still hungry

I'm just speaking for myself here, but I do not like to be surprised by baby octopus in my food.  There is a certain level of mental preparation that needs to go into eating something with tentacles.  This has become pretty difficult being that octopus seems to be the ground beef of Korea.  Octopus Helper anyone? My anxiety toward food surprises such as this have become more than unnerving, they are now downright upsetting.  So much so that my baby octopus surprise this week nearly sent me into a rage and it's really put a strain on my relationship with Korean food.  Me and Korean food...we might break up.  

Monday through Friday at noon, a handful of westerners will go upstairs and eyeball the vats of food placed out by the ajumas (old women in Korean).  After careful inspection I dish up food that I feel i'm prepared to eat...some days i'm brave and eat the sea creature dishes...other days i'm feeling less adventurous and avoid proteins all together.  On this particular day I wasn't feeling up for anything.  It was Tuesday, my most exhausting day of teaching, the kids were in a mood and I was already running on fumes.  This also happened to be a day where I had to eat with the class.  So after dishing up what I thought were fried vegetable patties and rice I headed down to eat with the 3 year olds...which also means sitting at a desk made for 3 year olds...all the while listening to 3 year olds make up excuses why they can't eat their kimchi--I know i don't speak the language, but i'm pretty sure you don't develop a headache at 12:20 everyday, Heather.  All I wanted was to down my meal and get through the day...but no...the vegetable patties that I was very much looking forward to turned out to be vegetable and baby octopus patties.  I realized this about a bit and a half into a very not vegetable type texture.  After throwing a fit worthy of a 3 year old...i dumped my food in the trash and ate my weight in cookies and whatever other unhealthy treats were in the staff lounge that day.  My 2pm crash was pretty epic. 

Since that day i've been jaded and angry at Korean food, angry because of the deceit.  Jaded because I can't eat anything without wondering what part of the animal i'm eating...or if it's something that i'm just not ready to stomach.  These food woes and anger keep me on a steady diet of Post cereal and bananas....and i've been watching reruns of Top Chief all day. Am I a masochist? Possibly. Does something need to change in either my mentality or in Korean cuisine and cooking practices? Absolutely. I'm gonna put my money on Korea...they've gotta be getting sick of octopus sometime soon...