My Mother-in-law is with us again. I don’t mind her being here. She cleans like a fiend and since she doesn’t speak more than a word of English she doesn’t gripe, nag or bitch. If she does, I wouldn’t know it.

I have noticed some peculiarities, however. She’s 71 years old, which puts her in her teens during the Korean War in the early 1950s. There were periods in which food was scarce then and the older generation is apparently quite keen not to repeat that. That may explain why there are so many vegetable gardens here, crammed into whatever space they can find. It may explain why most of the people tending the gardens are the old ones.I rarely see middle aged or younger tending the veggies.

Although we don’t have a garden here, mother-in-law does her part. Not a scrap of food goes to waste. Any rice not eaten goes back into the rice-cooker for the next meal. Any meat not eaten will sit until someone eats it. For two days this week I watched a big bowl of fried squid, leftover from almost two weeks ago at Lunar New Years, sit by the microwave. It started looking like it would soon throw itself out if no one ate it. I won’t eat Korean squid. It bears no resemblance to the calamari I’d sometimes eat in an Italian restaurant back home. Korean squid reminds me more of a bicycle inner-tube than seafood. Today, the squid was gone and I didn’t really want to ask where it went. I was just happy it disappeared.  Another bowl had strips of leftover pork. That stayed only a day; long enough for the grease to congeal.  But that, too, never got refrigerated. Mother-in-law (no names for relatives here, only titles) doesn’t refrigerate meat or soups and they’ll sit on the stove or countertop growing God knows how many colonies of funk. Scary. Terrifying, actually.  We’ve got a dozen or so bowls of unnamed, unknowable Korean side dishes in the fridge, some of which smelled like hell before they were leftovers (mother-in-law’s cooking style is very old school) and they’re beyond funky now. I like Korean food, I just never said I eat everything made. Fortunately, I am an able cook and they understand when I make my own breakfast/lunch before work. Dinner preparation is MyeongHee’s realm and I like her cooking a lot better.