kim's grill (or is it mr. kim's grill?)

Since coming to Korea, I have had to shift my way of cooking somewhat. I don't necessarily mean the kind of food (however, that has changed drastically) but the way I prepare food. I do have a gas cook top and an extremely small oven (with only one small rack that a 9x13 inch pan can hardly fit on). But coming from Texas, we used the outside gas grill year round. Alot of times I would just put some chicken, burgers, pork chops, etc. on the grill and then just round out the meal with salad or vegetables and potatoes or rice. Of course, sometimes on the weekends we would get fancier and Ken would grill fish or steaks, but I usually did it myself during the week. After selling the house and living with Bailey temporarily, I had discovered the George Foreman grill. It was a small one, so I usually had to cook the meat in increments but I liked cooking with it nonetheless.

While in Korea, Ken and I have been on the lookout for one here but to no avail. We do have a small outside charcoal grill but it is not as convenient or quick as a gas grill. Last week we were scanning the channels for something to watch on TV and somehow stopped on one of the channels that was advertising a "George Foreman type grill" - but I think it was Mr. Kim or Mr. Park or Mr. Lee selling it instead of George! Like in the U.S.,you will find shopping channels on TV, which is where we found this. Most of them concentrate on food or cooking. Have a gander at some of them.

Anyway,we quickly wrote the phone number down and Ken asked the secretary at the office to call and order us one. It wasn't too bad for here ($45) and it arrived the other day. We were thrilled and I will be trying it out tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. You probably wonder why we just didn't bring one from the states. Well, the electricity is different here and we would need a transformer to convert a U.S. plug to run anything with a heating element. We do have a transformer but it is a small one to run a mixer, etc. I bought my blow dryer here.

More on scanning the TV channels...! We have some sort of cable and satellite TV here. After awhile you get to know which stations will have English speaking shows on them, but that doesn't mean they will always be in English or what time they will be on. We have 2 channels that usually have movies on them but lately we have noticed Desperate Housewives on one of them (I think it is a season or two behind). We also have a couple of channels were you can chance upon shows such as CSI, Prison Break, House, Ripley's Believe it or Not or Numbers. There is a BBC channel that sometimes has funny British shows and we do watch alot of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. There is also a "chick channel" (Ken never usually watches it) that you might catch Bravo shows such as Project Runway, Next Top Model, Ambush Makeover, etc. Luckily for Ken, there are several channels with sports. Sometimes you can catch American baseball and almost always golf but it is commentated in Korean. They especially like the LPGA because there are alot of top women golfers that are Korean. Of course, there is CNN and BBC News. The problem with TV here is that you never know when things will start. When you come to a channel, there will be something in Korean at the bottom of the screen with a time frame on it (for example, 7:50-8:40). You may watch an entire program with no commercials or sometimes there might be a couple. Mainly the commercials are before or after the program, so it is hard to judge when something will begin or end. Their commercials are usually very short but numerous. Hope you enjoy some of them!! (By the way, I didn't tape these but I have seen all of these on TV. This person was able to video them better than me.)

Now if Ken and I could only agree on the remote control! He will start to look for something to watch and stop on a channel and watch it for awhile regardless how long ago it started. In other words, he will stop to watch something that has already been on for an hour. I think we should quickly go though all the channels to see what is on and what time it starts. Then we should decide what to watch. What do you think??