Tuesday, June 07, 2005

venus fly trap


There was a time many moons ago when I had this great idea, among the hundreds that may hit me over the course of a single day, that I would attempt to subsist solely on a diet provided by these respected establishments, the pojangmacha, that you see pictured here that are literally on every street corner of Seoul. My own personal Supersize Me if you will. At the time it was a very good idea, only because I was pretty much eating there every day anyway. They offer the three basic food groups: fish cake, spicy rice dumplings, blood sausage, and the occasional deep fried item. And so cheap. So I began this quest, eating a serving of blood sausage everyday, with some liver and other steamed organs thrown in for their added nutritional benefits. Delicately wiping my mouth after such a meal with a wad of toilet paper hung suspended from a rod inside the tent. Listening to the plastic tarp rustle in the warm evening breeze. But then I saw myself transform. Not radically. Not into some carnivorous beast, because I was already that, but just into a terribly hollow and disenchanted person. The sausages began to lose their flavor. The once juicy organ meats tasted dry and spongey in my mouth. And I started to wonder, how did they wash those plates in there? Do they reuse those sticks that the fishcakes are speared on? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? By the end of a month I think I put on ten unhealthy pounds of undigested food that may still be hibernating in my intestinal track. These are the moments that colon cleansing was invented for. So why am I sharing this with you? Mostly because I didn't go outside today and I'm really hungry and thought I might pop in on one for a bite to eat. But foremost, as a warning from a person who knows. Don't be tempted by the seductive call of cheap thrills. Go to a place with running water. Where the woman behind the counter doesn't look like her hopes have evaporated with the day old soup broth.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So I'm sitting here eating lunch, and I just realized something: that although tofu retains heat for a remarkably long time, a molten menace to the unsuspecting masticator, it doesn't like being reheated in a microwave. I've got a dish of piping hot vegetables and brown rice here, dotted with chilly chunks of tofu. Weird.

babibi said...

For a former engineering major you can be really dense sometimes. Let me explain once again. Tofu. Has. Temperature. Retaining. Properties. Unlike. Any. Other. Get it? That means, once hot, will stay extremely hot. Once cold, will retain the cold despite drastic environmental change. Recall my illustration about the little fishes swimming into the tofu for their sorry lives. Recall and THINK little grasshopper!