A rather shitty video I took a few months ago on a trip to Jeonju

Sorry no footage of 비빔밥. I just had this in my camera and am finally getting it out.

Fell off the wagon a bit, but back on.

Last week was kind of hectic. The weekend before last I went to teach an English camp out in the wilderness and had to eat non diet foods. I restrained from the temptations of ice cream and stuff like that, but once the camp was finished I found it necessary to indulge in a bit of Kalbi. For those of you who don't know, Kalbi is a magical Korean rib barbecue dish that is generally prepared at the table over open coals. Last Sunday I had Kalbi at perhaps Jinju's finest Kalbi spot, hyosung kalbi. Tender, sweet morsels of pork rib grilled over bamboo charcoal made both me and my stomach smile. Topped off with a small bowl of cold noodles (Naengmyun, video to come) made for a nice end to a hectic camp day.

The next day I still couldn't keep to the diet since I went over to my fiance's house, both to have her parents see that I was a fit spouse, but mostly to memorialize her grandfather in the Korean ceremony called a "Jessa." I had to eat a lot on that day as well, since a Jessa celebration involves a feast.

Monday also marked the end of phase one of my instinct dieting. This meant that I could resume consuming alcohol. Since I was at the camp during the weekend with no free time, I also couldn't buy any more groceries to continue dieting. Therefore I was stuck for one week for one week with no food, it also meant that I had to dine out more nights that week. (More on that later.)

By Wednesday I finally got around to weighing myself, and I found that I had lost another few tenths of a Kilogram (the week before I was 85 something something this week I was 84 something something.)

Friday night I went out for dinner and discovered that I kind of hate tuna sushi. I like sushi, however tuna is usually frozen. Let me tell you fishcicles, are really quite disgusting. And at 35000 won for two people. I feel that I had lost a meal that night.

Now this all brings us to last night June 22nd. After extensive shopping, I finally built up a nice war refrigerator chest full of goodies that I plan to make and eat this week. Last night I had another wonderful "I diet," meal from the book. The meal was "I diet Asian pork barbecue."

You need:
One pork tenderloin
Some garlic
Some Ginger
Some Hoisin sauce
Some wine
And some onion.

Chop up all the vegetables with the wet ingredients to make a marinade. Then put the pork in the Marinade and let it sit for a day.

The next day, grill it.

I served mine with some rice and salad. Rice isn't very good i-diet food, but last Sunday I bought some award winning rice from Jinju that I wanted to try (Five Kilograms I think). My Gff said that the meal was fantastic, she said, "Best Barbeque ever." Personally I thought it was good but I don't know that it warranted such praise. This is a meal that I would recommend though.

Week 1 complete

Week 1 complete, on my diet. Very satisfied so far. According to "The Instinct Diet," book; I have to follow a more strict diet than what I have been following. This has been a bit impossible due to the availability of some foods and the lack of things like a microwave at school. Nonetheless, here are some positive results.

Weigh in 85 Kilograms. That is down two from last week.

Bright spots on the diet front.

I tried 3 recipes out of the "I diet" recipe section. All were delicious.
The cucumber, tomato salad was simple and great. This is merely a combination of cucumber, tomato, lemon juice beans (recipe called for canned beans but I used cooked and soaked Indian lentils) and then salt, pepper, and oregano really gave this salad a nice zest.

The vegetable lentil soup was also great. This was chicken broth, tomato, lentils, carrots, celery, onion, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and some bay leaf.

And finally Tomato barley soup has also been great. This is broth, tomato, barley, onion, garlic, and fresh basil, with some Parmesan cheese on top. So far this has been my favorite, I had this tonight with an oven roasted sweet potato with some corn on the cob and a piece of low GI toast. That was about 2 hours ago and I am still full.

A sore spot about the diet has been the nightly pain in the ass of making my lunch for the next day. But a bright side has been an abundance of boiled chicken that I have been buying weekly in order to boil to make broth. (Canned Chicken or vegetable broths don't come easily here.) So my lunches have generally been, a half a chicken sandwich with some fruit and a salad. Some times I threw in some apple sauce or yogurt.

But for the most part I have been satisfied up to this point. Yesterday I cheated a bit and went out for sushi. Gff and I have a new favorite sushi place. Yesterday's lunch was a California roll with ten pieces of halibut sushi (negiri is the term I think they use in Japan for it, here it is Cho bob, ie fish with rice on top) Here the flavor is great, the meal comes with a salad, some kimchi, some Japanese pickled radish, shallot, and ginger, side salad, apetiser of some kind of shell fish porrige, and a side of miso soup. All small portions, but it was all only about 8 dollars. Good stuff.

Diet Day 1

No, Alcohol for one week, and then after that I have to moderate myself for six weeks. I think that is a good thing.

Here is what I had to eat today.
Breakfast:
Sultana bran cereal with lowfat milk, yogurt, coffee.

Snack, some almonds and apple sauce, washed down with a cup of barley tea.

Lunch half a chicken sandwich with mustard on something from Paris Baggette called "dietary fiber," bread. The stuff is basically white bread that claims to have 13 grams of fiber per slice. There were also some cucumbers involved with lunch.

Snack 2. Some watermelon and Darjeeling tea.

Dinner
a baked sweet potato (excellent number 9 on the dong yang magic panel)
Some steamed tofu (not too bad)
A cucumber tomato salad, recipe from the instinct diet. (This was a great little salad that involved
1 cup cucumber
1 cup tomato
1/4 cup chickpeas (I used Indian Dal)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 table spoon lemon juice
1 table spoon olive oil
some salt and pepper to taste)

I still haven't mastered the art of cooking raw beans yet so the dal was a little crunchy, but all and all it was a nice little salad.

When I tested for my various degrees of black belt, over at Chung's Black Belt Academy in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I would have to do these three day fasts. I'm happy to say that after the first day of dieting, I don't quite feel like that. Instead I feel like I will loose most of my weight from the rigors of preparing my daily breakfasts and lunches the night before. I spent about a half hour tonight chopping fruits and vegetables, and measuring oatmeal.

Today's weight 87 kilograms. This is actually three kilograms less than last summer, but back then I was pumping iron regularly, so I think i just lost some muscle. I feel a lot flabbier these days.

Diet wrap

Okay so I'm trying to make a high fiber diet with the aid of Susan Roberts' "Instinct Diet." I may have mentioned before that this is probably a good diet if you live next to a whole foods, and living in Korea definitely makes things difficult. I will not actually start the diet until Saturday, but today I feel I have invented a wonderful recipe that I can use on the diet.

Introducing "Jim's Middle Eastern Barley Chicken Wrap."

Ingredients

Boiled Barley
Some onion
Some Tomato
Some Cumin
Some Salt
Some Pepper
A pita or a flour Tortilla
A chicken breast.
Olive Oil

Cucumber sauce
Cucumber
Yogurt

Take some barely and boil it in water. First boil the barely on high heat until it boils a lot, then reduce heat and let simmer for 45 minutes. Use the 45 minutes to chop the onion and tomatoes, and whatever else you might want to prepare for the meal like a salad or something.

Cut the Chicken into strips and fry in olive oil with cumin, salt, and pepper.

Use about three inches of cuccumber, chopped into quarters, and combine with 1 small container of unsweetened yogurt.

Now put the barely, chicken, onion, tomato, and cucumber sauce in the middle of a slightly warmed pita, or tortilla (Tortillas work great, that is all I can get here.)

Notes,
Don't use too much barley. I cooked a cup of it, and now I'm stuck with a lot of barley. Tomorrow, I'm going to try and have oatmeal with barley in it for breakfast.

Enjoy. I just thought this recipe up this afternoon. The barley really matches well. It tastes kind of like a gyro.

Finished reading the "Instinct Diet," and saw "Terminator," last night

The "Instinct Diet," by Susan Roberts poses many a challenge to a person like me who isn't currently living in the United States. The book is chock full of recipes that are both full of fiber, and full of taste. Unfortunately recipes like, "Old Fashioned Hot Cereal," call for things like ancient wheat grains (emmer wheat), and whole wheat berries. While Korean super markets carry grains and flours, the grains and flours that they carry are generally variations on rice and beans. The good thing is, is that Koreans eat a lot of barley. This will come in handy for me because the "I" diet has many recipes which call for barley.

Now If were go to the year 2018, a time after Judgment day, I'm sure that people like John Connor would also have a hard time finding many of these ingredients. I feel that a prime weakness in the "I" diet is that it seems to be written for overweight, upper middle class people who have the luxury of living down the street from a Whole foods or a Trader Joe's. After Skynet goes online and starts attacking humans; people will definitely have a harder time finding ingredients such as low carb tortillas for when they make their "I" diet "Indian Kebab Wraps."

Like the people in the ruinous future, I think that I will have to find alternative means of sticking to many of the more difficult aspects of the "I" diet. For example, if I were to make a vegetable curry, instead of using white rice, I should use whole grain rice or steamed barley to get the extra fiber.

In the not too distant future, it will definitely be a challenge to get fiber when T-600's disrupt crop cultivation with their habit of firing anti aircraft munitions at carbon based life forms. Non robotic machines such as tractors and combines might also be dangerous to operate after being exposed to nuclear fallout as they might become radioactive. This would also be extremely problematic for the use of metal dinner utensils like the forks and spoons that people would use in eating things like the "I" diet's "Tuscan beans with Rosemary and Olive Oil," or "Helen's Red Flannel Cabbage."

Indeed a sample menu for a post Judgement Day world could be something like this.

Day 1 Continental Breakfast.
Kyle Reece's "Two day old Roast Coyote"

Lunch.
John Conor's quarter of a ration compote.

Dinner.
Forgotten as you try to separate the debris of your friend from the robotic limb that you shot off of the giant terminator that was putting him into a transport.

As for me I'll just have to check the Korean baking websites to see if I can get things like bran, also I should eat more salads.

People don't sit next to me on subways, whinge whinge

This has been festering in my brain for about a month now. This is a subject that I have seen a few times on other blogs, and I overheard a group of about five English speakers talking about this on a subway in Busan. I can assume that these people were other English teachers because a few were carrying backpacks on a subway.

Now, from conversations that I have heard in English, I have heard a lot of comment about how Koreans are so similar and think alike. I think that it is something of note that a lot of times, these very same people who say that all Koreans are the same end up having the same conversations about Korea.

One popular subject is about how Koreans never sit next to them on buses or subways. To this query I answer....so what?

Really.... is not sitting next so someone on a bus or subway really a big deal. The last time I was in Seoul, I took a subway where an old man decided he had to vomit all over the place. The man even lacked the common courtesy to get off of the damn train. To his credit he puked in a bag for a few minutes, but he really could have gotten off at one of the stops when he started to feel sick. He could have horked all over the third rail if he had to go that bad, at least no one would have had to have stepped in it, or better yet found a bathroom. He instead, decided that he had to stay on the train until it was finally his stop, while intermittently cleaning up his red chunks with a napkin.

Yes, I'm sure it is all good to say that you wish that Koreans would sit next to you on buses and subways, but if you are from largely depopulated masses like North America or Australia, I'm willing to bet that you enjoy the extra leg room.

Secondly, I wonder if these people wishing for bus and subway companions enjoy the free English lessons that they have to give to the people that do sit next to them from time to time. In another post I told a story about a woman who was intent on preventing me from enjoying my lunch. Since then I have made a bus friend in a retired elementary teacher who seems to be in his seventies.

Now this guy seems extremely nice, but his volume is also extremely loud. I don't mind talking to him about how Communism is bad and how democracy is good, but I wish it could be at a lower volume so that the other passengers don't get annoyed. My last conversation with him also seemed to be after he had a lunch of garlic and alcohol. Once again, don't really mind the conversation, but for all of the people wishing that people would sit next to them, they should bear in mind the consequences of what really happens when people sit next to them when they take public transportation.