It’s not every place that can get away with making the kinds of doughnuts that these guys do. Favorites include a maple bacon doughnut (just think of it as all your breakfast rolled into one delicious doughnut) and the kind I got today.

This raised doughnut is filled with oozy, gooey jelly, covered in chocolate, and stabbed with a couple of pretzels. Just pretend that it’s somebody you don’t care for much. Ex-boyfriends, former employers, annoying roommates . . .

I also brought home a butterfingered (devil’s food, vanilla frosting, and crumbled butterfinger candy) for my family members. I swear, I was even going to let them eat it, but I was afraid it would go stale ^^;;; . . .

Voodoo Doughnut is pretty cool. After all, it’s not every doughnut shop that you can get married in . . .

Gimme Doughnut from Magda Diaz on Vimeo.

Kentucky Fried Chicken has done such a good job convincing the Japanese that Americans dine on KFC for the birth of Christ that lines for the chicken buckets stretch around the block on the 25th.  They also like to eat fancy layer cakes, a piece of culture that’s spread to Korea.  Like most Americans, I scratch my head at these ideas, and as an anth person I’m truly intrigued by the emergence of these new indigenous traditions so far removed from the supposed inspiration.  Mostly though, I’m just happy to have been able to join my family for our “traditional” repast, as dictated by our family history, kitchen, and exhaustion levels.

Thanksgiving is always turkey, and New Year’s Day means roast beef, but Christmas is flexible in our household. Sometimes we tip towards our maternal heritage and have a ham, but this year I missed Turkey day and my parents made it up to me by stuffing a bird. This is no mean feat, and preparing and cooking the turkey takes pretty much all day. The stuffing (or dressing) is another point of debate for lots of Americans, since there are so many versions. My family’s version is one dictated by our own personal tastes, and one particularly horrific Thanksgiving where my mother refused to go to the store again just to replace wilted celery. She tore through the kitchen for a suitable substitute, which is how Gomushin Girl’s clan first started eating our own Bok Choy Stuffing (recipe follows).

Our dinner was, other than the turkey and stuffing, fairly modest this year. We roasted a few yams and some garlic green beans and called it a day. Gravy made with the drippings from the turkey was the only sauce. I can’t complain, seeing as jetlag got me and I didn’t get up until almost six in the evening anyway.

Normally we have homemade pumpkin or pecan pie, but this year I finished off the meal with a small cream cake I bought during my layover in Japan, and a glass of tawny port.

Boxing Day (St. Stephens, otherwise known as the day Good St. Wencelas looked out) is the day following Christmas. That means a bank holiday in the British world, but leftovers to a great many more. In our family there’s only one thing eaten all day long: Openfaced Turkey Sandwiches. It’s a simple dish – toast a piece of bread, and pile high with leftover turkey, stuffing, and vegetables, then pour gravy over the whole mess and microwave until hot.

Gomushin Girl here! I may be a Seoulite most of the time, but every once in a while we must all make a pilgrimage to the homeland. For the next few weeks I’ll be posting a record of everything I eat while back in my hometown  in the Pacific Northwest. I won’t pretend that this is in any way a good representation of the general American diet, but I do think of it as an ethnographic exercise in eating that will show a little bit of the diversity of how Americans eat while also giving a glimpse into the way local tastes and preferences show up.
Although I’m a happy camper with Korean food most of the time, my first day stateside is a chance to catch up on some of the foods I’ve really missed. Western-style breakfasts for the most part are easy to rustle up wherever you are . . . after all, cereal can be found in any Korean grocery store. Unless you want Weetbix, that is. I’ve been a fan of this British cereal for years, and while some people dismiss it as flavorless blocks of fiber, I figure that if it’s good enough for Elizabeth II then it’s good enough for me. It starts out crispy, then becomes soggy, and finally porridge-like as the milk slowly turns the bricks to mush. Trust me, it’s much tastier than it sounds, especially when washed down by English Breakfast blend black tea with milk and sugar.

Getting hummus in Seoul is hard, and getting good hummus is even harder so I insisted on having a big tub on hand when I got home. A piece or two of toasted flatbread were needed to facilitate eating.

What says “Welcome to America!” more than macaroni and cheese? Macaroni and cheese with petite pois. Frozen peas are pretty new in Seoul, so I’m happy to be back where I can stir them into dishes with abandon.

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Stafford's Lunch

So Stafford, when are you going to come write for FatManSeoul???

YA! Wakey Potion

This time we’re trying two experiments at once: In addition to picking some of the most peculiar new foodstuffs out there, our bold Gomushin Girl is going where no one has gone before and is doing it live. Because this blog will be going out as she writes it, Korean translation and pictures will be added after the fact.

Hola! Gomushin Girl here, bringing you a live update from the land of energy drinks. Now, there’s lots of energy drinks out there, most of them relying on a combination of sugar and caffeine to get you up and moving . . . or at least keep you awake through the mid-afternoon slump in your cubicle. The problem is that you end up wired for an hour and then you crash like a lead balloon. Not good.

The response has been to start making energy drinks that promise more up-time. The new drink YA encourages me to “take your chance” on its “wakey potion” for 5 hours of energy. Let’s put this bad boy to the test! I’ll be doing an hourly update to this blog (Korean and pics to be added later) to let you know if this drink passes the test, or if I pass out.

Hour 1: The trial begins! Ya looks a lot like most other energy and vitamin drinks in Korea. Same squat bottle, but they’re trying to be a little cutesy with the label. Anyway, it says it’s for a “society that even works at night (밤에도 일하는 사회)” and is a “sleep solution drink(졸음해소음료)” and with taurine (the same ingredient as other drinks like Red Bull) as one of the first ingredients, that seems like a promise it can keep temporarily. The question is, will the ingredients help keep me going through an entire workday?

The taste is pleasant, but nothing really special. It’s got a vaguely citrus tang to it, maybe even more than some of the vitamin c drinks on the market. Kind of nice, actually. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever had slide across my tongue, but it’s not the worst, either. Although I don’t think it’s carbonated, there’s a fizzy sensation. Fun stuff.

I should mention here that I’m the caffeine queen, and can drink pretty ridiculous amounts of coffee with nary a shaky nerve. In college I used to drink espresso right before bed without a problem. My friends once watched me consume five cans Starbuck’s Double Shot and slowly but surely drift towards falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon. It takes nearly suicidal levels of energy drinks to give me a boost. Let the contest begin . . ..

Hour 2: I wouldn’t say I’m more alert than usual. An hour after taking this stuff I feel . . . hm, not quite jittery, but as if I needed to jump around a bit. Not quite “run a marathon” energetic, but definitely to the point of typing well over my usual 60wpm rate. My brain isn’t quite up to speed with my finger though, and I sat and brooded for ten minutes on what word to use instead of “participant” in a poster I was editing. Mental acuity is not improving. On the other hand, I can twirl pencils now.

Hour 3: Still feeling a little hyper , but that’s about it.

Hour 4: I no longer feel the need to twiddle my thumbs or constantly tap my toes, which is probably a good thing. This is normally about the time of day when I start to lag a bit, but I’m actually feeling . . . well, wakey.

Hour 5: Back to being a bit twitchy fingered, but getting sleepy. It’s like my usual mid-afternoon mental slump has hit me, but later than usual. I’ve got the same sort of feeling I used to get back in college after I’d stayed up all night to study for a test or finish a paper. Yeah, I’m awake and moving, but there’s nothing alert normal about me. I feel like a cartoon character.

It seems that yes, Ya will keep you going for a good four or five hours but is it worth it? Yeah, it kept me awake, but it hasn’t done anything to improve my concentration or mental acuity. It just made me type faster. And fidget. If I were, say, trying to stay awake to finish a term paper or study for a test, I would skip this. If I’d used it back in my student days I would have just ended up pacing the halls, running to the 7-11, and making a nuisance of myself to my roomates because I just wouldn’t be able to sit still and concentrate. It doesn’t really give you energy. I would use it if for some strange reason I decided to stay up all night baton twirling.

Special Hour 6 Update: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hmm, apparently while I was asleep I missed the part where I turn into a superhero. Darn.

우리 음식일기 쓰는 사람, 고무신 걸의 미국 오래곤주 포트랜드시의 포장마차 사진: