Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Cleaning

When I first moved to Korea the entire kitchen in our apartment was covered in years worth of cooking grease.  The bad kind.  The kind that just sorta moves around instead of wiping off.  It was so thick in some places that you could paint pretty pictures if you wiped it creatively enough.

I took a few weeks and with the help of a lot of Seventh Generation Multi-Purpose Cleaner I managed to get a few of the cupboards clean enough for storage and a wipe down the stove so it was only slightly covered in grease.

That's the way it stayed for a year.  I left the other cupboards for dead.  So did the roaches we spent months killing off.  All was working well, but the stove always had a glean of gross on it.  More so as I started cooking myself and used oils, butter, cheese etc for my cuisine.  

Until today I had a stroke of brilliance as I washed my pans.  I soak my pans in undiluted dish soap to degrease them.  Why could I not do the same for my stove?  So, armed with Palolive orange soap I attacked my stove.  Lo and behold - the grease is gone.  It's not sticky to the touch anymore.  I'm not afraid of setting it alight when I turn on the gas.  My stove is clean!

And it only took me a year to figure out how to do it.  

Monday, April 27, 2009

Back in touch with my Seoul

Last year I spent six months in Korea; teaching military brats and generally being miserable.  After a four month break spent at home in Hawaii I'm back - and far more ready to take on the country than I was before.  Part of this is the fact that I am 1) Unemployed 2) Closer to finishing school and 3) have nothing to do with the military anymore - save my fiancee who is in the military.  

But anyway I'm here!  So let's go.