What's cooking?

You would think that when eating in restaurants is cheaper than eating at home, life would be one big going-out-to-dinner party. Well, you'd think wrong. Korean food is good, but if you don't eat spicy food, there's very little variety in your non-spicy options. Also, Korean food is very short on fiber (processed flour noodles and plain rice are the carb staples) and if I've gotten any calcium in a restaurant, it's been accidental.

To clarify, eating in restaurants is SOMETIMES cheaper than eating at home. I'd say that depending on what we get, Justin and I feed ourselves on about 9,000 to 12,000 won, on average. The dumpling shop is a little less, barbecue is more (about 9,000 each). 9,000 won is about $10, so about $5 per person. It might be cheaper to live on sandwiches, but a) we wouldn't eat as well, b) we would have to schlepp groceries, cook, and clean, and c) stuff in the grocery store isn't as cheap as the restaurant prices seem to indicate they should be. Justin wrote about this before; our newest potential explanation for retail food being pricier than prepared food is a tax that hits retail but not wholesale. Could be.

To illustrate, tonight, we decided to spoil ourselves by eating pasta. Yes. Pasta in tomato sauce is now a pampering kind of meal. I had to go to two stores, because the first one only had Korean-style noodles and no pasta. (No pasta?! I twitch at the thought!) At the second store, in the "Foreign Foods" section, I got rotini and Ragu. I don't think I've ever eaten Ragu in the USA, but somehow it felt like a comfort food. All I needed, I thought, was some cheese, and we'd be good to go!

Well.

Cheese is exotic in Korea. How exotic, you ask? Well, let's put it this way: I have never before seen anybody shelve Velveeta in the wine section. For real. That, Borden, and an 11,000 won block of parmesan. I've never heard of anybody eating parmesan straight, let alone eating straight parmesan with WINE. What on earth goes with that?

In their defense, there was also some Brie and Camembert, but come on. Velveeta???

We ended up mixing some pretty good Feta into the sauce and accompanying it with monterey jack melted onto French bread slices. Pasta, garlic and tomato Ragu, bread, and two kinds of cheese, and it was the most expensive dinner we've had since we got here! Fortunately, there was tons, so we'll eat it tomorrow and halve the cost.

I apologize if this was completely incoherent. Korean schools are just as much of germ factories as American schools, and I'm coming down with a cold. My new discipline threat to the children will be to breathe on them.