Keeping Up the Cha-rade

When I was a wee pollywog growing up in the swamps of Seoul, one of my favorite snacks was the steaming pile of grubs that were to be had on almost every street corner.  Bbeondegi (번데기) or silkworm pupae also comes conveniently as a bagged snack available in the States but it was mysteriously labeled as "Fish Bait" .
(The lady in the photo is boiling silk larvae in the traditional style at a folk village near Suwon. The bbeondegi is a by-product of silk production. )

I was quite nostalgic for the fresh version for a decade and had no shortage of times bragged to my husband how "chewy, nutty, and utterly uniquely delicious" these grubs were.   So the first time I took my husband to Korea, he demanded to see me relish them steaming hot from the street cart.  For about a dollar,  I bought a small cup's worth from a crinkly old man who's probably been selling them for fifty years; he looked me up and down. My husband looked at me, and looked inside the cup. I looked inside the cup, I looked at my husband.  It was all too much pressure so we went several blocks down so the vendor could not stare me down.  I put a grub in my mouth and tried to force my jaws to masticate.  Swallowing of course was a different matter, In the end we abandoned the cup in a street corner in case some exceedingly fortunate flock of birds would chance upon it.

I had many theories why the golden memory did not pan out. I thought perhaps the vendor was not offering the freshest example of this genre.  Business is down. Kids in Korea now a days don't go for such old world fare preferring pedestrian snacks such as corn dogs or spaghetti in a cone.  In truth, I probably had beondegi no more than a handful times as a kid as my mother was most strict about food safety. But most likely my palate had been Westernized as I had not kept up bug eating in any capacity.

If I go a few months without drinking shu,  I fall down the shupu ladder.  It takes a good long while to coax my taste buds into accepting shu again.  Now I just force myself to drink shu almost every other week so I don't have to keep on paying the setup fee.  Sometimes I wonder why I bother drinking shu. I bought this samples box from teashop-china to see if I could buy some cheap aged tea to relieve me of having to drink shu.

This kit is a MUST if you've been feeling left out and you too want to partake in Jakub's dry storage meme.  I myself have a strict no Star Wars no Star Trek reference policy.   I've only tried teensy tiny sips of the three aged samples only to quench my curiosity.  The leaves are definitely aged and if you like dry, they gots dry.  Oh god. Is this really the fate of our dry-stored collection?

I think I was more grateful that it wasn't moldy or wet stored in any way because I can take dry but I can't take wet.  But  I can see that the rock bottom prices on ebay are not entirely a fluke. I'll try the other samples tomorrow- perhaps the dry aged shu might be more to my liking.   I still went ahead and rolled the dice in the vain hopes that one of their higher priced beeng might taste decent enough to avoid shu.  Whether this was a foolish waste of money- I'm sure no shortage of tea friends would want to satiate their curiosity.

Hand Hewn

I have a particular fondness for rough hand hewn lumber nurtured  actively during my childhood years by Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods.  Laura's father "Pa" Ingalls  built many a log cabin for his family with only a hand ax.  I actually do not know many such men who could do this now- certainly not my own amiable father.  My own Pa Hugo is a man of multiple talents including enjoyment of delicious raw sea creatures but none of his abundant skills involve any form of sweat-inducing manual labor.

My sweet husband could build us a cosy hand hewn cabin if he had the will.  However, I dare not ask him to square raw logs by hand in this age of power tools and milled lumber.  I need him to spend his precious time on my custom desk, tea cabinetry, wiring, plumbing, tiling, grouting, cladding, decking, window and staircase installation and more.  Thankfully we can rely on reclaimed barn beams to bring back this bygone era of hand milling.   The above stack of century old tamarack beams came from a farm in Washington state. Of course holding up a barn means that these here beams saw plenty of live-stock action.  When you wash the mud off them, they smell of hay but nothing as offensive as a young ripe shu.

Such a structural piece once set cannot be readily undone so you really must be sure of yourself.  I actually picked out my beam from the stack in an instant.  All those decades of scrutinizing wood grains and hand cuts apparently paid off so I knew what I wanted.  Only if I had such confidence with my puerh selection.   We lugged this beauty home pleased as punch.  When there is only one readily-accessible purveyor of a desired good,  it's important to want what they have in hand.

Constructing Space for Tea

My little home has been under massive construction.  I have long desired a dedicated room for all things I love- tea, writing, and maps.  My tiny plot barely allows for a vegetable patch or two, but I've finally sacrificed the valuable gardening space. We had to prematurely pull two squash bushes and relocate herbs to make way. My dear husband will build custom tea cabinets so I can continue hoarding. It really must be hoarding. I pathologically bought a few pounds more tea last week and am too sheepish even to mention the contents. I'm itching to make another order.

Every day I come home and sit inside the new space fantasizing about the new organization scheme I can enforce. Currently, beengs and bricks are squished in any way they will fit which offends my sense of order.   Still grouping by style, shape, factory, region, and year is not always straight forward.  

I'll probably have to move teas gradually to determine storage worthiness . I'll move a few lesser beengs for a month and monitor moisture and to dim the smells of new construction. I have no shortage of such strong scented budget puerh to prep and saturate the boards.  I severely interrogated my poor husband during dinner about possibility of mold or mildew but he insists the insulation and vapor barrier would prevent such a disaster.  Still I'm a nervous nelly-  pu once ruined is ruined forever.

The plan is to put in a roof deck with an outdoor sink so I can have a new space to brew tea.  I love plans and even planning to brew in a novel setting makes me happy.