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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Mar. 3, 2006 I grew up liking kim chee. In case you don't know what it is, it is a staple Korean dish, and it consists of fermented cabbage. This is sort of like pickled cabbage, but older. No, I am not Korean. You might be interested in knowing how I developed my fondness for kim chee, or you might not, but I'm going to tell you anyway. During and after World War II, I had several aunts and uncles in the South Pacific helping in the fight against the Japanese during the war and performing some administrative and electronic spying activities on the N. Koreans and the Soviets after the war. They passed through Okinawa and some lived in Hawaii for a while, and one of the foods they came across was kim chee. Occasionally we would get a package in the mail, and I was always happy when it contained some Wong Bok Kim Chee, which was my favorite. It was a spicy and pungent vegetable. Most people hate it when they first try it. Most people hate it when they try it again. Many people refuse to try it again. Kim chee, in the old-fashioned way, is manufactured by putting the cabbage and other secret ingredients into an earthenware pot and then randomly burying it in the ground around the Korean countryside. Then, at intervals, somebody happens to stumble across such a buried pot whiel burying a dead cat or planting a tree, and--voila!--the pot is opened and one finds kim chee. This is, you will notice, much like the method of sqirrels burying acorns all over your lawn and then digging them up later. Squirrels apparently find some of the buried acorns because of the smell. Some people claim that is how the kim chee pots are found. This old-fashioned method results in a non-standardized, varying quality of kim chee, for some is buried only a month or two before being found, while some has been dug up after, it is claimed, hundreds of years. The modern method, dependent upon the development of global satellite positioning technology, involves using a GPS and noting the location of the buried kim chee pots, documenting the coordinates and the time of burial, and then using the same computer program used by Norton Systemworks to determine when your anti-virus subscription expires to set when that particular pot is to be unearthed. All one has to do, just as in the modern game of geocaching, is to go to the coordinate and dig around in a small area until the specific pot one is looking for is struck. Thus, with modern technology, the quality of kim chee is much improved and standardized. Some diehards, however, miss the centuries-old kim chee that would occasionally result from the old manufacturing methodology. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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