By Charles Nelson IV, ETA ’11-’12 / Photograph by Bridget Harding . She asks me, pulling beets from the vegetable drawer on Big Night In, our Friday night ritual, if I ever went to get the little shrimp out of the caves? The question’s content is similar to that of her more bizarre sleep-talking. It took a beat to understand that the little shrimp in the caves weren’t relevant to our present. She was voicing ruminations, and I was plopped into her mind’s medias res. I ask, do you realize how surreal that question sounds without context? Get the little shrimp from the caves. It’s not as though I had been out on errands, and now here preparing dinner, dadgummit, honey, did you forget to go and get the little shrimp out of the caves? Didn’t you look at the list? We had lived a little over an hour from each other during our ETA year. While I never did go and get shrimp from caves, it’s not unlikely that we would have had the experience in common. They were everywhere, those tiny pinkish brine-bombs. But, for the life of us, we can’t remember the Korean word. In her frustration to remember, she reopens the refrigerator door and rummages for a jar. As she searches, it strikes me that from our time spent in Korea, neither of us incorporated into our own lives the refrigerator organization skills of our host-families. While she removes items from the fridge, we describe visions of our host-families’ refrigerators, the towers of translucent airtight containers, navigable despite the volume of food they contained. Model efficiency, maximum usage: those refrigerators were dioramas of the urban utopia, a weaving mini-maglev train being the only thing needed to complete them. In contrast, our fridgescape has fruit on the loose, nothing stacked, and an entire onion if only one could stitch together the constituent thirds of several onions into a Frankenstein’s Onion. She thrashes through some collards to find the tiny cute shrimp shelved in the back corner, the jar wrapped in a plastic bag to prevent the shrimp essence from imbuing everything. Sae-oo-jaot, she says, turning the jar. Her pronunciation is rusty. Sae-woo-jeot. I pause. Eot, I say, listening to myself. I realize that I’m unsure if my correction is even correct. She wonders if the shrimp go bad. I reason, salt is a preservative, so, probably not? Meh, she murmurs, and throws the jar out. For whatever reason, tossing the tiny shrimp needles me. Rue-laden heart be damned, though. After all, twice the number of the now-trashed shrimp will be the number of their pen-dot black hole eyes, the abyssal specks that will remain, probably forever, staring at me in my Kafkan tiny cute shrimp nightmare. At least now, we remember the word.     She cuts stems from the beets with kitchen shears, staining the blades purple. She says, the color is like lipstick a goth would wear. She then folds a purse of aluminum foil and seals the beets inside. In the oven, the purse will expand into a silver pillow as the beets give steam to the heat. The salty cave shrimp center the discussion on Korea. She recounts to me how she lived near the sea. On weekends, she would hop the train to Daecheon. Her host-mother would ask her what she did on those trips. Sit alone, listen to Tennis–that is, the band, not the sport. She’d read, eat seafood, lay out. Host-mother always smiled indulgently, but never understood. I grind cumin seeds, raw garlic, salt, and smoked paprika in a mortar, mixing in olive oil and white vinegar for a paste to make Peruvian chicken. Teaching in Jeonju, I lived in what I understood to be the gastronomic center of the country. I visited Ga-Chok Hwi-Gwon for bibimbap many times, usually as a guest of teacher colleagues who invariably asked, Do you know Jeonju bibimbap? She sighs. Gojuchang, she says. The Peruvian paste looks like gochujang, but darker, and lacking of the sweeter layers of smell. I massage the blend into the skin of the spatchcocked chicken, set the bird on a roasting rack, and then wash my hands. Did we ever eat bibimbap together in Jeonju? Yes! We met up with Mina and Luke, Melinda, and Jenny. Remember? We definitely had bibimbap. Vaguely. I don’t remember Luke being there. I lament, what a bummer we didn’t know each other better. Yeah, she says. But, she notes, I also never loved bibimbap. Duck? She sighs a pining groan. Host-mom made amazing duck. The radish. Those circles of mu kimchi–gah, with the fat of the duck. Host-mom would roam the kitchen talking to herself, and when host-dad wasn’t around she’d take straight MSG and whisper jooooogeum to me, before sprinkling some in. Our secret. Imitating her host-mom, index finger to her lips, she motions to keep quiet about the surreptitious MSG. She shushes, and then makes the just-a-little pinching sign. My host-mom made great duck too, I reply, chuckling. The first time we had duck, my host-family tried to help me understand. We were sitting at the table, and they kept saying O-li, o-li. We were at the edges of their English and my Korean. Then, my host dad jabbed at the meat with his chopsticks, and went Quack, quack, chicken. She laughs, as do I. I was doubled over, I say through a guffaw. My host-dad kind of chuckled and looked around in that Rodney Dangerfield whud-I-say? kind of way. I couldn’t believe that for all the English he didn’t know, he knew the word quack. Finally winded from laughing, I ask, What do animals say in other countries? I think cocorico is what French roosters say. She asks, is meong meong what Korean dogs say? I reply that I can’t remember. Meong seems about right. We continue to cook. Our golden retriever enters the kitchen. We bark meong! meong! He snorts, looks at us like we’re idiots, drops his … Continue reading How to Eat Rainbow Play-Doh