Happy Birthday Jesus

Somewhere in amongst the hail of merry Christmases and happy new years that people have been wishing upon their family, friends, and colleagues something has gone horribly wrong. At some stage, the gap between Christmas and New Years has been forgotten. This festive perineum should be the time with the most luck and blessing attached to it, being it the time that most people have away from work, with their families and loved ones. If people are looking forward to any time of the year to be merry it would likely be this part of the year that they spend at home or on holidays with those they care about.

With this in mind, I wish you all a merry festive perineum.

The past week has been spent enjoying the city of Jeonju for a few days, attending Christmas functions and watching a bit of television.
Jeonju is known for a few things, nothing huge and touristy but a reputation for food is something that will always have my interest. Dol sot bi bim bap (beef, egg and Vege's served in a hot stone bowl) is a favourite food of mine, and this is its hometown. Suffice to say a few big meals were eaten. Korean food is generally served with a few panchan (side dishes) that everyone shares, these are little salads, preserves, and other assorted tidbits. The quantity and quality of panchan served in jeonju is absolutely amazing, imagine a table full of side dishes all with a different flavour and texture to complement and contrast the taste of the dish that you had ordered. I am firmly in favour of the panchan concept. There was a slightly difficult moment when an octopus, still completing the rather complicated process that is waving hello with 8 prehensile limbs, when a large pair of scissors quite literally cut the greeting short. Watching the tentacles dance their final dance in a pan of boiling soup does make one stop to reflect a little. In a place where refrigeration was not a commonplace item during the creation and popularization of these dishes, one can understand how a procedure of proving the freshness of key ingredients became important. Fresh Octopus is considered a delicacy to the point were there is a rather dangerous custom of eating the smaller ones live. A dangerous custom due to the tendency of the food to exact a final revenge be suckering onto the epiglottis and choking the eater to death. All that in mind, the killing of the suckered snack at the table was to prove the quality of the food so that I had no doubt that I was receiving delicacy quality ingredients, something I can't complain about as it had to die at some stage during the preparation of the meal.

The meat was a little tough; perhaps the Octopus was a little tense.