Korea and Gluten and The Future

Hello, readers.

I am back in Seoul, in Korea. I have an iPod now. It tells me real-time bus information and the weather and nearby restaurants and also sometimes I listen to music on it. My students have complimented its fuschia-ness, as well.

Sweet potato tacos with pineapple slaw. Also, beans. Gluten-free tortillas.
The Wild Cow in Nashville.

One of the things that occurred to me during my sojourn into the U.S., was how much it had actually weighed on me, the explaining to Koreans what it means to be allergic to gluten, as well as a vegeterian. Sometimes, in Korea, it is quite simple. People understand. They are considerate and accommodating, where accommodation is reasonable (such as, "Please don't put the wheat tortillas on the plate with my naked fajita."). Sometimes, though, it is less simple and seems to involve explaining that fish and chicken and pork are all meat and once, truly, someone did refuse to not put the wheat tortillas on my plate for reasons that escaped me at the time but which I chose later to imagine involved their being quite attached to the way they believed a plate of food should be arranged in terms of color and shapes.

Huevos rancheros as had at The Laughing Seed Cafe in Asheville, NC. Note, that is tofu, not eggs.
And they were yummy. And, yes, those stalagmite formations are gluten-free.

I respect obsessive attention to detail, so I was happy with my made-up reason.

All of this is to say that I will continue to eat out and learn more and useful ways to explain things in Korean and also that I bought a toaster oven.

Hopefully, it will arrive soon.

This is a boston cream pie cake. It is gluten-free. It can be had at The Posana Cafe in Asheville.
Most everything is gluten-free here. Everything everything is good.

And then I will bake things according to ratio's in the way currently being expounded by the Gluten-Free Girl of Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef.

She, and other blogging people, are calling it The Ratio Rally.

Vegetable tempura at Posana.

This month is pancakes. I made some this morning. My mix of flours included buckwheat, oat, brown rice, and teff, as well as the starches of tapioca and potato.

I used soybean milk, too.

They were tasty. I failed to take pictures.  I promise not to in future times. There are many more pancakes to make. You will see them.

It's possible this blog will begin to have many pictures of food, both as fun-ness and as motivation to not stop making tasty things as inspired by both Nashville and Asheville's astounding plenty of yum: pictures of which have decorated this post.

Other people do this cooking and picture thing. Gluten-free girl, for one, as well as Alien's Day Out, whose quixotic attempt to remain vegan in Korea has often inspired me, if not to be vegan, then at least to remain vegetarian in the face of those occasional Korean questions/temptations as to whether chicken might not be some kind of un-meat.

I enjoy reading these people. Much in the way that I write stories due to my love of reading stories, or often blog because of my love of reading blogs, I imagine the chronicling of my food adventures in Korea will follow a familiarly imitative and celebrative path.

We'll see. You never know with the future and food. Once we have replicators I don't know what we'll do.

Spring rolls at Posana.

Happy #foodisgood, readers.


ttfn.