Zero waste lifestyle ruined! My new strategy!

 I can boldly say I am trying to live a zero-waste lifestyle. As you all know it is difficult to completely eliminate non-biodegradable waste from our daily lives, especially now that food take outs are common. At our university we went on a serious buy-take-out week due to sanitizing measures in September to early October. The amount of trash that we generated those weeks was so huge!  For one meal, one would get a plastic bag, plastic spoon wrapped up in plastic, plastic container of the main meal, another one for soup or separate salad, yogurt container and of course biodegradable chopsticks wrapped in paper. Maybe with a picture or pictures you can figure out how much trash we generated in a day. 

Food packaging 'single use items'

Sigh!!! Sad, right? So sad that a 30-minute meal generated this much waste, non-biodegradable! Hmm it's so disturbing. Anyway, in Korea the recycling seems to be efficient and it's rare to find piles of rotten garbage.

Back to my routine during the sanitizing week. Due to daily temperature checkups and all, it was a wise decision to reduce contact tracing by eating at the closest place so I avoided going off-campus but resorted to the 'plastic packed meals'. Though some days I just chose to reduce my carbon print by going home and eat plastic free lunch. 

Every step counts though it would seem insignificant. I later started to seriously plan on reducing my carbon print. It is my responsibility to make a positive impact on the earth for future generations. 

My new strategy towards zerowaste is to always carry reusable shopping bags whenever I go for shopping, refusing excess plastic packaging, carry my own basket when buying fruits and vegetables in the mart, go for bottled products than plastics etc.

I hope you enjoyed reading my ZEROWASTE LIFESTYLE. Please feel free to comment and share any zerowaste lifestyle tips, together we can save the environment.

Korean winter diary "my first snow"

I'm always feeling cold even from the lowest fan wind. I studied in Midlands/Zimbabwe for 2-years, where lowest temperatures are recorded. Believe me the Midlands winter compares to Korean fall or spring. Korea is extremely cold in winter.  I'm talking about negative temperatures! I first saw snow in Daegu, but it wasn't thick like what we saw on news in other places like Seoul. 

Later on, I realized I was in the hottest city of Korea 'the Beitbridge/Kariba weather city' in Daegu. People around me used to say Seoul area is even colder, but I said no, a cold is cold there is no colder place to me. Yeah, Daegu winter was freezing cold. The 3-winters I spent in Daegu were freezing cold, I used to layer up like a Christmas tree. One could just recognize my eyes of-course since they were the ones exposed. As you can see, in the camel jacket below.

Left: me in camel jacket and my friend Nini in white, on a snowish day at Keimyung University, Daegu, December 2011.

8-winters later, I'm used to cold now but I don't like winter!

Thank you for reading my winter diary. Now temperatures are dropping and I have started layering up! Please leave a comment if you can, do you like winter?

Spicy foods breakthrough 'kimchi superfood?'

    I grew up with constant upset stomach which automatically detoxify after eating spicy foods. In other words, a little chilli sauce could just send me to the restroom.  Before I came to Korea, I was worried how I would survive with all the Korean spicy foods around. 

Rice with black sauce, spicy kimchi, bibimeon and sea weed soup.

    Like for every Korean dish, if you see red-stew-like color be rest assured it's chilli! Whilst in Zimbabwean dishes if you see red-popping it's definitely a tomato. 

So yaah, at first  I thought maybe I would find tomato stewed menus in Korea.. Alas! There wasn't any.

Korean food: rice with spicy chicken, soup, spicy kimchi cabbage and radish type  and soy pan cake.

    Then, I guess my gastrointestinal system got aware of it and decided to normalize.  Yaah, you heard me well, from the first day I ate kimchi, I never experienced any "running stomach" or grumpiness. So it's now that I really wonder what is the secret nutrient in the fermented Kimchi that stopped my lifetime chilli-triggered upset stomach. Up to now I can't figure out but I can say, the Kimchi fermented microbiomes corrected my gastro-fauna to accept all the chilli. Forget the 'microbiome' term lol, just know that kimchi settles well in my stomach now!!

Raw sea food kimchi.

So yeah you can guess the taste of kimchi, it's fermented so yaa that kombucha/vinegarish taste is the one I enjoy whenever I eat it. 

Thank you for reading my spicy food breakthrough 'Kimchi superfood' story. Please check out my videos where I was enjoying Kimchi. 

My next blog I will share tips on how to select Korean menu for non-korean speakers.