Korean

A friend recently returned from South Korea bearing gifts. One of them was a bar of North Korean chocolate candy she'd picked up from the country's demilitarized border. In the manner of a Nestle Crunch bar, it was crispy and crumbly, with little taste of mushrooms at first. But a few minutes later, my mouth was filled with the distinct, earthy taste of shrooms — not terrible but certainly odd. I wish understood Korean so I could have deciphered the ingredients (any takers?), but the bar looked to be composed of corn flakes and pumpkin seeds, coated in mushroom-infused chocolate. Would you have been willing to try it?

I'm a huge pet lover and even though I'll eat just about anything, I'm pretty positive I couldn't knowingly order up dog. However if the Seoul city government has its way, dogmeat could be reclassified as livestock and will legally appear on menus in South Korea. Right now it appears illegally and there are no hygiene regulations regarding slaughter. So tell me, could you ever order dog?

To see the graphic photo the comments are referring to — and warning, you probably won't want to do this near lunch time, or if you're a huge pet lover — click here.

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Last week I saw a can of juice I'd never seen before: pomegranate-flavored aloe juice from Korean company J1. The color was a vivid orange-pink, and although it looked like one solid color, there were actually bits of floating chunks in it. The almost-invisible chunks are the aloe, and they have the consistency of somewhat thick Jello. I was surprisingly pleased by this drink, and liked the way it tasted. It was a light pomegranate flavor and was cool and refreshing. The texture was a little odd — it was slimy and thick at the same time — and the whole thing made me think of dessert. I would definitely try it again, and yet I can see how the texture would really bother some people. Are you one of those people, or would you drink this juice?