Hot Pot

This experience takes chop sticks skills to the new level. Hot Pot is a Chinese sort of fondue only they've had about 5000 more years to perfect it! (I'm well aware that this is my second post about food-- but In Chengdu there are more restaurants than there are people--okay, not really but everywhere you turn you smell the red pepper and the other spice that I still can't identify)

Our hosting professor took us to his favorite Hot Pot restaurant and invited two of his graduate students along. They were thrilled with the treat. When we sat down the server brought out the yingyang bowl of "broth". One side had red chili peppers floating in it and the other side was a yellow broth that had onions and a whole fish floating in it! The prof ordered a bunch of food and we waited watching the fish float around on "our" side of the bowl. They we gracious enough to give us bu ma la (no spicy) broth but the fish complete with the eyes was looking up at me was a little unnerving.

Around us families and groups of friends enjoyed laughing and pulling mysterious meats and veggies out of the big boiling pot with chopsticks. As our food arrived I thought of this as my graduation ceremony of learning how to use chopsticks! The prof dumped in the meat (slices of cow muscle, the cow's stomach, chopped up fish, and... I stopped watching after that) the veggies were a little foreign to me but much more comforting. There were about 6 orders of different mushrooms, lotus root(yum-- water chestnuts), green beans (still crunchy--Merf!!), lettuce stalk, sea weed, onions and much more.

So the trick was to go after what you wanted with your chopsticks but it could be kinda of nice for the undeceive people because you get whatever you can grab if you're a beginner. If your more advanced you might get part of what you want and be happy with the other things you pulled out as well. If you're advanced then you can laugh, talk, and pull out exactly what you want!

Once you pull it out you put it in a bowl of peanut oil and garlic to tame the spice! So you have to get pretty good at dunking with the chopsticks as well or you loose all of the flavor of the spice and are just eating peanut oil garlic covered lotus root! So it's tricky and complicated but overall I think I've graduated!!

We had pizza last night from Muts Nuts Pizza. You just pick it up and put it in your mouth! Maybe after 5000 years we'll be eating pizza with chopsticks or something else a lot more complicated!!