Gochujang

and how it makes me think about consuming - everything.

There is an enormous amount of delicious, striking and unique flavours in fermented foods present in Korean and other Asian cuisines. Growing up in a Korean household, I have always eaten a lot of gochujang, doenjang, and ganjang - which you may know as Korean chili paste, miso paste and soy sauce.

As a child, I just ate things because they were delicious. I didn't really stop to think about the food I was consuming, other than taste and what's for dessert. But then my parents opened a Korean restaurant, sort of in the middle of nowhere, in a town where there are almost no Korean people. We currently know of some 3 other Korean people besides us living there. It was the Korean culture equivalent of setting up a business in a wasteland, selling spicy food in a small town, located in a region where the average person does not appreciate anything but salt as a seasoning.

My parents worked so hard. They toiled through the night. They sacrificed holidays, weekends, vacation and worked away, day and night. And they weren't recognised as the visionaries they are (still haven't earned the recognition they deserve, in my opinion). The underappreciation our restaurant had at first made me rethink about food, the scarcity of it, how dangerous it is to work for hours with fire and boiling oil, and above all, the sauces my mother made from scratch. She makes her own gochujang to this day; and making gochujang is no easy feat.

Gochujang is a fermented condiment. Which means this sauce gets part of its flavour from the ingredients mixed into it, and another part from the fermentation process it has to go through before it is served. This is the tricky part, because it involves the most precious ingredient of all: time. And this post isn't really about Korean cuisine, but about time.

See, my mother makes gochujang and puts it into special jars called jangdok to ferment - and waits for about two years before using it to cook.

Two whole years.

Which means the food I was eating had been being made for at least two years before it hit my tongue. And there was always the chance that I didn't like the taste, too!

It is mind blowing to think that something that is the product of so much time, effort and love can be consumed in a glimpse, without any appreciation for the work that precedes it. Thinking about the time invested in gochujang made me think, too, of the time spent on every creative, original product: films, books, paintings, songs. And how The Fellowship of the Ring (LOTR) was produced in 4 years, but we watch the whole film in less than three hours.

How much time, effort and love was invested in writing the last book you read?

I also run a side business selling desserts, pastries and confections. And I can tell you that the cookie you ate in three bites cost me several hours to make, and even more time and money to finally find the right recipe.

Ever since I stopped to think about appreciating products instead of mindlessly consuming them, I have been shopping slow fashion with no price haggling, I have left positive reviews on restaurants on Google and their websites if possible, and I have spent more brainpower in fully enjoying things, which means I have also been much more enraged than before by any brand benefitting from forced or underpaid labour.

This is why now, instead of verbally bashing and abusing things I don't like at first - which I did liberally in the past -, I take time to appreciate the time, effort and love invested in bringing it into the world.

I'm trying to dedicate the same patience and temperance to myself when creating. Wish me luck.