Happy Holidays: Best of 2014

'Tis the season to be jolly and reflect upon the previous year; and boy, was 2014 a good one!  This was Who Eats Better?'s second year on the web!

Last year's end brought a countdown of the Top 10 Tasty Adventures in 2013.  This year, thanks to a lot more readers and shares, I want to recognize the best posts of 2014.  Without further adieu, the winners are....

It's just a bit ironic that the most boring sport I've participated in, ice fishing, resulted in my most popular post this year.  Get your step-by-step guide to catching a trout here.      

Runner-Up:
Job Description: True Korean "Ajumma": Korean women over the age of 60 have been jokingly, but lovingly, dubbed the third gender of Koreans.  They are not your average grannies.  

My summary of my amazing trip to the Philippines got more likes than any post I wrote this year by a landslide.  It captured the attention of readers around the globe and got several comments on Google+ (my main platform for sharing).  If you've never considered the Philippines for vacation, you just might after reading this post.  

Runner-Up:
A Fortress Guarding Beef Ribs: I took a trip to the ancient Korean capitol of Suwon for a famous lunch and interesting history lesson.  

I turned a really easy hike into a comic book adventure.  I love to write unconventional posts like this one and spent a lot of time putting it together.  I think it's worth a look.  

While these weren't the most viewed or liked this year, they still got a decent amount of traffic and thumbs up.  

Welcome to Korea, Mom and Dad!: My two favorite people came to visit me and we ate enough for three blog posts, but I narrowed it down to one.  

Bubba Gump Chicken: Everyone loves recipe ideas and these are the epitome of simple.  Whole ingredients, what you see is what you get.  

Stay Tuned...

A lot of delicious adventures to come in 2015.  Follow the blog to stay up to date.  Happy holidays, and as always, thanks for reading!  

Two Peaks in Two Hours

There are 37 mountains within and surrounding the city of Seoul, South Korea.  While the tallest of the 37 is just over 800 meters, many of the mountains are more like glorified hills offering easy-going hiking trails and a summit reachable within an hour.  Hiking is a popular sport in Korea, but is much less about the mountain, and more about who you're with, what you're wearing, and what to eat.  I'm digging back a bit and describing one of my first hikes in Korea last fall.  What I expected to be a laid back adventure ended up unfolding in colorful scenes, sort of like a comic book.  So, that's how I'm going to present it to you.  

Two Peaks in Two Hours

If you liked this post, check out my other comic post based on The Walking Dead here. 

Bubba Gump Chicken

Over the past couple months I’ve been working hard with a personal trainer to build more lean muscle.  She’s also my unofficial nutritionist and has me on a high-protein diet.  Among her favorite proteins are almonds, tofu, eggs, and milk, but her most adored food by far is skinless, boneless chicken breast.  She asks me every day if it’s “on my menu” and is adamant I have chicken for dinner as much as possible.  Chicken isn’t the most common meat found in Korean recipes.  Pork and beef are much more popular, but unfortunately not as healthy as lean chicken, at least in regards to my current goals.  So I’ve had to get creative with what’s available to me locally that I can afford.  (Groceries in Seoul are among the most expensive I’ve ever seen, including when I lived in New York City.) 

I have become the “Bubba” of chicken.  You remember the lovable character of Bubba from the classic movie Forrest Gump, and his iconic shrimp scene, right?  “Shrimp is the fruit of the sea.”  As a reminder, or in case you’ve been living under a rock since 1994, here is the famous clip. 

“Anyway, like I was saying…”  Chicken is to me what shrimp was to Bubba.  I can boil it, sauté it, fry it, marinate it, BBQ it…

Here are some of my favorite chicken dinners. 

"Korean" Chicken

My trainer's personal recipe combines equal parts ketchup and oyster sauce for this simple and saucy dish.  

Chicken Stir Fry

A touch of sesame oil and soy sauce on top of brown rice.  

 

Chicken Tenders

Just pan-fried chicken strips with homemade BBQ sauce (ketchup and oyster sauce).

 

Chicken Curry

A little olive oil and curry powder go a long way.

 

Chicken Sandwich

Some homemade hummus, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and lettuce replacing one slice of bread makes the best summer sandwich.

 

Chicken Wraps

Black beans add extra protein and with brown rice as the carb, skip the tortilla and opt for lettuce (also makes it gluten-free!).

Chicken Pizza

A chicken twist on the classic Hawaiian pizza.  My homemade BBQ sauce combined with pineapple makes this a sweet and savory meal.    

 

Chicken Tacos

These tacos are so simple: what you see is what you get.  A deliciously spicy salsa is what drove these home.

 

"Rainbow" Chicken

The red cabbage is what makes this colorful dish pop.  I added some Korean red pepper paste (similar to Sriracha) to give it some zest. 

 

Thai Chicken

This Thai peanut sauce recipe is so easy (shout out to Kelly): creamy peanut butter, Hoisin sauce, and Sriracha (ratios in descending order respectively, play with the measurements, add water for a smooth consistency).

The Tourism Paparazzi

The tourism industry in Korea is on point.  With hundreds of festivals, social media groups, and weekly events and programs, it's so easy to find things to do in the city of Seoul and other areas of the country.  A lot of trips and programs are specifically geared towards foreigners, and this last weekend was no exception. 

I signed up for a trip that promised a visit to a newly renovated mine cave that they had hopes of attracting

Our free money for the day.

more foreign visitors to.  They would provide a free 45-minute private bus ride from Seoul as well as 15,000 won (about $15) to use at the town's local market.  Essentially, they were paying us to travel to the neighboring town of Gwangmyeong for the day.  Sounded like a win-win situation to me!

Upon arriving at the cave, we were greeted by smiling Koreans, many asking each of us where we're from, and then snapping a posed picture.  After being in Korea for almost a year, this wasn't particularly unusual.  Most Koreans, especially at a touristy spot, are incredibly welcoming and curious of your presence, the brave English-speaking ones approaching for more information.  I was a little caught off guard by the sheer number of Korean "reporters", but continued following the trail toward the cave.  

One of many posed pictures.

When we reached the mouth of the cave, there were even more cameras.  They distributed helmets, grouped us up, and took photos for about five minutes, yelling instructions for poses or funny things to say.  I also noticed that anyone who was Korean, or even of Asian descent, was politely asked to step out of the frame.  They only wanted the foreigners displayed.  This was about the time I was starting to wonder what exactly I'd unknowingly signed myself up for.  

"Hiding" behind the rice.

When we started our cave tour and I realized the man with the spotlight on his camera would be following our every move in the otherwise dark cave, I fished around for answers from my accompanying group members.  With a little help from our guide, we came to the conclusion that we were the models for their new promotional materials to attract more foreigners to the cave.  In case the same idea crossed your mind as did mine: no, we were never asked permission or to sign a release form.  Only in Korea.

"Hiding" behind the fruit.

When we moved from the cave to the local market, our cameramen followed.  We were filmed and photographed throughout the narrow aisles and they even squeezed inside the tiny restaurant to record us
eating lunch.  Between every bite or drink, they asked us to smile, give a toast, clink our glasses, pat our bellies and express how delicious everything tasted.  I've never been camera shy, but this was just bizarre.  Part of me reveled in their undivided attention, while the other part was simply annoyed.  Is this how a celebrity feels amid paparazzi?  

It became a sort of game with me and my fellow tourists as we toured the market.  Who can attract the most camera clicks?  The strategy was simple.  Simply look at the oranges: "click."  Pick up an orange: "click, click, click."  Buy an orange: "CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, (take a bite) CLICK, CLICK, CLICK!!!"  

When we made our way back to Seoul and no one wanted to take my picture anymore, it was bittersweet.  I'd gotten my 15 seconds of fame; it was fun, but I'm more than happy my life is not always in the spotlight.  

Jolly Times in Jeollanam-Do

Over Korean's Memorial Day weekend I traveled to the southern province of Jeollanam-do, South Korea.  Since the holiday fell on a Friday this year, I was gifted with a rare three-day weekend.  I traveled through a tour company with about 50 other foreigners.  With the amount of things packed into the trip, three days felt like a week!

Our private tour bus.

We left Seoul by private bus on Thursday night and arrived in the coastal city of Yeosu around 4am on Friday.  It was completely dark as we departed the bus and were given breakfast muffins and directions to the nearby Hyanglim Temple for sunrise viewing.  The temple is situated on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  There is nothing like a challenging climb up a mountain first thing in the morning.  My internal clock was a little off due to lack of sleep, but I think it took less than 45 minutes to reach the temple.  By the time we got there, day was just starting to break. 

Daybreak from the temple around 5 a.m. 

From the temple, there was the option to hike a bit further to the mountain’s peak.  It was about 20 minutes of some very steep climbing, but it was so worth it!  The view was incredible.  The sea was so calm, and the colors of an ocean sunrise (from the top of a mountain) created quite the living masterpiece. 

Sneaking into the cave with another girl on the tour.

After the temple and a quick nap in the grass, we headed to the small island of Odongdo (named for the Odong tree leaf it resembles).  When I say small, I mean we took our time walking around the whole thing in less than two hours.  There are many designated areas around the island with some catchy names.  The first to catch our eye was “Dragon Cave.”  I was feeling brave enough to shimmy down the rock into the water and walk a little ways into the cave before it got too dark and filled with trash and lots of rusted metal (no idea).  

Can you spot the jellyfish?  Me neither.

No dragons were spotted, but on the way back from the cave I encountered my first jellyfish.  Since I grew up far away from oceans in small-town Indiana, I naturally panicked a bit.  Even though everyone was pointing to it from above, I couldn’t see it from where I was in the water which made the whole experience all the more terrifying.  At one point I heard someone say there were two, so I thought a whole school of enormous jellyfish was heading my way.  After my new friends blindly directed me to safety and I finally laid eyes on the jellyfish for the first time, I was a little embarrassed at the amount of screams that left my mouth.  The thing was tiny and its lack of tentacles probably meant it couldn’t have stung me anyway.  Still, quite the ocean adventure for an Indiana girl. 

Later that evening we headed to Naganeupseong (Na-gun-up-song) Folk Village where we made ourselves at home in authentic traditional-style straw-roof homes.  A Korean bed-and-breakfast, if you will.  The homes are “ondol” style, meaning we sleep on mats on the heated floor.  The village is surrounded by an ancient fortress wall so it really felt like we had traveled back in time a bit.  The best part was we arrived just as the place was shutting down to tourists so it seemed we had the whole village to ourselves for the night. 

Left: a view of the entire folk village from the fortress wall; Right: my roommates and "ondol" style home for the night.

Grilling duck and veggies.

We had dinner in a local restaurant just outside the village walls where we were served BBQ duck.  It was traditional Korean BBQ style so we sat on cushions on the floor with the grill in the center of our table and were served endless amounts of raw duck and veggies with full control of the cooking.  It was delicious.  We ate more than enough. 

After dinner the majority of the group met up on the fortress wall for drinks.  It felt amazing to make new friends atop an ancient castle wall. I can only imagine a similar scene hundreds of years ago of Naganeupseong villagers sitting in the same spot, drinking makgolei, and watching the stars.  It’s something we don’t often think about, but history has a pattern of repeating itself, even the little things. 

A handful of the traveling group.

The next morning, we headed to Boseong Green Tea Fields, a nationally famous green tea plantation, and a high item on my Korean bucket list.  The land is very green and picturesque.  We did some light hiking and snacked on green tea ice cream.  If you ever encounter green tea ice cream, get the double scoops!  The stuff is delicious! 

Enjoying green tea ice cream amid a field of growing tea leaves.

Speaking of delicious, I tasted some of the best green tea I’ve ever had at a smaller plantation.  We were given the wonderful opportunity to pick our own green tea leaves and participate in a green tea-making process.  Unfortunately, said “best green tea” was by no means of my hand, but was the work of professionals.  Still, the plantation experience was lovely!  

From plantation to cup, this green tea was superb!

Bamboo for days.

Before checking into the hostel for the night, we made it to one more bucket list item: the Damyang Bamboo Forest.  It’s incredibly popular among Koreans and tourists alike and was extremely busy when we visited, but it was really fun to see so much of a beautiful foreign plant. 

For our overnight in Jeonju, a big group of us headed to a local restaurant for dalk galbi (spicy chicken stir fry).  There was an option to add cheese and ramen, which of course we did.  There is no better way to bond with strangers than an adventure followed by a scrumptious meal.  The beer and soju (Korean liquor) was flowing and being passed around tables, which was a clear indication the night wouldn’t be ending anytime soon.  The majority of us ended up at a tiny bar playing familiar nostalgic tunes and we danced until the wee hours of the morning.

A group of the late-night jokers. 

On our way north back to Seoul, we stopped off at Maisan Park for a quick hike through the valley.  The two mountains composing the valley are known simply as the “donkey’s ears” because of their physical resemblance.  However, there is a legend the peaks were formed by two gods who were trapped during their ascension to the heavens because they were seen by a local villager. 

Hard to see the "donkey's ears", but a clear view of the valley hike starting from the parking lot.

A lot of mystery surrounds Maisan Park.  Surrounding the valley’s temple year round are nearly 100 stone “pagodas” that were stacked by a single man in the 1950s and still withstand any season’s weather conditions.  Unimpressed? Listen to this: in the wintertime, water placed in a bowl freezes upwards, reaching for the sky!  That in itself makes me consider a trip back to Maisan in wintertime to witness this phenomenon for myself.  How bizarre! 

One man, one mission: stack a ton of rocks.

Overall, this trip was fantastic.  I met some wonderful people, made some great new friends, and explored a small part of this beautiful country I currently call home.  Thanks for the ongoing adventures, Korea!  

Playing the large temple drum, signaling a successful trip.