Its kimchi time! Last Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday we made kimchi for the next year. This kimchi will last until December next year and will feed all 80 kids and the staff and other people who eat in our cafeteria. And remember, we eat kimchi everyday with every meal (although I skip it from time to time 
). I’m going to take you through the kimchi making process, with random pictures thrown in… this will likely be a long entry…
DAY ONE
First we had to unwrap the million bags of cabbage
After unwrapping, we had to slice the edges of the cabbage and then slice it in half
Next we would put the cabbages in these huge tubs and heap big crystals of salt on them
The littlest ones wanted to come out and get a better look (most kids were at school when we worked, although a couple high schoolers came home early because of exams)… lets take a break from the kimchi and watch the kids play
Min Seung running from me
Jina trying to give me the peace sign
Mu Jong office worker playing toss with little Jung Ho
Hyun Bin and Jung Ho helping push Min Seung
Min Seung
Here staff workers and volunteers are working slicing up the various onions we would add to the seasoning
Jung Hwan came home from school early… he had chocolate around his lips, dead give-away that he had eaten ice cream before coming home
With Choong Hee (high schooler), my work partner… yes, Choong Hee was cold…
All the cabbages have now filled those huge tubs… they will soak in the salt for the next 20 hours until we begin work on them the next day
After that work was done, we went inside to the cafeteria and worked on cutting open garlic cloves
Tedious work, but I enjoyed talking with the dorm mothers and high schoolers (Go Hyun is looking up here)
DAY TWO
We had to cut up the huge radishes and then finely slice them into what looked like mini french fries
Min Kyung and Eun Young dorm mothers
We also had to take all those salted cabbages and wash them in three different tubs and then spread them out to dry for a couple hours… this work hurt the back a bit, we still had a lot left to lay out when I took this picture…
Next the DISGUSTING SEASONING… everything they put into this glop was disgusting… I think what you see here is little bits of shrimp mixed with the garlic along with chili pepper sauce
After adding a bunch of other madness (stuff without English translation, with some of it smelling like old wet socks mixed with dung), that stuff in the tub was the end result of the spices… a spoonful of that stuff would probably kill you… ugh
Next step is to mix the glop with the sliced radishes and the various sliced up onions
A close up… the sliced things are radish and onion… the green leaves were the leaves at the ends of the radishes before we sliced them up
Soon it looked like this… all red
Once all that was well mixed, we would take a cabbage and stuff it with it… the cabbages on the trey being the end result
Next step was to take the kimchi into the pit… a deep cellar in our home that most of the kids are scared to go into…
We would then stuff the kimchi (and I mean stuff) into big kimchi pots and put lids over the pots… then we let the kimchi ferment and can eat anytime over the next year
A view from inside… its deeper and longer then the picture looks
Soo Hwan (high schooler) and So Yun (our home’s dietician)
We were really covered in red glop and looked like we belonged in a horror movie… too bad you can’t see it that well in the picture…
Now, you too can make kimchi! Its really not that hard… cabbage, radish, onion, garlic, and whatever madness you want to make the sauce out of. Not too bad. God bless!
