mission statement

Trying to cook anything more complicated than bolognese spaghetti is a challenge. I am a decent cook - not amazing, but usually my stuff turns out somewhere between "I can eat this" and "Can I have seconds, please?" And I definitely wouldn't characterize myself as a gourmet cook - I'm not above trying recipes that include things like lasagna made with Kraft's parmesan cheese or apple turnovers that include Mountain Dew. I'm not a vegetarian nor a health nut - I love meat and butter very much. But almost all the recipes I want to try out include something that is either worth its weight in gold, or simply non-existent in Seoul. It saddens me when "simple" recipes casually require things like flat-leaf parsley or frozen pastry sheets. My access to sour cream is wholly dependent on the whims of the kind but unreliable ladies that run the local foreign food mart, who delight in inflating my hopes by constantly assuring me that it'll be in "tomorrow."

So, this blog is meant to be a collection of recipe reviews - stuff I've tried with substitutions and other tweaks to make it doable for us poor Seoulites who suffer for the sin of craving the decadence of Western food. Hope other people find it helpful.