'Tis the season for...beverages.

I've posted a lot about food, but I haven't really talked about drinks much on here. I've been on the search for specific things recently, so I might as well write about it.

Alcohol here is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, soju is everywhere and it's pretty inexpensive. On the other hand, have fun finding something stronger than beer that isn't soju. There are fun flavors that are popular right now, but it's like flavored vodka - everyone defaults to the original.  I know stores where I can find vodka and Kahlua, but I have yet to find spiced rum. Maybe one day I will find Sailor Jerry on a shelf and do a happy dance in the middle of the store. One day.

Beer is...well, I don't care much for beer, so it probably says something for how tasteless it is that I can drink Korean beer without any problem whatsoever. In most places, you can find Japanese beers and possibly a couple American and German options alongside the Korean ones. Sometimes you'll even see Guinness, but that's much less common.

Cider is starting to pick up in popularity, albeit very slowly. I've seen Strongbow and Somersby's in a couple marts and convenience stores, but very few. I've been missing Angry Orchard like mad and thought it would a long time before I could have it again, but apparently Korea started importing it in August. I never would have known if a friend of a friend hadn't stumbled across it. My friend remembered the name because I've been constantly mentioning how much I miss it, so she immediately told me.

What did I do? I went out on an adventure with nothing but vague directions, high hopes, and a picture of the bottle my friend had received from her friends and passed on to me. (I drank it before leaving. I couldn't resist. Who cares if it's 2 p.m. here? It's midnight back in Ohio.)

I had two destinations in mind. The first was an import beer shop in Hongdae that I found on Naver, which is basically Korean Google. I didn't know if they would have what I wanted, but since it was waaaay closer than the other one, it was worth a shot.  The second was an unnamed craft beer/import beer shop somewhere in the French area of Seoul. I didn't even know there was a French area of Seoul.

The Hongdae shop was pretty easy to find, but it was tiny. Itty bitty. They had individual bottles for sale of various different beers, and I was surprised how many I actually recognized. They only had one cider, but it was the one I was looking for. Victory!

On to the mystery shop. The people who originally found the cider remembered the area of town the shop was in, but nothing beyond that. Luckily for me, it's not a huge area. I didn't even have to walk down the main street for very long before I caught sight of a sign for craft beer, and it turned out to have exactly what I was looking for. This was a combination bar/shop, and the shop area wasn't much bigger than the one in Hongdae. They also only sold by the bottle, but they had a lot more variety (and a lot more of each). Their Angry Orchard was slightly more expensive than the Hongdae shop, so I picked up a couple ciders that I haven't tried before instead.  I had no idea if it was good or not, but there was a deal where I got a free glass if I bought two bottles of it, so I figured I might as well.

So, all in all, it was a productive adventure!

(One of these days I'm going to remember to start taking pictures of everywhere I go so I don't have gigantic boring chunks of text on my blog. One day. Maybe. Possibly.)

More baking!

Yes, another post about food. There isn't a whole lot else to write about in winter. Besides, life is so much happier with an oven.  It really is.  I've already posted pictures of my scones, but I've made quite a few other things since that first batch.

 

Chocolate chip cookies~ They weren't perfect, but I think my brown sugar mixture was just a bit off. They were still quite good, and I'll be able to fix it for next time.

(Please ignore the derp cookie that's sitting front and center. That was the heel of the roll, so it was doomed from the start. The other side of it looked nice, though.)

These cookies were SO. MUCH. FREAKING. WORK. A coworker and I stayed up until 4am on a Thursday night and 2am the following night so we could make cookies for our students, who had to come in for Saturday classes on Valentine's Day. We thought it would be cute to make heart-shaped sugar cookies.  My coworker found a video and recipe for sugar cookies with shapes in the middle and sprinkles on the outside, so we decided to try to make them. It looked easy enough.

NO.

It was easy to do, but it took an eternity. Thursday night we made four rolls of what were basically slice-and-bake sugar cookies with sprinkles on the outside. Like I said, we were up until 4am...and we were finished mixing the dough at, like, 11pm. 

Eventually we gave up and put the remaining dough back in the fridge for Friday night, when we would do most of the baking. We decided to just roll out the rest of the dough and cut heart shapes out of it instead of trying to make fancy cookies with heart shapes in the middle. 

Grand cookie total: Three hundred. 

Yes. We made three hundred cookies for our students (and coworkers). No, I will not EVER do that again. Next time it'll be something that's less effort.

I grabbed mini loaf pans when I went shopping for the Valentine's Day cookies, so when Ingrid had some very ripe bananas and I found some bananas on special at Homeplus because they were starting to turn a bit brown, I knew it was time for banana bread.  It turned out really well, but I think I'm going to add a bit more cinnamon next time. The recipe called for half a teaspoon, but I think it needs more than that.

Next endeavor: pumpkin bread. I have a can of pumpkin sitting in my pantry, and it's the exact same brand I used back in the US.  It's gonna be awesome. 

Meanwhile, my apartment still smells like banana bread. Awesome.

Scone saga

I love baking. Baking is my favorite thing to do in the kitchen. Looove it.  Unfortunately, most Korean apartments and houses do not have ovens. This meant that even though I know how to make wonderfully delicious baked things, I was not able to.

Until now.

My parents decided to be awesome and get me a toaster oven for Christmas. A large one. My mother also included my pastry mixer and scraper along with some measuring spoons in my Christmas box, which made me feel much more at home in my kitchen. Since then, I have been on a search for all the necessary ingredients for scones. Baking soda and baking powder were a bit of an adventure, and buttermilk was all but impossible. White vinegar to add to milk for a buttermilk substitute was also a pain, but eventually Costco came to the rescue. Today the final piece came together: baking sheets.  The trip out to a supposed "baking street" was a bit frustrating at times, but eventually very rewarding.  I now know of multiple stores with baking supplies, from cookie cutters and loaf pans to melting chocolate and food coloring.  On the way back to the subway, I even ran across at least a dozen shops selling yarn - talk about a bonus!

Immediately upon returning home, I began my endeavor of making delicious little treats with (mostly) unfamiliar equipment.  Preparing the dough was reasonably easy, except for the part where my mixing bowl was too small so I spilled flour all over myself. I always spill flour on my shirt. Always. This time, however, it got on my shirt, pants, floor, and counter. Whoops.

Unfamiliar ovens are always scary. There is no way of knowing if you'll accidentally overcook or undercook your food because it could be finnicky. Also, Fahrenheit to Celsius is a problem. So is the fact that my oven's instruction manual was all in Korean. 

MY SCONELESSNESS IS FINALLY OVER!!!!

 

The only casualty of the evening was the oven mitt that came with my oven. All I did was try to grab the baking sheet that the scones were on, and this happened. Apparently this oven mitt was not designed to be used with hot things, which begs the question of what exactly it was designed to do. Look pretty hanging on a hook? Thanks, I'll get a functional one that does the same thing.  Luckily I had a clean hand towel, so I was able to use that to handle the baking sheet.

My scones ended up darker on the outside than I typically make them, but the inside was perfect. I'm really looking forward to learning more about this oven's nuances and trying some new things~

Boo cold :(

I hate cold. Hate hate hate. If hell exists, it is not fire; it is ice. I spend most of my evenings wearing the warm pj pants and socks my grandma made for me and drinking tea. Going outside is kept to a minimum.  It doesn't help that my hat, which is super warm, is also kinda tight on my head and therefore irritates my cartilage piercing. Those suckers take for-freaking-ever to fully heal, and mine is at the point where I forget about it except when I have to put on a shirt with a tight collar, accidentally get too close with the hairdryer, or some idiot at the club isn't looking where he's throwing his arms and elbows me right in the ear. That last one really did happen a couple weeks ago and it made my ear bleed a bit. Grumble grumble. I had plans to change my earring the next day, but NOPE. Not gonna happen when it's sore.

Ahem. Anyway. Cold.

I've also been getting the sniffles, which I've been keeping largely at bay with vitamin C supplements and a number of cups of tea per day that I would rather not disclose out of possible-though-unconfirmed embarrassment. I will, however, say that I might need to order tea again sooner than I expected, even though I steep my loose tea 2 or 3 times per portion. I will also admit that the (partially-used) box of fillable tea bags that my mother included in my first care package has been entirely used up. Whoops. I am now down to my reusable infusers and the full box of bags I brought with me. No comment on how much tea is left.

Today was the first sticking snow in my part of Seoul. I think I remember hearing something about snow in other parts before now and there were definitely flurries sometime last week, but the snow today actually turned things white. It was a dusting, but it turned to ice once the sun set and I nearly slipped and fell when I went out to get my pizza from the delivery guy.  My current shoe options are heels or old and worn-out Converse. Tomorrow I have a haircut in the morning and a birthday event in the evening, so I plan on getting myself some fur-lined snow boots sometime in between. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some HeatTech as well. I already have hot packs at the ready. I DON'T PLAY AROUND WHEN IT COMES TO COLD, GUYS.

I also have been wanting to go geocaching lately but haven't been able to because screw going out in the cold and wind by myself to search for itty bitty microcaches. I do think I converted one of the Korean teachers by accident, though - she seemed utterly fascinated when I was explaining the concept after she overheard me talking about why I wanted a trackable something-or-other to one of the other English teachers. I might have to brave the cold just so I can take her out to find a couple caches and show her how much fun it can be.