Love / Hate Relationship

So it's time to break up with Soul, to go our separate ways. We had a good run of it, 7 years, and while there were some amazing times, there have also been bouts of confusion and frustration.

The Good
I'll miss the food, I just know it. There will be a day when all I'll want will be a big bowl of Yuk-Ke-Jang (spicy Korean soup), or Soon-Doo-Boo (spicy Korean soup), or Kam-Ja-Tang (spicy Korean soup). Maybe it's all spicy Korean soup, but I love it. There's also the rice dishes, Korean BBQ, the street meat. It's definitely different than standard American fare, and that's what's great about it. Korea, you know your way around the kitchen, unless...

The Bad
...you're cooking western food. Granted, western food has gotten better from when I first showed up. At this rate Korea might make their first edible sandwich sometime in the next 20 years. I think the problem is where American tastes go sour or bitter, Koreans go sweet.

Case in point, when I was teaching elementary school long ago, I got very excited when I saw spaghetti and garlic bread for lunch. After having kimchi and rice so many days in a row, it was nice to get a bit of home until I took a huge bite of garlic bread and found it was topped with an enormous amount of sugar. I can't explain how wrong this is, and this wasn't the only time I was duped. There was the time when I got whip cream with my quesadilla (apparently it's an acceptable substitute for sour cream), how honey is served with Gorgonzola pizza, and how it's perfectly fine to wrap a hot dog in any kind of sweet pastry.

The Chicken-Cola Cup. Western food
that a westerner would never eat.

Ah Korea, sometimes you're like a 7 year old in the kitchen throwing sugar and syrup on everything. Grow up a little. Don't put honey mustard on everything, put down the jar of sweet pickles. Refine yourself, like Americans do... wait, that's a terrible comparison. You know what Korea, be whoever you want to be, but I think I'll make my own sandwich if you don't mind.