Keeping vampires at bay
I had another pretty scattered day, probably the fallout from the previous couple of days. Our writing bootcamp didn’t kick me into the right gear, and I ended up doing a 20 minute meditation in the middle of it to try and get me back into the present, rather than all sorts of worries or plans about the future. While it did not help really to kick me into a hard-core teaching and research flow, I found myself making plans for a healthy dinner: rice, tofu, miso-soup (erm, bean paste with hot water), sigeumchi namul (spinach, Korean style) and oi namul (cucumber, Korean style). [Disclaimer: I haven’t used these recipes yet. I base my concoctions on Judy Hyun’s Korean Cookbook)
Does anybody else laugh at the instructions “1 clove of garlic” for a pound of spinach? Please raise your hand! I put two in there for a fraction of the amount, and it tastes just right to me. Same with the cukes. I love me some fresh garlic – vampires beware! Incidentally, I lived in Korea in 2002-03, right during the SARS (now SARS CoVid-1, I guess?) outbreak. The rumour was that it never took hold in Korea because all the kimchi and other garlic-laced dishes killed off the virus. I doubt there is scientific evidence for that, but just for fun, can anybody try to correlate per capita garlic consumption and Covid19 cases in the current crisis? But it definitely helps against vampires: haven’t seen any of those around tonight! And my crunchy craving was partly satisfied: the cucumber is salty, and the toasted seaweed is a snack in Korea much like salted potato crisps in Western countries, often consumed with a beer.
A good diet with fresh veggies is essential to keep functioning well. While I wish I could subsist on biscuits (cookies for you Americans reading this) and cake and ice cream, I know from half-hearted attempts at such a diet that it doesn’t serve me or my cognitive skills. But this is healthy, tasty, and vegetarian, so it’s good for me, and for the planet. Quarantine kitchen does not have to be boring!