The title is so original it will earn me writing accolades. But I have the supporting photos, I would have you know.
My little family hols started with as little an incident as would be expected with my mom around-- which is to say that she had a completely unwarranted response to NAIA security personnel; she misunderstood what was said by the hapless man and infliicted on him quite an earful.
Our beloved metropolis, right after taking off, was a picture of... uncontrolled particulate pollution. Lovely, nonetheless.
This reminded me of my favorite football player, i.e.; skies and sole star (squint and there's one smack dab in the top center) and splendor and all that.
And then Incheon International Airport, which is an accomplishment in megalomania and airport planning for dummies. I have no, absolutely no head for directions but I skipped from drop-off point to a walkalator and down flights of escalators, waltzed through immigration, boarded a train to the exit, and hopped on a bus to the hotel. The airport awards are smashingly deserved.
Coat and scarf (and flip flops) weather,
A warm welcome from my home away from home,
And midnight dinner, although the acronym for the resto, Fried Chicken Baengi, called to mind a football club which drubbed (in convincing fashion, yes) Arsenal FC in the Champions League...
Starters were popcorn and pickled radish, which is a blinkingly odd combination, if ever there was one...
Instead, FCB came up with two... One of the chicken platters was as head-scratching... kimchi (surprisingly amazing), a blob of boiled noodles (cold, unseasoned, made me ask "why?"), canned peaches (fancily called "Imperial Peach"), and fried chicken. In the odd pairings charts, that's a combo that can't be beat.
It's hard to go wrong with chicken, almost impossible to go wrong when the same is fried; but FCB got everything right.
We wanted a steaming soup bowl to counter the cold, so the most exotic one on the menu, the gigglingly intriguing "A Fish A Cake" it was. It had sea cucumber, fishcake and rice cake (aaahh, that's why), and shrimp.
The blur of hands only prove the hunger.
Seeing as I get carried away with pretty much everything I write, I have decided to narrow this post down to my Fave Five in Seoul (I was striving for alliteration but unless I change the name of the city...)
The beauty is in the attempt. Or some such.
Inspiration: Chef John in You Don't Have to Be a Cheese Whiz to Make Your Own Fromage Blanc; Manjula of Manjula's Kitchen; this guy making labaneh; and
It has maps inside!! I love maps!!
Somebody please give me a globe.
Since I was very hungry and nearly passing out1 (but still wanted to make cheese??), I stayed away on the first day from the ones that required cooking, so as not to set my house on fire.
Ingredients: Yoghurt and salt (1 quart yoghurt to 1 tsp of salt)
Tools: Strainer, cheesecloth (but since I couldn't find any, I used 2 layers of strips of gauze)
How I made it: 1. Mix yoghurt and salt. 2. Strain (then wait 24 hours).
Notes: Somehow I always end up mixing parts of one recipe with another. And not following the right portions of ingredients. So I hung this one a-la Chef John. And put too much salt. So while it looked luscious and quite creamy, it was uneatably salty.
Somebody please give me a Nikon.
Verdict: Except for the salt part, I'd do this one again.
p.s. A commenter said on the video, hey, that's just strained yoghurt!! Well, yes. It's lovely strained yoghurt, though.
Ingredients: Milk, lemon juice (supposedly 1 quart to 1/4 cup), buttermilk (1 cup, if following Chef John, straight-faced funny as heck), 1/2 cup water (to mix with lemon juice, if following Manjula), 3/4 tsp salt
Tools: Same as #1
How I made it: 1. Heat milk (about 10 minutes, said Manjula). 2. Pour lemon juice in. Curd should separate from whey. 3. Turn off heat. 4. Strain. 5. Wait 30 minutes (if following Chef John). 6. Remove from gauze. 7. Mix in salt. 8. Cover with cling wrap. 9. Keep in fridge overnight "for flavor to develop".
Notes: I may have overheated the milk (but Manjula didn't turn it off until it finished curdling!!), or used too much lemon juice (I used juice from 2 small ones. Did I measure it? Mmm, no...). Or maybe it was because I did not use buttermilk (but, Manjula!?!). I ended up with a rather dry "cheese". Not creamy, nor was it white like in the demos. I wonder why? Film kept forming on top too. It turns out you're supposed to stir once in a while to prevent that happening.
Further notes: I had this idea that to make mozzarella, you just need to put the curds in hot water and pull. So I thought I'd use some of the curds to do just that for this batch (ambitious, aren't we). Then, just prior to starting, while reviewing the instructions, I saw another video called "Make mozzarella cheese in less than an hour!" so I said, "Excellent..." (a-la Mr. Burns). But of course I did not have citric acid, nor the other curdling thingies. Equals curd begriming the hot water.
Real stretchy.
Verdict: In the morning, I found out that the "cheese" did not magically get creamy overnight (Yes, I was kinda hoping...). It did taste like dry, crumbly cheddar, though.
Upped with the addition of cream. Let's make double? cream cheese why don't we.
Ingredients: Same as #2, except the buttermilk, add 1 cup cream, use vinegar instead of lemon juice (in God-knows-how-much-amount. My milk wouldn't curdle so I kept adding and adding and it still wouldn't curdle until I said oh that's it I'm not putting up with you anymore. And I just strained what has become of my milk [a paper-recycling vat full of muddish torn wet paper]), no more need for water.
Tools: Same as #2
How I made it: 1. Stir, stir, stir until bubbles form at the sides. 2. Turn off heat. 3. Add maybe that was 1 tsp vinegar (I used only half the milk, by the way, so I'd have some left for Honey Flakes the next day). It curdled a bit, but not quite. 4. Add more. 5. Nope. 6. More. 7. Nope. 8. Turn heat on again. 9. Is that whey separating from my curds? 10. Nope. 11. Turn heat off again. 12. Add more vinegar. 13. Probably added 1/3 cup total. 14. Before I gave up. 15. Strain. 16. Hang. 17. Wait. 18. Hey that looks LESS dry. 19. Mix in salt (in the corresponding amount). 20. Cling wrap. 21. Fridge. 22. No attempt at mozzarella this time.
Notes: Hey! That kinda looks...better! Fluffier. And hey--it's creamy in my mouth, too. And it tastes like...cheese. Cheddar. Crumbly, creamy Cheddar. Sure I was supposed to make spreadable, soft, white, fresh, ricotta, but I'll take this just fine, because, hey, it's Cheddar-like! I made Cheddar-Like! And made everyone taste it. Unaged Cheddar. I'm so great. My mother liked it. My sister said it was good...mild.
Patience is a virtue.
Verdict: I can do anything, you know.
1. Juicing lemon is hard. Squeezing lemon with your hand is hard. Squeezing lemon with 2 hands is hard. And with a cereal box cut on your finger it's painful, too.
Somebody please give me a squeezer.
2. Making cheese is an exact science and a craft. It takes precise measurements, and skills, to do it. Maybe making cheese is not something I could wing. Nah I could wing this. With some practice.
3. You can substitute gauze for cheesecloth (Yay! I contributed to cheese knowledge! Nobody burst my bubble).
4. Many a people gave up their (naval engineering, hotel managing, insurance brokering, archaelogy) careers to focus on making cheese. Hm.
5. When one attempt fails, and two attempts fail, you set on a third one, more ambitious than the first two. And so on.
6. Of course draining time matters, too.
--- L.C.
*Araw ng Kagitingan weekend.
Arsenal 2 - 2 Barcelona (Champions League First Leg): Of War and Warriors; and On Broken-ness
07:34:06, by Cynch 
, 1413 words 
I am emotionally spent so this will be short. Several Fridays ago, the Champions League quarterfinal draw was held in Nyon, Switzerland; clearly, the cosmos had much too much alcohol and handed Club of My Life the most difficult tie:
They say a blink banishes a ghost, but a dozen blinks after, forty winks later, a hundred years it felt like, the spectre of the third draw above continued to haunt me. What to do but grit my teeth and bear it? The game between Barcelona and Arsenal, the two primary advocates of playing the Beautiful Game beautifully, was hyped to such heights that it could only have disappointed. It didn't.
How could it, when the story was limned with subplots of the Prodigal Sons: Thierry Henry returning to Arsenal in Barcelona colors and Cesc Fabregas captaining The Arsenal against the Catalan club where he learned his craft and cunning; Barcelona golden boy, Lionel Messi, the world's best footballer at present; Arsene Wenger who has won all coaching accolades except the elusive Champions League; Pep Guardiola, former Barca captain, who on his maiden coaching year won all the competitions to be won with his stunning Barca squad; oh and the little matter of the 2006 CL Finals, which Barca nicked (just!) from under Arsenal's nose? (This loss is on equal tragic footing with the World Cup 06 debacle.)
This was a game played atop a gunpowder keg. And were there ever explosions!
The fluidity with which Barcelona demonstrated the passing game, the Tiki Taka, at Arsenal's home, The Emirates, in the first half, particularly, the first painful twenty minutes, and the dispiriting Arsenal response, whose Tippy-Tappy football was nowhere to be seen, would have been enough to send the faint-of-heart crawling back to bed with a bottle of vodka, a mat of sleeping pills, a hastily scribbled holographic will (remember to date it), and a tear-stained No more, Cruel World! No more! valediction...
But I am masochistic some ways, and I got through what was the most humbling forty-five minutes of many a game night reelingly delighted at how Beloved Team had weathered the Barca onslaught with the halftime scoreline at eggs. Yes, a most mystifying 0-0 when the Blaugrana had dominated the Gunners so completely, no one would have begrudged Barca had they led by five goals.
On the half hour mark, Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal midfielder, had to come off because of a strained calf muscle. By his self-diagnosis he classified said calf-muscle as torn, but Arsene Wenger quickly refuted our Russian tragedist's "I fear that I am out 'til the end of the season" claim by saying he should be good to play by the 24th. Smiles.
The gamble on the William Gallas' fitness seems to have backfired though. Everybody was surprised by his return to first team action-- against Barcelona, no less-- since he has not played for months. But Arsenal are desperately short on defenders, so he had to be called in. Unfortunately, he had to be stretchered off just before the first half ended. Arsene Wenger has since confirmed that Big Billy, unlike Arsha, would be out for the rest of Arsenal's games.
A fifteen-minute suspension of proceedings, a ciggie break, a phone call to Miko at 4 am-- hysterical, incoherent, dazed, a cup of hot chocolate, and a packet of cookies. Alien times and an alienated soul demand the comfort of the familiar.