Winter Camp Lunch, Week Two

The first consecutive week of winter camp is in the books and man, am I tired.

Let’s take a look at what we ate, shall we?

Monday’s lunch featured a very mild tteokbokki and fish cake, sliced fried potatoes and ketchup, rice, what I thought was fried tofu but a student told me was actually fried cheese, some soy sauced chicken, quail eggs, a slice of sausage, two pieces of crab, some stir-fried anchovies, and pink radish cut into cute little hearts.

I found the meal to be a little bland overall, so I’m giving it a 6/10.

Tuesday’s lunch was a mini bulgogi burger with lettuce, cheese, tomato and pickle, along with some mini chicken nuggets as well as some sauced chicken nuggets. We also had some nice yubuchobhap and for dessert, we had a tangerine and a mini chocolate macaron.

This was easily a 9/10 for the variety and sweet treats.

Wednesday was another traditional Korean lunchbox with rice, samgyeopsal and mushroom, salad with the boring citrus dressing, kimchi, spicy cucumber, quail eggs, sliced pepper and garlic, ssam-jang and the other oil-based dipping sauce.

This is my least favorite of the Korean lunchboxes we receive. I’m scoring it a 4/10.

Thursday we had spaghetti… and rice. We also had a shrimp and corn salad, fish cake, sliced radish, kim mari 김말이 (deep-fried seaweed and glass noodle roll), and tonkatsu with some barbecue dipping sauce.

Tonkatsu was introduced to Korea in the 1930s during Japanese colonialization. Over the decades, the preferred method of cooking the tonkatsu has varied widely–from making the pork cutlet much thinner and not slicing it (in contrast to the popular Japanese version, to serving it already sliced. In my experience both eating it in Japanese restaurants in Korea and ordering take-out, it is usually a thick pork cutlet that is pre-sliced.

In Korean, it is called 돈가스 (“don-ka-seu”) but my students almost exclusively refer to it as something that sounds more like “don-kass.” To be honest, I don’t know if this is how it’s supposed to be pronounced or not, but it’s what I’ve taken to calling it as well.

8.5/10

Friday was a special lunch for the kids–shrimp pizza and fried chicken. For us teachers, it was another Korean lunchbox, this time with spicy octopus as the main protein.

(Octopus was the first “outside-my-comfort-zone” food that I encountered–a baby octopus in my soup when I was visiting Thailand back in college. I took an amazing photo of it perched on my spoon, and while the soup was delicious, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

When I moved to Korea, I did try it, but discovered I didn’t like it. At my last school, if the soup had octopus in it, my fellow teachers would warn me before I went to even open the soup container. Even the smell is off-putting to me.

Recently, I visited one of my favorite restaurants in my city, a sujebi 수제비 (hand-pulled dough) restaurant. It has four items on the menu and you have to take your shoes off at the door, so you know the food is going to be amazing.

I was halfway through the soup, spooning more into my bowl, when I saw it. A piece of pink-tinged white octopus flesh. I was stunned. Had I eaten a piece of octopus? Surely I would have noticed it. They must use octopus in their broth.

After polishing off another piece of kimchi, I shrugged, and finished the soup, leaving only a little leftover dough and broth–and two small pieces of octopus.)

For Friday’s lunch, I briefly considered trying the octopus but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The rest of the lunch included salad with citrus dressing, rice, miyeokguk 미역국 (seaweed soup), kimchi, some cooked vegetables, ddangkong jorim 땅콩조림 (braised peanuts), two quail eggs, a few pieces of fish cake, and some red spicy thing that I don’t know the name of. 4/10

I was really hungry by the time I got home, so I ordered myself a special dinner of 반반 (half-and-half fried chicken. This is half sweet-and-spicy sauced boneless chicken, and half regular fried chicken. I also love chicken mu 치킨무 (pickled radish that comes with fried chicken) so I ordered two servings of it.