birthdays and boxes

I had a birthday last week.

Since we had previously been invited to dinner that night with some of the employees of Ken's project and the shipyard, we celebrated with them. We went to a restaurant that I haven't been to before. It is close to the harbor area and they specialize in snow crab legs. Anyway, we feasted on wonderful (and huge) crab legs that were already cracked for us. Ken had sweetly brought a birthday cake for me and we commemorated with song and candles. My computer had been returned to me that day and I received my camera the next day. What a wonderful birthday!

Due to the fact that I seem to be getting older, I have had a renewed interest in vitamins and the ways and means of staying young (I wonder why...?). I bought a book in the U.S. on the subject
and have been reading parts of it since I have been back. This leads me to the subject of ginseng, or insam as it is called in Korean.

Ken has been receiving various gifts from various people in preparation for the Lunar New Year. We have gotten the usual fruit, wine and baskets of Korean sweets. One thing we got was a box of individually wrapped boxes of Korean Sliced Red Insam.



It has the consistency of a hard gummy bear and......I am tasting it again to describe the taste to you.......it tastes like I would think bark would taste.

It is not foul or awful tasting, but it is not something I would pick up to eat as a snack. On the outer box, it described in English that it is to be eaten before drinking, while drinking and after drinking, which I assume means alcohol. There was no mention at all of the medicinal qualities ginseng is to possess.

Yesterday we received another box of ginseng. I then realized that another wooden box I retrieved from the trash last spring (don't tell Ken) was probably a box that contained ginseng. The same plant picture is on the front.


Anyway, this ginseng was vacuum packed in large pieces. I guess that this is what it looks like before it is sliced into the smaller pieces. I am not going to open this because I will give it to someone that will enjoy it, like my cleaning lady or some of the Korean men at Ken's work. Bark taste or not, I did save a few boxes of the sliced ginseng to nibble on for health reasons!




But I am going to keep the box.