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WE LOVE FOOD!

This journal relates our adventures in experiencing food in Korea, along with recipes for Korean food and tips for ex-pats living in Korea.

A LITTLE HISTORY

ZenKimchi was started in early 2004.  The Food Journal came about because I wrote so much about food in my diary blog that it was becoming a food blog.  At the time, there was only one English language food blog in Korea, the original Fatman Seoul, but Mr. Fatman stopped posting in 2005.  I picked up the slack by creating the ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal in October 2005.

Since then it’s grown pretty big and has proven useful.  Other Korean food blogs have come along to join us, and it’s a great community.  ZenKimchi has been featured in The New York Times, Korean newspapers, Arirang TV and the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern in 2009.  Through this site, we have also met some awesome people.

WHO WE ARE

Joe McPherson (Creator, Writer) is a full-time English teacher and three-quarters-time food writer.  He writes regular columns for The Korea Herald and 10 Magazine.  He comes from a food-obsessed family, where his first job, at twelve years-old, was to dress up in a Popeye costume for his dad’s Popeye’s Fried Chicken franchise.  His brother Ben is an up-and-coming chef in Atlanta and is also a published food writer.  Joe has worked in the food industry as a cook, bad waiter, slightly better waiter, barback, bartender (bartending school, too), pizza maker/driver, sandwich artist and oyster shucker.  He also reads a shiteload of books on food to the point of obsession.

Eun Jeong Lee (Research, Attitude) trained really hard to be a lifelong Korean and has acheived phenomenal results.  She speaks Korean well and likes kimchi.  She also agrees that Korea has four distinct seasons.  She’s the magic maker at ZenKimchi, finding and setting stuff up that I thought was not possible and we were told was not possible.

Steve Ward (Videographer, Writer) has been living in Seoul for nearly five years now and has dabbled in many different hobbies and types of work in that time. He briefly became known as ‘SkinnySteve’ because of his mission to lose weight while working on the website SeoulSteves, but since SeoulSteves is now defunct, he’s now kinda-sorta skinny, and he’s really bad at making up nicknames for himself, he’s now ‘JustSteve.’ “Steve” also works just fine. SteveWard.TV is the homepage of his official online presence.

Shinshine (Writer, New York Bureau Chief) grew up in Seoul and has been living in the U.S. roughly the latter half+ of her life.  She’s been living in New York since 2005.  Having switched careers from finance to food, she is now a full-time restaurant cook in New York City after culinary school in 2008.  Recently she started her food diary, www.shinshine.com, which is about three things in life she enjoys the most – food, Korea and New York.

ChubbO Chubbington (Writer) has lived in Korea for about 2 years.  She has been gifted with the ability to eat spicy food and not complain about it or sweat while doing so.  She also teaches English in between meals.  Her main dietary considerations consist of texture, texture, taste, and texture.  It’s gotta feel right between the tongue and the teeth. She leaves the cooking to her Korean husband and focuses mainly on consumption.  She knows Krispy Kreme is not one of the main food groups, but hopes to rectify this injustice in the future.  She is currently living in Wonju and writes at Wonju Wife when she’s not stuffing her face.

Tammy Quackenbush (Writer, San Francisco Bureau Chief) has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communications/Journalism & PR (not in Culinary Arts).  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for my Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

CONTACT US

We love hearing from readers, especially the ones who think the journal is the wittiest, most informative site on the Internets.

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