We all have our callings in life, and I think I've found mine - professional karaoke-er. Not singer, mind you - I'm a terrible singer. HOWEVER. Fortunately for me, the Korean karaoke machine doesn't bother with silly things like "talent." Instead, I think it judges you on a combination of 1) Volume 2) Enthusiasm 3) Lyric knowledge. Luckily, I happen to excel at all three categories! Suffice it to say, as one of my Buyeo friends recently said, I'm basically the queen of the noraebang (karaoke). I rack up the hundos like it's my job. I went to the noraebang last night and last week, and I'm just saying that I got 100 on Destiny Child's Survivor, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rihanna's Umbrella, and a Kpop song (my Korean friend Boyoung did the Korean parts and I filled in on the English parts). Anyway, the noraebang is tremendously fun.
Recently my English friend Celina here in Buyeo has been pretty homesick, especially for all these English things I'm not familiar with. Her dad also had to go into the hospital the other week, so it's been a tough time for her. I decided in order to cheer her up I would try my hand at making an English dessert - banoffee pie. Apparently it's a banana-toffee pie that doesn't require an oven, so that was all I needed to hear. I enlisted the help of another Brit, my friend Chris, who claimed to make a mean banoffee pie. We schemed to go to Costco (two weeks ago) to pick up the ingredients: sugar, cookies, butter, cream, and sweetened condensed milk. Alas, Koreans don't really do sweetened condensed milk, and I thought the plan would come to naught. Luckily, an American friend of mine told me that you can get sweetened condensed milk at a special market in Daejeon. Chris goes to Daejeon fairly often, so he volunteered to stop by this market and try to find milk. He was successful, so this weekend he came to Buyeo for Operation: Banoffee Pie. We were slightly out of our depth with this because unsurprisingly, it's pretty hard to make things when your only cooking tools are a wok, frying pan, chopsticks, spatula, and a subpar can opener. But it was okay - REAL cooks don't need measuring cups! After some guesstimation, we melted butter then mixed with with crushed cookies for the base. Then we melted more butter, poured in some sugar, stir stir stir, then add the sweetened condensed milk and stirred some more. We sliced bananas to put in the pie then poured the toffee into the prepared crusts and let it sit.
Then came the real challenge: whisking cream sans whisk. Instead, we used forks to whip the cream. After awhile Chris got the idea to get two forks and rub them between our palms to mimic an electric mixer. Let's just say that if either of us are ever to be stranded on a desert island and need to rub sticks together to create a fire, we've got loads of practice now. After a full hour (no joke) of whisking, we had to call it quits as we were supposed to meet some people "out on the town" of Buyeo (see: noraebang, above). We Tupperwared the cream for Round 2 at a later time.
The next day I went to the dollar store and bought a whisk, and we actually managed to create "soft peaks" in the cream, which was a sign that it was finally ready. I told Chris next time we were going to go American-style and just get some Kool-Whip or something. ("But it's an English dessert! I don't even know what Kool-Whip is!")
We made a pie for Celina and then we had enough left over for four other little pies, so naturally we ate one. It was really good! It was ridiculously sugary though. Sadly, Celina is out of town this weekend and won't be back until late today, so I have to postpone giving her the pie until tomorrow. I think she's going to be really pleased though!
Boyoung, Jake, Chris, Carl, Misa - this is us in Seoul for a going-away party. There's too many people leaving! The new school year means that a lot of people's contracts are finishing so there's been a lot of changes.
My coteacher, his wife, and Kevin. I finally took them out in Buyeo last Friday. That toxic-looking green stuff is kiwi soju cocktails.
Noraebang last night. This is us singing Backstreet Boys' "Backstreet's Back (All Right)." Sadly I think this performance only garnered like a 93 or so.
Banoffee pie! It's got chocolate shavings on top.
Chris, my sous-chef. Well actually he was probably the head chef what with being my resident English dessert expert.
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