Army Base Stew

Way back in December, Joseph and I were both terribly sick with awful runny noses, coughs and sore throats.... you name it and it ached..... our Boss found out and took us, as well as our co-workers, out to a lovely lunch at a restaurant called Nolboo. It is actually owned by one of the parents of a student I teach at the Hagwon. They have several different types of this stew with different ingredients, but the idea remains the same, Get a hearty filling meal with what you have around you. It was quite spicy but unlike some korean food it had many ingredients that we could identify! It is easy to forget that not too long ago this country was at war with itself. (heck it still technically is at war with itself..... ) But for that time, many of the South Koreans lived on food provided to them from other countries. Army Base Stew, also called Meat and scraps stew, consists of mostly processed or potted meats(aka hot dogs and spam), baked beans, noodles, rice cakes, green onions, gochujang (spicy korean paste), musthrooms, tofu, kimchi and any vegetables they could find. Joseph and I have taken to this particular resturant and find ourselves here at least once every two weeks or so. We keep coming back and though we are probably VIP customers, this is the first time I actually remembered my camera.

As always, with any traditional Korean food, you get several side dishes. Kimchi (always) coleslaw ,which they called "a salad" (nope.....sorry guys) and depending on the season, you might get fish strips, fried quail eggs or acorn jelly.... sometimes, as in the night I took the pictures they bring one or two that I have NO CLUE what they are... Then they bring all the ingredients in a big pot and throw in some broth and let it begin cooking right in front of you.

You get a side of rice to help take away some of the spice. I have learned if it is too spicy, add some rice and that will help take it down a notch. I have grown accustomed to the spicy stew and can now just use the rice to soak up the broth after the main items have been eaten with chopsticks.

Delicious stew cooking right at the table. You have to be careful when there is a burner in the middle of the table, that burn I got on my arm several weeks ago has healed for the most part now, but I am sure I will have a scar for the rest of my life.... I burned it worse than I thought... Ooops!!!

You get a small dish and you dish out a few spoonfuls, you can see I got some spam in there and Joseph usually goes for the tofu or rice cake noodles. Some people think Spam is gross, but I have always been fond of it. My mom used to make spam sandwiches when I was little.

They have also re-vamped the menu recently and added a few new items to the menu, so we got some mushroom dumplings, Joseph and I love dumplings. The Korean word is Mandu.... or in this case Mandusa (little dumpling)

We love going to this particular restaurant because, as I said previously, the owner is a parent of one of my students. Nicole has been doing really well lately in class, so I have happily been giving her 100's on her work.... also around this time we started receiving free pepsi's with our dinner. Maybe we are VIP's because we go to this restaurant so much or maybe that is a thank you from a parent... I don't know... All I know is I always write cute messages on Nicoles homework! Yes, I can be bought with free Pepsi! (Although Nicole is really smart and doesn't need my help much anyway!)

That is all for now!