Tag Archives: Korea

Grocery shopping with recipes in mind (and a giveaway!)

Korean grocery store/mall all in one!
Massive fruit and veggie area through and to the right;
to the left it’s a regular mall area with Korean products
They are really into cooking up samples with their products
There are five to ten chef stations where they cook food samples
including meats in various sauce, samples of something you could make at home.
Two other chef stations, must have been about seven that day,
sometimes there are at least ten!
The grocery store has a housewares section in the back;
Notice: I put a rectangle around the women’s grocery cart (right, at bottom),
she bought tons of greens and meat.
That’s what almost everyone’s cart looks like…

I love to shop for groceries. My husband and I always shopped together before we had our kid and it was just fun to take our time and buy fun things. We don’t really have a favorite or “usual” grocery store as we just go where we please (“Trader Joe’s today?” “Great!”).

But sometimes we’ll make a special trip to the Korean grocery store/mall called Assi (sort of an unfortunate name — I don’t even know how to say it!) or to the Japanese equivalent Mitsuwa. I spent most of my twenties obsessed with Mitsuwa. It feels like entering Japan, which is just plain cool. In both “grocery malls” everyone is Asian and there also are restaurants set up in a little mini-food courts with many types of Asian food (only). I like to eat and shop, what can I say!

I am learning how to shop with recipes in mind. I’m a decent cook, but I’m not the kind of person who can “wing it.” I need to sit down and plan out meals (sometimes opening a cookbook, sometimes just writing out a meal plan with my standard meals) and then look through the fridge and cupboards to see what I have on hand.

I think what is telling about the last shot (above) is that the grocery cart is full of greens and meat — whole foods. My cart has boxes and packaging in it — I aspire to a cart full of basically greens and meat. Everyone who shops at Assi has a cart like that, especially if they are on the older side. These shoppers are probably fantastic home cooks who can throw together great meals with basic ingredients. It’s no wonder than Asian people who stick to a traditional diet (non-Western foods) have lower incidences of cancer and obesity.

Additionally, I like how Assi has chef’s stations with mini-demonstrations of how to prepare food. American grocery stores have stopped offering samples and when there are samples it’s usually “little smokies” or a similar convenience food. At Assi there is real cooking at the stations (although Mitsuwa does not do that to the same degree) and there are many, many different stations.

Finally, there is a housewares section in Assi. So you can buy a pot to cook the food you are also buying at the same store. Basic but brilliant, no? We have elevated cooking to something regular people can’t do and so to get our housewares we have to go to department stores or stand alone shops like Crate and Barrel (love it though). At the grocery store, food and cooking should be connected.

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In the spirit of grocery shopping with recipes in mind, I’m giving away three brand-new cloth-like reusable grocery bags. I think they are adorable! Next week I’ll randomly choose three lucky readers to receive one of the below who comment on this post with tips, thoughts, or questions about grocery shopping:

Guest blogger: Korean School Lunches

Hello all, I’m an American teaching ESL in Incheon, South Korea. I teach in a largish public elementary school, grades 3 through 6, and have about 650 students (30 students per class, 6 classes per grade, with a two-week rotating schedule. Ah!). 

I’ve been reading this blog for the past month, and I think it’s wonderful. I was inspired to ask Mrs. Q if I could write about how lunch is served in my school.

First, there is no cafeteria.  Lunch in served in the classroom with the homeroom teacher present.  Extra teachers, like me, eat lunch in the science room with the principal and vice principal.  Each lunch costs W2,180 ($1.95), and is prepared fresh by the kitchen staff.  There is usually nothing in plastic (I’ve only seen seaweed and yogurt drinks in plastic).

Each classroom has a cart with metal pots full of food, and metal chopsticks, spoons, and trays. The kitchen staff delivers the carts to each floor and then the students push their cart to the classroom.  Everyone eats lunch at the same time for 50 minutes.  This is also considered recess.  I should mention that classes are 40 minutes long with a 10 minute break between classes.  Students can do anything they want in that 10 minutes.  They usually run, scream, gossip, and wrestle in the hallways.  It’s 10 minutes of chaos.

The menu always consists of some form of rice, soup, meat, vegetable, kimchi, and sometimes fruit.  Purified water is available in the hallway (no milk, no knives!).  Surprisingly the food rarely gets cold.  And if they run out of food (the kimchi was particularly good that day), one student will run to the kitchen and get some more.  Leftover soup and food is dumped into a different pot.  I believe they use some of it for compost.  There is no ‘trash can’, and many times I’ve carried around a napkin all day trying to find a trash can!

Today’s lunch was rice with bits of corn, seaweed/tofu soup, rice cakes with spicy sauce, cabbage kimchi, and stir fried beef with carrots.

Sometimes teachers complain that the food isn’t spicy enough.  I asked why and they told me it’s because some students can’t handle spicy food.  Personally, I don’t like eating rice and kimchi every day, but nobody seems to complain about that.

Lastly, here is a picture of a student eating across from his homeroom teacher.  I know that some other public schools in Korea serve lunch in a cafeteria with each grade eating at a different time.  But even then they always have fresh food cooked by the kitchen staff.

If I had a choice I would choose the Korean meals over whatever Mrs. Q is eating.  The pizza posts alone make me cringe. 

**Thanks so much to our guest blogger from Korea! She can be reached at: almalibre3(AT)gmail(DOT)com**