2 birds, one stone:
The image prompt from magpie tales #56 this week is a head of garlic separated into cloves.

The word prompt from Sunday Scribblings this week is: Raw.

What delicious happenstance; Sunday Scribbling's prompt, raw, drew a blank in my mind and therefore I set it aside to marinate and waited to see what would come to mind in the following few days.  ( I rarely am inspired by a prompt immediately in any case.)  On Monday our new Magpie image grabbed the marinated raw prompt and married it in my mind and out came, Kimchi.

I was introduced to Kimchi in 1974 while stationed In Pusan South Korea for the U.S. Army.  It quickly became a favorite for both flavor and, to be honest, self defense.  Large amounts  of raw garlic are integral to the making of kimchi and as most know, ingested garlic, cooked or raw, gives off an odoriferous message to any one in close proximity to the ingestor.  If you yourself eat some kimchi the aroma of your neighbor becomes inconsequential.  Mind you, kimchi is eaten by everyone in Korea. 

Over the years I've attempted to make this vitamin rich relish myself and have also bought the super-market's canned version.  Nothing comes even close to the kimchi I ate in Korea, with 2 exceptions:  there is a Korean restaurant an hour west of us near Fort Drum that has perfect (perfect being comparable to that which I had in Korea) kimchi.  And a year ago this past Oct. My wife and I vacationed in the Big Apple and went to dinner one night in Koreatown and of course had kimchi, ( I think it's served at every meal in Korea) which transported me back 35 years to the culinary delights I experienced in Pusan.

Ingredients:

1 fresh Chinese cabbage, dark green outer leaves removed

1 1/2 cup cooking salt
1L water
1 cup Korean chilli powder – aka gochugaru (not flakes, look for it at your local Korean grocery store)
1/2 cup fish sauce

2 tbsp white sugar

6 spring onions, washed and sliced on an angle into slices about 1-2″ long
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 knob of ginger, grated
1/4 nashi pear, cored and peeled
1/4 brown onion, peeled
200g white/chinese radish (long and white as opposed to small, round and pink-tinged)