korean middle school cafeteria winter-styles day 15

breakfast... the last of my granola (sniff!), some pineapple and salad/*roasted* nori, ahem, kim (i am in korea and all, i should be practicing my minimal korean)...

 there was tofu at lunch and soy/onion/veg sauce so i went for it. oranges were a nice surprise! (snuck some for later) and i added some hemp hearts to my salad.

 bean sprouts and onion or garlic or something with carrot strips and the salad... this time with the rest of my package of hemp hearts and the end of my bag of croutons. apple cider vinegar to keep it from blowing away...

now that i'm approaching my last week (i leave in one week tomorrow morning!), i'm thinking of emptying my jars (olives, walnut butter, chickpea miso...) so i don't come back with half-used food. i'd rather keep things unopened or totally demolish them. so we'll see how it all works out...
i'm getting super excited to get a vitamix when i get home (i got some money for one for christmas/birthday) and start making some new foods at home! making food at home again (rather than on trays in the cafeteria or at the desk in my room) will be AMAZING.
seoul tomorrow! yay!!!

korean middle school cafeteria winter-styles day 9

getting ready to leave for seoul for the day!!! 

but here's yesterday...

the pineapple was GLORIOUS! and chia cereal and salad with *roasted* seaweed...

 at lunch i was super excited to see carrots and cucumbers... i was just commenting on how i was missing carrots especially since i think i'm getting pale while i'm here. anyways... so then my head chef friend comes up and sees what i'm eating. i decide to show him my "vegan passport" again so he can see, in korean, what i eat and don't eat (though technically i don't eat the white rice in the cafeteria so that must have been confusing for him) so then he is worried that all the people i work with are strict veg like me and they have been eating all these random animals this whole time but i explain it's just me but i have come before so i know what to expect and i brought food. well, he's not convinced so i'm to give him a list of things i do eat on monday and he said he can prepare some things for me? super curious. he ended up bringing out warm tofu and a spicy soy sauce with veggies and nuts for me. my friend ate 1/3 of it but there was still a lot and i wasn't hungry for the rest of the day! gah. 

i made some quinoa in my room and i'm curious about that. kept it in my "fridge" (near the window sill) to keep for this morning. so we'll see how that is!

cascada farallas... day 10... early morning... last bites of bliss...

it was super sweet... they prepared some papaya and pineapple for me to eat in the morning. i still remember me saying the night before, "i cannot eat the cereal in the morning. i will not eat the cereal in the morning". um, so yah, i was not looking forward to the 3.5 hours on the road to the airport and no yummy foods. oh yah, when we got to the airport, it was so hard to find ANYTHING fresh. i saw one apple at one of the food court places but by the time i got to the front of the line, it was gone! it was so sad. i had dehydrated bananas and pineapple with me but there's only so much of that i can eat. ANYWAYS... i am drooling now thinking of eating this papaya and pineapple again. i never liked papaya, in canada or mexico or hawaii or wherever, until i came to costa rica...

korean middle school cafeteria day 18

today was a great day for fruit! started off with some grapes with my chia cereal and salad...













and then my chef friend brought out pineapple! hurrah! ah, one thing i want to note about the grapes - in korea, everyone seems to squish the inside into their mouths and crunch the seeds and leave the skins. i got used to this last summer when i was here and now i enjoy it! but it's interesting that some rumour the grape skin is the most nutritious and then others, the seed! so there you have it folks. just eat what you like.













lunch... just some salad. since today was my last day with fridge access, i am saving my crackers for tomorrow (my last full day here) and thought i should work on finishing up my hemp hearts. so here they are with olive oil and nutritional yeast, dulse and sundried toms. i was SOOOO HUNGRY after less than 4 hours and thankfully i had one snack bar left (a glorious go raw spirulina energy bar) so i made it until dinner time.













and dinner was a 'special buffet' but it really didn't end up much different for me except i got red, yellow, and green peppers in my salad and different lettuce! and some lychee. which i haven't been liking. at loving hut on saturday, i actually spit it out and tonight i wasn't too keen either. is it possible lychee are bitter? i just don't understand. there's only a hint of the sweetness (that i used to think was too much?). i thought when you went off sugar, sweet things became sweeter, not more bitter. or is it just the lychee? i have a theory it's because they were frozen. who knows.