Mixed Pickle

"I didn't order this shit to bug you, I really like it."

So says my friend the vegetarian.  Apparently he actually enjoys eating the Indian dish, mixed pickle. 

We had planned the day well in advance.  I was going to try some spicy Indian food, and he was going to film the results.  I was going to start off eating something mild and then build my way up to something spicy.  Instead of wading into the pool, I ended up diving in head first.

It did not go well. 

The only consolation was that we had 2 minutes of very good footage as I struggled to eat the very spicy dish.  Biting into it I thought it was going to be mild.  It wasn't.

Unfortunately, the footage we got was not usable.  It was upside down and we both know so very little about computers that we don't know how to fix the problem. 

I really didn't want to try it again.  I''ll admit it.  I'm a wimp when it comes to eating spicy food.  Maybe that's why those kimchi guys were laughing so hard last week.

Seeing is believing so don't take my word for it.  Reluctantly I did a second take and this time we had the camera right side up.  I hope you enjoy.

Plus I know I've pissed off a lot of people over the years, so some people just might enjoy seeing me squirm a little. 

Take care, and bon appetite.

Rymr.

here is the link to the video: http://youtu.be/iZqdvR-SpMA

"Very Spicy Samgyeopsal"

(Editor’s Note: I don’t want to get sued so I’m not going to name the ‘Korean’ restaurant I went to yesterday.  Plus the owner was very nice and we had a great conversation about Korea.  He introduced me to one of the kimchi chefs, who was from Anyang, the place where I was a public high school teacher for two years.)

Wooden chop sticks???

A Korean restaurant should not have wooden chopsticks.  The concept just seems so ridiculously insane.  Now, the novice, who wouldn’t know what the hell they were talking about (even if they meant well) would not have a problem using wooden chopsticks at a Korean restaurant.  The only problem is they would be wrong.

It is so wrong.

In Korea the chopsticks are long, thin, and metal.  The chopsticks I was given were short, thick, and made of wood. 

I went to the restaurant with my Korean friend Hee seop, my partner in the Red River College Mentorship program which pairs up an international student with a local one.  I thought this was a good way to give back considering I had been helped by so many people while I was in Korea and I was interested to find out what it was like for a Korean to live in Canada.

I picked up Hee seop from the College at around 2 pm.  I had looked up the location of several Korean restaurants and many of them were located in the same area along Pembina hwy.   It’s a good thing I had Hee seop with me or I might have gotten lost.  I thought the best way to get to Pembina hwy from William/Princess was to go down Main Street to get to confusion corner (I’m not even sure if that’s possible)

I asked Hee seop and he said the quickest way to get to Pembina Hwy from the College was to go down Donald St, so that’s what we did.  A few minutes later we were driving down Pembina.

(In my defense, even though I’ve technically lived in Winnipeg for over 30 years, I’ve only lived in the city for the last 8 months, consecutively.  Hee seop’s been here for over a year.  That’s way longer than I’ve been here.  Therefore it’s not shameful at all to get directions from him.)

On the way into the restaurant we were approached by a local filmmaker who was helping out with a documentary about these Koreans who travel around the world and get people to try kimchi.  If you don’t know what kimchi is, it’s made out of a cabbage that they ferment somehow, I think. I’m not really sure.  I chose to do Korean pottery and not the  “learn how to make your own kimchi” seminar.

I never really liked kimchi, but I have had it before so I am allowed to say that.  It is a little bit spicy, depending on the kind it is and whether or not the person eating it is used to eating spicy food.  At my public school in Korea there were three things that were a part of the meal every day: rice, soup, and kimchi.  Of the three, the only one I ate was the rice and I had to learn to like rice and only did so because I was so hungry and when I get that hungry almost anything will taste good.

 I never had kimchi in the school cafeteria once.  Mostly I ate just rice as fish was all too often the side dish that went with rice. (I learned from Hee seop that rice is always considered the main part of the dish, and that rice isn’t a side dish.  In Korea it’s considered ‘rice and chicken’, and not ‘chicken and rice’.

Since the filmmakers doing the filming were from Korea I felt obligated to help them out.  After all, I had been a government employee for two years and their taxes had paid for my salary.

I must have been doing something funny as I chewed the kimchi.  It wasn’t overly spicy or as strong as some of the kimchi I had tried in Korea.  I wasn’t sure why they were laughing at me as I ate.  Apparently this is a joke that I just don’t get.

They seemed pleased with the footage they shot of me and I am hoping that I make the final cut and appear in the documentary.  It might even make it onto one of the big networks, like MBC, or KBS.

The food in the restaurant wasn’t bad.  I’m sure if a person didn’t know any better they might have confused it with authentic Korean food.  I didn’t.

It only took a few minutes for the meat to cook.  In Korean BBQ they cut the meat up into tiny, thin pieces to make it cook faster.

Part of the experience of authentic Korean BBQ is that the meat is cooked at the table it is served at.  There’s a small bbq pit like hole in the table and there are hot coals placed inside the pit with a grill over the pit.  Above that a vent can be lowered down to suck up most of the smoke.

I used to love going to Korean BBQ while I lived there.

I once went to my favourite Korean BBQ place in Anyang with the gym teacher at my school.  He was used to eating lunch with me at school in the cafeteria where I mainly ate rice and shied away from a lot of things because I was worried they were too spicy.

Apparently, the name of my favourite restaurant in Korea was “Very Spicy Samgyeopsal”.  It was written in giant Hangul letters on the outside of the restaurant.   Even though I’d been in Korea for three years I’d never bothered to learn how to read the alphabet, even though it was very easy because it was written phonetically and only took a few hours to learn.

“Very Spicy Samgyeopsal” is an awesome restaurant and I give it 5 out of 5 stars.  For a very afforadable price the thick samgyeopsal is the best I’ve ever had in my life.  For a truly authentic Korean meal, that is the place to go to.  Unfortunately it would cost about 2000 dollars to fly there, so it just might not be worth it.

Til then I’m gonna have to continue my search in Winnipeg because (name of ‘Korean’ restaurant withheld to prevent a possible lawsuit) isn’t it.

The CFL can still go...

After the 2011 Grey Cup I swore I'd never go to another CFL game ever again.

When the Bombers lost to Saskatchewan at the Banjo Bowl this year I couldn't stop laughing at what I thought was the dumbest decision made in the history of pro sports.  My brother, who is still a Bomber fan, threw something at me.  I guess he didn't think it was funny.

When I was a kid my dad had season tickets behind the visitor's bench in the front row on the 45 yard line.  I'm old enough that I got to see Warren Moon play live as he destroyed the Bombers, and the fans were denied a free meal at 'The Old Spaghetti Factory".

Ray Jauch was the coach and he lived down the street on Assiniboine.  His son went to the same school I did, and he was very nice and new everyone.

My favourite player was Dieter Brock, who would wind up starting for the LA Rams of the NFL before being forced to retire due to injury.  Before leaving the CFL, the Bombers traded him to Hamilton for another Bomber legend and favourite player of mine, #2, Tom Clements (Brock wore 5)

When the Bombers played the Ticats in the Grey Cup that year, a lot of people in town had "Brock Buster" t-shirts with his old number 5 in a crossed out circle.  It was awesome when the Bombers won to capture the Grey Cup for the first time in a long time.

Other favourite players of mine growing up were, Willard Reaves (38), Tyrone Jones (35, I met him), Trevor Kennard (3, met him too), Bob Cameron (6, played forever), James Murphy (21), James 'wild' West (58), Chris Walby (63), and Rick House (31), among others.

I used to join in with the drunks (at the time I didn't know they were drunk, they just got rowdier in the second half, after consuming a lot of beer) as we hurled insult after insult on the visiting team.  It's probably the reason I'm still such a lippy/sarcastic person.

One of the most memorable games I went to was the game where Matt Dunigan threw for over 700 yards to set a league record.  It was a fluke that I was there because my dad didn't have the season tickets anymore and we all had just sort of stopped going to the games and caring about the team.

We sat in the really cheap seats in the end zone, and bumped into my grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Gunther, who was happy that a former student had said hello to her.  We were young and wasted and the experience seemed surreal.  It was almost like we were watching someone play techmo bowl.  It didn't seem like we were watching a real game.  There was just no way someone could pass for that many yards in a real, single game.

It was funny that the subject of the Dunigan game up while I was at the game on Saturday.  Even stranger was the person who was talking about it.  Craig Hodginson was someone that I had gone to high school with and hadn't seen or talked to, in over a decade.

Out of the 25, 426 (I can't auto fail my blog) people watching a game where the 4-11 Bombers were defeated by the (whatever Calgary's record is, I don't have time to look it up right now), to eliminate the Bombers from the post season, I thought it was pretty funny that I would bump into "Hodgy", as he had been called in high school, way back in 1994.

Now 'Hodgy" (I won't refer to him as that in my article for class) is all grown up.  He's married, has two kids and is a physical therapist.  He also gave me a super awesome story (thank you so much Hodgy/Universe)

It certainly was a coincidence, but not the biggest coincidence I've ever had.  That took place in 2008 in Korea at a baseball game with my parents who were visiting from Canada.  Before the game we went to Burger King for lunch and after we were done my dad stepped outside to have a cigarette.  I sat at the table with my mom as she finished her meal.

My dad turned and started to talk to someone.  The funny thing was I knew the person he was talking to, but hadn't seen or talked to him in at least 6 years.  It was Norm, someone I had gone to University with and that I knew was also in Korea, working as an English teacher.  I just hadn't seen him in the 6 months I had been there.  I thought it was funny that this was how I met him and he was the first person my dad chose to speak to going to a baseball game in Korea.  (Norm was happy to talk to my dad because my dad had a goldeye hat on and Norm recognized a little piece of home.  It was actually funny to hear Norm tell it from his point of view.  He was on his way to a baseball game when an old man asked him a question.  He recognized the hat and started to talk to him.  At this point I came over and said hello.)

There was no way I could have known that Hodgy was going to be at the game.  I did not pick where I was going to sit.  My seat was chosen randomly and it could've been anyone who happened to sit a few rows back in the same section where Hodgy has shared season tickets with his dad and one of his friends for the last 15 years.

Small world.

I left for Korea in November of 2007 and I know for a fact that I have not seen or talked with him since.  I'd lost all contact with Hodgy long before I left for Korea.  We had never been all that close to begin with.  We ran with different crowds in high school, and rarely would our crowds mix.  In grade 12 we would sometimes hangout at the same party with friends of friends but that was about it.

The most direct contact I had with him was we were both on the soccer team in grade 12.  We were also the two fastest beer chuggers at our school, and we had a lot of good drinkers who were very competitive.  Hodgy was the undisputed champ and had never been beaten until I beat him at a party after the grad car wash.  We had a rematch and he got his title back but for a brief moment I was the champ.  In University we both competed on the same beer olympics team placing second in the competition, but by that time I had lost  my touch and could no longer chug a beer in under 3 seconds like I could in high school.  Back then my time was about 2.3 seconds to chug a beer.  Damn I was fast.

Oh, I think I was supposed to write about why I swore that I was never going to go to a CFL game ever again, after the 2011 Grey Cup.  It wasn't because the Bombers lost, it was because I couldn't even watch it.

The CFL does not care about its fans if they live outside of North America.  They do not stream or provide any access to games for people who live there.

In 2007, the first time I was in Korea, I was able to watch the Bombers lose the Grey Cup game live by paying 10 buck to stream it online.  In 2011, this was not possible.  I sent the league an E-mail asking them about this but they never got back to me.  They even got rid of all of the illegal feeds making it impossible to watch the game.

*Oh, I did eat while I was at the game but I didn't try anything new.  I was really looking forward to having a big pretzel but I was very disappointed. For 5 dollars all I got was a cold piece of bread with lots of salt on it.  I didn't even finish it.  After that I bought something for 5 dollars and thought I was going to be trying something new.  I'd never had a 'nip' before, but it turns out it's just another word for cheesburger.

Can anyone explain to me why they call it that?

Two thumbs down.

**Thanks for the free ticket, I guess. (I still would have liked to have watched the Grey Cup last year, even though we didn't win)

Happy thanksgiving: Death to Turkeys!!!

Pre-Game

I love turkey.  living without it in Korea almost drove me mad.  The only time you could get it was at Christmas time or during American Thanksgiving.  It was one of the things I missed, like Salt n Vinegar chips, certain chocolate bars, and slurpees.  There’s no bigger tease in the world than to go into a 7-11 and for there not to be a slurpee machine.  I mean, what’s the point of having a 7-11 without a slurpee machine? 

Today I am writing about my first Canadian Thanksgiving in 3 years, so I guess I should talk a little about what I am thankful about. 

I am very thankful to be back in my home city, even if I enjoy complaining about every little thing too much.

I am thankful to be living in a country that is not currently at war with another country that borders it to the north, and has nuclear weapons aimed at its capital.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a family dinner with my mom.  A lot of the kids I remember are now all grown up (I think).  Some of my cousins even have kids of their own. (Don’t think I’ve met any of them)

I think the last time I went to a family thanksgiving with my mom my brother still had hair (or was he going with the come over then?) and I still had a crooked nose and a big gap between my front two teeth.

Post Game

The turkey dinner I had today was excellent and cooked to perfection, reminding me of why I used to like thanksgiving so much.  30 years ago, when I was growing up, there were only 2 days out of the year where I got to eat turkey.  They were at Christmas and at thanksgiving. 

The other day I was reminded of one of those Christmas dinners that we spent out in Altona with my grandparents, who were both Mennonites.  There was not enough room at the dinner table, so the women had to wait in the other room as the men (including young boys like me at the time) got to eat first, even though the women had done all of the cooking and had set the table. 

I did try something I’ve never tried before today and it was cranberry sauce, in honour of the occasion.   

Apparently, some people like to eat it with their turkey.  Now that I have tried cranberry sauce I can safely say that I am not one of these people.  It was way too tangy and sweet.  It was so bad that I started to make that same face that I made last week when I tried the pie, but I was able to restrain myself.  I had to explain it to the chef once again that it was not their cooking that was the problem but that it was me. (it’s not you, it’s me)

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving.  Death to turkeys!!!