Mi-ryung's food cravings

[JadeEyes]

Anyone want to offer a guess as to the meaning of the scenes today w/ Mi-ryung salivating over first that magazine of food pictures, and then pastries in the bakery window?

I thought at first maybe it means she's pregnant. Then I thought perhaps she's having food cravings because her mother is pregnant, which is what I thought might be going on at first with Han-soon, but was wrong. So now I don't know.

And what was with Tae-young? He seemed really upset with her for admiring all those desserts in the bakery window, which is of course exactly why bakeries display their wares in their big windows...to tempt people. He told her next time just tell him what she wants to eat and he'll get it for her, not drool over things in windows. My husband thinks maybe he was embarrassed by her behavior and thought it unseemly.

I thought it was so strange to buy all those little cakes and then practically order her to eat all of it then and there. I have a big a sweet tooth as anyone, and I could throw up just thinking about eating all those cakes at once.

There is so much about food and eating in this show. I have never seen anything like it on TV before. Every ep. has a few eating scenes, w/ closeups on food and discussion of food. It's the most unabashed celebration of degustation I have ever seen. Food and eating on this show is almost a religion.

After the scene today of Han-soon scarfing down grandma's seafood soup w/ gusto, I confess I came down with the most wicked craving for seafood soup and talked my husband into going out to get us some at our local China Buffet, which has an excellent dish of this kind. Not Korean, but close enough.

I would propose if we ever decide to conduct a daily rating of each ep, we use the Asian restaurant revue system of number of chopsticks for how good it is...like one to four or five chopsitcks, w/ more chopsticks being that much higher a rating. I think that would fit very well w/ the emphasis on food in this series.

Jade

[eyego]

I was wondering if the food obsession meant she may be pregnant too.

About Tae-young getting upset... Maybe he thought MR didn't feel she could just buy the pastries because they were an extravagance. He might have felt bad that he can't buy her everything like her parents could. He didn't want her to think she couldn't even buy a pastry if she wanted it.

[Jean]

I knew Mi-rung's mother was pregnant when she was feeling sick.

I am glad Mi-rung is also pregnant; although, I am very romantic and had wanted Tae-young and Sun-joo to get married.

You mentioned all the food they eat. All societies eat also for social reasons. I love this show, the one thing I do not like about the show is everytime someone has a problem they get drunk. AS IF THAT WILL HELP ANYTHING! On the American soap operas all they do is drink, and watching this show from another country I did not think we would have to deal with all the over drinking that goes on. TEXT

[Avalon]

I agree with you about the drinking to drown out depression, etc. But think of it this way, it is hard to dramatize suffering in silence. Min-Joo does a good job of showing on her face exactly how she feels which is mostly negative emotions.

[JadeEyes]

I was amazed at how many drinking scenes there are when I first started watching. Obviously, along w/ food, liquor consumption is a very big part of Korean culture. My husband told me a while back that Korea has a very high rate of alcoholism...it is indeed a culture very embedded in alcohol consumption. I was surprised to hear it, considering what a genteel culture it is in so many other ways, especially compared to Western culture. But he says it's very much that way in Japan, too. Maybe it has to do w/ what a driven people the Asians are in so many other ways...the heavy drinking is a way of handling the intensity of how they push themselves to achieve and excel in so many parts of their lives.

I remember how Ja-young belted back a ton of liquor the night she went out with her colleagues, after returning to work from her leave to have Ji-min. It's like she was making up for all those months she couldn't drink while pregnant.

Then she really tied one on again after she found out about Young-joon joining the volunteers to help Bangladesh. Personally, I don't approve much of people going out on big drinking binges, particularly as a way of handling stress or pain. But I think it works on YH and I admire them for showing it. I bet it's an honest depiction of Korean life.

Jade

[Soju]

With all the drinking going on, I find it interesting that KBS has banned depicting people smoking on their shows, saying they want to be a better influence on society. Why one, and not the other?