…so other people can have it for free. And there are no dishes for you to wash!! I’ve added a link on my sidebar for The Hunger Site. It’s a website that allows you to click the box that says “Give Free Food”. You can click every day, and each click donates 1.1 cups of staple food to folks who need it via The Mercy Corps and America’s Second Harvest. (There is info about these organizations on the site). I’ve known about, and frequented this website for a long time now (Thanks to Melanie for pointing me in its direction). There is also an on-line gift shop associated with it. Every item purchased (and there are some really nice ones!! ) results in more free food for somebody! When you look at the stuff in the shop, along with the price and product description, it also tells you how many cups of food will be donated if you purchase that item. Christmas is getting closer, and if you tend to do some of your shopping online anyway, you might want to check out The Hunger Site. The only sad part is that while folks will get good healthy food, nobody’s going to be lucky enough to get a “Church Basement Jell-O and Olive Salad”.