A Korean "cooking" contest

This past Sunday we were involved in a cooking contest. One of our Army friends was roped into participating and he asked us to join him. Western food was one of the categories for the contest so they needed at least five "westerners" to participate (along with about 75-100 Koreans). The contest was held outdoors at Seoul Land, an amusement park just south of the city.

Since we were told we'd only have one burner to cook on, we decided to make white chili. In spite of having to haul all of our ingredients and supplies with us, the chili turned out quite tasty. We were pretty excited about it until we realized the whole contest was based on presentation (we didn't know this beforehand because of the language/communication barrier). In fact, the judges didn't even taste the food! Chili itself isn't especially snazzy, but the only thing we brought to serve it with was red plastic bowls and white plastic spoons! We had to put that next to some pretty spectacular looking food presentations, complete with real plates, tablecloths, wine (in a glass, not a plastic up!), etc. I'm sure all the Koreans got a big kick out of our final product. None of us foreigners were in the running, but we all got consolation prizes-some lotion and sunscreen.

In spite of not winning any honors with our chili, we did make it onto Korean television. You can check out the little blurb that aired at the following link: http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=215&article_id=0000000619§ion_id=101&menu_id=101 Just click on the picture (that's me in the picture, and Tyler's green shirt in the lower left-hand corner!) and it should pull up another screen. You don't have to do any more than that as the program will load and start automatically. Try and see if you can figure out what they're saying and you'll get a bit of a feel for what we experience on an almost daily basis around here!

All in all it was an interesting experience, and fortunately it was a gorgeous day so we enjoyed the time outside and away from the city. We got to take all our chili home too, so at least we can still enjoy it!