my toaster oven did this

roasted radishes with garlic, rosemary and olive oil (like potatoes, but better). ....AND pumpkin mini-muffins (vegan). success.

Hiking Jirisan

i went on another hiking trip outside of seoul last weekend. it's almost too cold for the likes of me, so i figured i might as well do at least one more good mountain before it's unbearable. jirisan happens to be one of the three most notable mountains in korea (the others being seoraksan, done that, and hallasan, which is on jeju island).
we left seoul before midnight and made it in time to start hiking in the dark, just before 5am. we caught a nice sunrise en route to the peak, and then it was a long, knee-jarring descent, but we made it back in time for a late lunch. unfortunately, the fall colors were past their prime, but it was a great hike w/ a sweet group of folks. we were pretty beat by the end, but a little soju and makgeoli took care of that. ;)


before heading back to seoul, we made a little cultural detour for some traditional music, and we also got to make our own jjango drums! we probably looked pretty ridiculous when we got back, though... about 40 foreigners w/ little toy drums walking the streets of seoul at night. haha. bap, bap!

harvest; tuber time

it's been mighty nippy outside these days. well, it's actually been o.k. this past week... you know, mild autumn weather.. a nice sweater and a thin jacket.. maybe a scarf. but there were a couple of days that were just FREEZING. and i thought i was gonna die. anyway, we decided we should head out to the garden one last time to harvest what was left; what survived the freeze anyway.
daylight is growing shorter w/ each day, so we had to book it to the garden on our bikes straight after school. we knew that we'd only have a couple of hours, at most, before dark. when we got there, it was a bit sad. it was obvious that the gardening season was over. folks were harvesting their cabbage to make enough kimchi to last god knows how long and they wouldn't be planting anything else. our little garden was barely hanging on. all of the basil was dead; wet, brown drooping leaves. we were just a couple of days late. so we started uprooting all the tubers (beets, radishes and carrots) and harvesting huge piles of herbs and greens. getting it all home on our bikes was a bit of a challenge but we made it.
so then i had all that stuff to deal w/. just washing it all took forever. now i have enough greens to have huge, amazing salads for dinner this week. as for the other stuff, i found some good recipes for daikon radish and beets and i set aside one whole evening for that magic. the outcome was daikon kimchi, do chua (vietnamese pickled vegetables) and, my new favorite, daikon cakes. YUM. as for the other stuff, the herbs are drying & i'm gonna make some herbed radish butter and i'll roast some of the beets (but i mostly like them fresh on salads). damn, having a garden has been good. :)

rainy halloween

well, halloween has come and gone and i'm trying to remember what actually happened. ...not that i had such a wild night that i blacked out or anything, but just that it was pretty uneventful. oh, yes, now i remember. so, i initially had big plans of dressing up and biking around to different pubs and/or attend a friend's party, and also to participate in a big halloween scavenger hunt around seoul. but...it RAINED. all day. looking back, i can't believe i let the weather take control of my halloween fun like that, but it happened. so be it.i did make it out on halloween night, tho. joined some friends at a music festival where we had some drinks, caught some mediocre high school garage band style music, and we saw some pretty decent costumes. the highlight, tho, just might be the falafel that i had at the end of the night. ;)

actually, the best thing about this halloween was definitely the party we had at my school. i actually got to plan it & it was a lot of fun. the whole school was decorated, all the kids dressed up for the costume parade, we had a pumpkin carving contest, trick-or-treating, a halloween movie and, best of all, a haunted house. the haunted house was in the gym, which is down in the basement. we fixed it up like a spooky obstacle course: a scary soundtrack playing, ghosts and spider webs to walk through, tunnels to crawl through, and a "witch's kitchen" where the witch (one of the teachers) was brewing up some eyeballs and worms (the classic peeled grapes and noodles). we also made a sweet coffin out of cardboard, tape and spray paint that one of the teachers laid in and grabbed people as they went by. the kids were a little bit scared (they ARE preschool & kindergarteners), but it ended up being their favorite part of the day. halloween...luv this holiday.