What I'm Excited About #3

It's snowing again, and that's not one of the things I'm excited about this week. Rather, I am excited about...

• A second appearance on a class panel for the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives: A Food Systems Approach to Cooking class. I persuaded my friend and fellow food blogger Charles to take the class this spring, and he's been blogging up a storm. The HFHL institute is also offering a one credit class this fall: Cooking on a Student's Budget.
• The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread. I've made this "bread" four times now, never the same way twice, and never way the recipe suggests (though I do weigh the ingredients). HT to my colleague Jesse Haas for sharing this! I've been eating it for breakfast almost every day for weeks.



Photo by Kim Unertl.

• A moss garden?! Our housemates invited a landscaping friend over to give us ideas about how to make the yard more interesting and less grassy. Staring at a soggy patch of decaying wood chips, I had a brainwave - a moss garden! "You could grow ferns, too," Mr. Landscape added. I have no idea how to make this happen.
• A shift in priorities. I attended a conference of the National Cooperative Grocers Association the other week, and something clicked around Hour 5. I'd been struggling with the feeling that the Hampden Park Co-op board was not the right place for me, that co-ops just weren't my "thing," that I was taking time away from food systems consulting by pouring time into my duties as board chair. But that day, I realized what a boon to my career being on the board actually is. I could will get so much out of my experience by putting my entrepreneurial schemes on hold for a year or two and unabashedly embracing co-op work.

What are you excited about this week?

Surprises at the Market: South Korea

This post was written by a former classmate of mine, the engaging Kelsey Hotle. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a bachelors in nutrition and dietetics, she moved to South Korea to teach English. She produces podcasts about the adventures of people living aboard, which you can find at Frolicking Foreigners.

The professor of my food culture course advised us to never make assumptions. "When it comes to other cultures," she said, "it is always best to ask." She told us thousands of things that semester, but that stuck out as solid advice. Yet for some reason, I still held on to an assumption that all produce in South Korea was local.

In this case, I didn’t get off without a lesson. I bragged about the produce situation to the wrong person and wound up with a writing assignment. My goal: obtain actual information about the farms in Korea. 

My first year as a teacher in South Korea gave me high hopes about local food. I lived in the middle of a farmer’s paradise, aka nowhere, called Seosan. Elderly Korean women sat on the steps of my high-rise apartment sifting though piles of produce, removing stems and such. Occasionally they tugged on my shirt and pantomimed until I pulled it into a makeshift bowl for them to fill with their seasonal produce. I’d usually post pictures of my unsolicited goods to Facebook in hopes that somebody could identify it. 

Dropwort?
Photo by Kelsey Hotle.

My second year in Korea found me far removed from the little farming community.

What I'm Excited About #2

Sometimes I am struck by several exciting things at once. 

• Upcoming guest post from Kelsey Hotle about the Sangnam market in South Korea.

Root vegetables on display at the Sangnam Market.
Stay tuned to discover their origin!

• Lunch with former Lawrence University classmate Ian Silver-Ramp of Mississippi Mushrooms

• The CFANS Speed Networking Event I attended last week (view pictures on Fb), where I met a dozen interesting students.



Finally, I'm on the "professional" side of the table!
Photo by Masha Finn.

• The Hunger and Environment Nutrition DPG membership drive, ably lead by Ashley Colpaart and carried out by HENlet(te)s Holly Sostock, Amber Noterman, Garnet Bruell, and myself. Join today!

What are you looking forward to this week?

It's Live!

The long-awaited day has come:

After eight months of project coordination, and thanks to the efforts of many, the University of Minnesota Extension Health and Nutrition website is up and running!

I owe a debt of gratitude to the tireless web production assistant, who freed the pages from the old template..
 

..and also kept up a steady stream of encouraging words throughout the whole process. Thanks, Ruth!

So dive in and click around (I recommend the For Families section)! Use the "Contact Health and Nutrition" link to tell us what you think. Or comment below. Or tweet @UMNExtSGE or @hanamil. Be sure to tell your friends!