Hot pot!

As one or two of you may know, I am not usually very adventurous when it comes to food. So, when I was invited to share a Chinese New Year celebration which includes having "hot pot," I mustered some adventurousness and accepted. I'm glad I did - it was great!

Here's the rundown. There's a pot with broth, pork meatballs, green onions and bamboo shoots and this is the foundation:


There are other foods provided to be cooked in the pot: tofu, cabbage, snapper, beef, tuna, mushrooms, shrimp, scallops, fish cakes, egg purses, and so on:

Each person has a basket to fill with the items they want. It's a bit like fondue. You set your basket in the broth and let it cook. Sandy had the biggest basket - the one on the right below. For comparison is the other basket size on the left below:



As the eating goes on mushrooms, cabbage, spinach, egg purses and other items are tossed into the broth to just generally cook and be fished out by whoever wants them. Here is the hot pot later into the meal as well as the in-basket cooking process:

This is our friend Nadine who, along with her husband Ted, hosted this dinner and is the hot pot mastermind!

I actually really enjoyed the process and ate a lot of food! Happy Chinese New Year!

on a side note, there actually would have been more pictures of the meal and the green tea after dinner our camera gave out! After I dropped it on its lens on xmas day, it was repaired and returned this week. However, it just stopped taking pictures after about 15 shots last night...