I'm still in love with Korean-style frozen yogurt and I spread my love around- I go to the closest Red Mango, Pinkberry, or Yogurtland for my fix. I also make it at home with tart Greek yogurt or plain organic yogurt mixed with vanilla. The best thing about this type of frozen yogurt is that it's actually real yogurt (in the past, frozen yogurt in America was made of very little REAL yogurt). So you get a delicious treat (or lunch if you're one of those people that can make a meal of a yogurt or a salad) plus all the health benefits of the good bacteria.

There was some anecdotal evidence that kimchi helped people recover from SARS (avian bird flu), and South Koreans were mostly unaffected by the bird flu that swept through Asia. So these days, with rising concerns about H1N1 during the winter season, South Koreans are eating more kimchi than ever to ward off this new flu.

I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV, but I do know fermented foods/probiotics are always recommended as preventative medicine to strengthen the immune system. I also swear by a cold remedy tea which includes ginger and hot chili pepper, two ingredients found in many types of kimchi. But it's nice to have an excuse to eat more kimchi, so this is the first news about H1N1 that is good news to me.

The "Amazing Korean Table: World Feast of Gastronomy 2009", Seoul's first gourmet food festival, will take place from October 28th - November 1st. It's an over-the-top fantastic title for what sounds like it will be pretty incredible event: Korean nouvelle cuisine, celebrity chefs from around the world, young chef competitions, master cooking classes, and Korean street fare and slow food tasting events.

Whether you like watching cooking shows, dramas, romantic comedies, adventures, or biographies on TV or in the theater, you'll love Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in the Palace). This highly addictive Korean miniseries is over 50 episodes long, and it has it all.

Dae Jang Geum photo still © YA Entertainment.