Hot Pot

Boiled Meat?

No thanks.

I was initially resistant to the idea of hotpot (if initially can mean for our first three years here.) Here's why: it's raw meat, there's scalding water, and there's mutton... boiled mutton.

Like so many things in my expatiate life, I needed to be ready for the experience.

Mr. Johnson finds my need for readiness a little annoying. I first employed it when we were preparing to move to China. I needed a little prep time before getting our passport pictures. I needed to be emotionally prepared. I knew that once they snapped my unsmiling mug and those of my incredibly young children there would be no going back. I needed a day or two. I needed a week.

Of course we got the passport photos and the passports, and the full-page-eating visas necessary to come to China, which we traded out for the residency permits to live in China. We learned how to wield chopsticks. And then one day, I was ready to try hotpot.

And as Mr. Johnson promised, I liked it. I really did. The meat cooks in an instant in the rolling boil of a spicy broth. You toss in mushrooms, and spinach, and Chinese cabbage. You get your own cute individual pot. And at my favorite spot there are freshly made noodles to drop into the pot as well.

I think hotpot is more fun on a date than for a family meal. There is of course pots of boiling water, and semi-open flames, which with kids is as much of risk as I assumed it would be (and was part of my initial reluctance-- if initial translates into three years.) It's an interactive meal that carries numerous verbal warnings something along the line of "This is raw meat... remember to dip you kuai zi in the rolling boil." But, since we no longer need a high chair and our palates are more inclined to try and like new things (that E. likes hot pot is saying something!) we sometimes give it a go.

We did this weekend. We caught the city bus and had hot pot.