Dinner with someone's best friend

On Saturday, I decided to gather the ingredients for pumpkin pie and do a trial-run, to make sure I can make a decent tasting pie for Thanksgiving. I don't do many things well, but baking is one of the few. So I take pride in my confections and need to be sure I don't serve anybody any crap.
So after a morning haircut and nice long coffee/visit with my Korean friend Hannah, I turned on my iPod and headed for the bus stop to make a quick trip to Home Plus (the department store/grocery store 20 minutes away). While I was waiting I looked up to see Kevin and Keith heading my way. Turns out they were going to Home Plus too. So we combined forces and went together. We had a quick lunch at McDonald's, which we all rather regretted eating, since we're now accustomed to eating REAL food. But then we shopped around for a while. We delighted in coming across the Christmas Corner of the store, and perusing the Konglish Christmas cards and listening to the music playing on a cd player.
It turned in to a several-hour excursion, but it was fun. I finally made it home and began preparing to make my pumpkin pie. First I had to bake the pumpkin. There are only 2 options for pumpkins here....big pale orange ones or little green ones. I guess the latter is more of a squash, perhaps. Anyway I went with the green ones since they looked about the size of the pie pumpkins I used back home. So I baked one pumpkin and meanwhile began making the pastry crust, which I have never done before and was unsure of. After the pumpkin was finally done, I only had an hour before I was set to meet Kevin for dinner, so I set it all aside to finish afterward.

I met Kevin at the park in my old neighborhood and we went together to the restaurant which was just down the street. It had traditional-style seating so we removed our shoes and sat down on the floor at a table near the kitchen. The only other customers were a handful of old men and women. This is about what we expected in such a restaurant.
Because you see, we were about to try 보신탄 (that's Bo Shin Tahng). For those of you unfamiliar with this Korean dish, 탄 (tahng) means soup. Literally the term means 'self-protecting soup'. Or, in other words, Dog Soup.

Yes, Dog Soup.

Here we are about to dig in...



Overall it wasn't bad. Kevin liked it more than I did. Basically it's just a boiling hot soup/thin stew, with chunks of meat, seasonings, chilli paste, some kind of leaves (spinach? radish?)...and then something that at first I thought were mushrooms. But on closer inspection they appeared to have some meat on them. So we figured perhaps it was strips of skin? But we didn't know for sure. We didn't really want to know. Anyway the meat was only so-so. It was rather fatty. It had been boiled so it was all quite tender. And the seasoning was pretty good. In a way it was reminiscent of pot roast, with it's fat and stringiness. But it was also somewhat greasy.
At one point the proprietress came over and showed me the proper way to eat it. One of the side dishes contained a mixture of salt, oil, chilli paste and bean paste. So it should be mixed together and the meat dipped in. It did give it a lot more flavor. I ate all of the good meat chunks out of it, but mostly focused my meal on the kimchi. They had really good kimchi.
Presumably since we are so far from their usual clientele, she later came and gave us some fresh oranges for dessert. They were quite delicious as well.

The restaurant also serves the meat in another manner, in a sort of stir fry. Kevin assured me that next time we'd bring the whole crowd and try it that way.
Next time? hrm...

While I was eating this meal I marveled at the unexpected turns my life has taken to get me to that exact point. I'm doing things here..EATING things here that I never would have imagined. It's a good thing. I'm exactly where I need to be.

Next Saturday we are hosting our Orphan Thanksgiving. So far we've got about 12 people attending. Should be interesting.

At least the pumpkin pie is good.

안녕히 주무세요
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