First attempt to cook with kimchi

My culinary adventure continues with the bag of kimchi (at least I think it's kimchi, spicy fermented cabbage) I bought at the open air market yesterday from a very kind ajumma (Korean word meaning "auntie" that is generally applied to all older women; ajummas are super mega awesome--if I were Korean, I'd want to skip over the whole young girl thing and land firmly in ajumma land where I can do cool ajumma aerobics in the park). She also gave me some other spicy paste stuff that I have no idea what it could be, and I haven't been adventurous enough to open it yet. As "present" she said. So nice!

I know it probably would make a Korean person's head spin (I'm not sure the exact traditional method of serving kimchi), but I thought I'd try making a kimchi stir fry for breakfast as the spices in kimchi look and smell appealing, but the cold, fermented cabbage not so much. I thought maybe if I warmed it up in the wok and threw in some fresh onions and yellow peppers and served it over rice I might enjoy that. So I tried it:



Looks pretty good, right? I like the garlicky, spicy flavor to the kimchi and it did go well with the onions and peppers, but I really don't like the texture or flavor of the cabbage (it's tough and chewy). In fact, after eating one of the cabbage leaves, I lost my appetite entirely. Maybe it was the spices that filled me up, but I think I just found the cabbage unappealing. What a shame--I was hoping to enjoy kimchi!

Maybe they use the same spicy combination for other dishes on vegetables I would like more... Or maybe the reason the women here are so thin is from the secret appetite suppressing magical qualities of kimchi and I should eat it daily for weight loss. Who knows?