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I love food. During my time in Korea, I have been collecting recipes and anecdotes about Korean food. I also have been working on survival techniques for westerners living in Korea.

In this journal are recipes for cooking Korean food in Korea or abroad and recipes for recreating western food with Korean ingredients.

But mostly, it's about enjoying life.

SUBJECT KEY
Christmas Chronicles - Trying to celebrate Christmas in Korea
Drink - Imbibe me
Event - Special events involving special Korean foods
FFF (Food for Foreigners) - Recipes for foreigners living in Korea
FP (Food Porn) - Pictures for stimulation
Fusion - A mixture -- or clash -- of cultures
Junk - Junk food
KFC (Korean Food Concept) - A blog entry explaining a type of Korean food
Kimchi - Something about kimchi
KR (Korean Recipe) - A recipe for Korean food, duh!
Miscellaneous - Stuff, stuff, and stuff
News - Korean food in the news
Out There - What others are saying
Rest (Restaurant) - An entry about a restaurant in Korea
Street Food - An entry about a street food concept or adventure
Tip - A survival tip for living or visiting Korea
Video - A summary of a video on the site
WTF - A feature on anything unusual that has to be investigated further

Sunday, January 15, 2006

(WTF #2) Toothpaste for That Forest Fresh Feeling


While I was packing my bags to come to Korea two years ago, I was asking my old friend Christina what all I needed to bring with me. The three major things she said were deodorant, condoms, and toothpaste.

Now, she was right about deodorant. It is darn difficult to find. I have found some women's anti-perspirant at a convenience store, and I've seen the nasty Speed Stick deodorant (not anti-perspirant) that high school jocks use on sale at the black markets in Namdaemun. Yet all my personal anti-perspirant I get from care packages from my family.

Condoms are findable here and are getting moreso. Yet the quality and variety aren't that great. That's another item I order by mail from the U.S.

Now toothpaste. There's no shortage of toothpaste. People are passionate about oral care in Korea. Christina recommended the toothpaste because Korean toothpaste, according to her, "tastes terrible."

So I stocked up on toothpaste and didn't try any Korean toothpaste for over a year. But when my first batch ran out, my girlfriend lent me hers, and it wasn't that bad.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of toothpaste flavors. The mint flavor in mint toothpaste does not taste like mint. It tastes like nasty ass toothpaste. Why does mint flavor not really taste like mint? I don't like chocolate chip mint ice cream because it doesn't taste like real mint. It tastes like toothpaste with chocolate chips in it. Grape flavor doesn't taste like the grapes I grew up with. It tastes like the grotesque purple gum that the coach gave out to everyone in little league. It's not grape flavor. It's purple flavor.

I had run out of my Colgate Tartar Control yet again, so I grabbed for my girlfriend's toothpaste. I noticed it had a much more pleasant exotic taste, something I really liked. I looked on the tube and saw a picture of what looked like a pine tree. I asked her to confirm my suspicions.

"Yes, it's pine tree flavored."

HA!

It's the first toothpaste I've tried that's flavored as a scent rather than the taste of a food. And it is a refreshing taste and sensation. It's not that painful Mr. Freeze feeling that Mega-Mint toothpastes attack you with. It's smooth.

I've never really enjoyed a toothpaste, thus it was hard for my mother to make me brush my teeth. Brushing my teeth was a chore before. Now I look forward to being transported to a Yukon evergreen forest through my mouth whenever I brush my teeth.

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