Cycle 4 – Item 150
4 (Tue) June 2013
Wu Tang
2.5
by me
at home
-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
with the Family, Nanny 8
For the stock, I started with beef bones and upped the beefiness by adding a small chunk of brisket. Cooked to tenderness, the meat was sliced thin and served back in the broth, which was seasoned with a touch of light soy sauce, salt, pepper, and garnished with sliced daepa. Not too bad, would’ve been quite good with better beef. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “wu (beef) tang (soup)” is a name of my own invention, one that I can’t believe isn’t already in use, as far as I’m aware.
LUNCH
Earlier that morning, DJ’s kindergarten held an open house for the parents. For me, the highlight of the visit came after the scheduled events had come to an end, at lunchtime, when I got an opportunity to see what and how the kids ate. The teacher seemed puzzled that I was so interested. In fact, I was the only parent who stuck around for this purpose, which puzzled me. Maybe that’s why school lunches, in Korea and elsewhere in the world, are becoming so problematic: the parents don’t get actively involved.
The food is prepared off-site, apparently by an old woman, presumably in her home, who packages the various items in containers holding enough for each classroom and delivers them to the school – this assumption is based on the sudden appearance of an old woman at the start of lunch service. The teachers take a set of food to their respective classrooms and dole out portions to the kids in their personal trays.
As shown here, the meals are typically Korean, including such standards as steamed rice, doenjang soup with dubu, sautéed potatoes, kimchi, veggies in mayo (“salad”), and tonkatsu – looks pretty well-balanced. Not entirely unlike the dinner spread shown above.
Fortunately, DJ likes the food, which we know because he doesn’t come home hungry. At his previous daycare, a place that seemed more intent on maximizing profit than the kids’ welfare, by cutting costs on the food, for example, he wouldn’t touch his lunch and demand a snack as soon as he got home.
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
