Hannah and the Tortured Abalone:

A continuing saga about you, your seafood, and animal cruelty.

I went to emart today to buy some food and some useful kitchen supplies, like an extra sauce pan and a casserole dish. I wanted a pie plate (a glass one, I did successfully find a metal one) but it's actually really hard to find oven-things here in Korea. Most homes don't have ovens, and most Korean food is fried/cooked on a stove top. Needless to say I did make a successful and delicious apple crisp. As soon as I can get shortening (or a decent recipe for a pie crust that doesn't require shortening) I am going to start pie baking.


Oh but the abalone.
Abalone are delicious. Korean's like to eat them. You can buy them in giant pick your own tanks. You will then take them home alive, rip them still alive from their shells, and hack them to pieces before they can flee too far in terror and then eat them raw or in soup. Or you can grill them in their shells still alive. I have had them both ways. Raw they are kinda gross. Grilled with sesame oil they are delicious. I just have some ethical issues. Mostly in that I don't like torturing my food before I eat it and it takes them a long time to die when they are being grilled alive.

But today I noticed emart had some prepackaged and shrink wrapped abalone. I grabbed a two pack and thought "how nice of them to kill my food for me." I continued to shop. I bought pecans! I bought hot chocolate! I checked out, bagged up my purchases and grabbed a taxi home.
I got home. I started unpacking.
I picked up my package of shrink wrapped abalone to discover they were very much NOT DEAD but ALIVE and squirming and flailing. My first thought was "THROW IT IN THE OCEAN" but I am several hours from the ocean. My second thought was "FISHTANK WITH STEPH" this of course would not work given the saltwater/freshwater differences. So I sat there. And watched them squirm. And listened to them gurgle. Then I stuffed them in the fridge and made tacos, hoping they would die quickly.

That was five hours ago. One is still alive. I open the fridge and it gives me a sluggish wiggle. I am going to be haunted by the ghosts of abalone past.

Becoming vegetarian in 5...4...3...