Hot Pot

On Saturday night I got to experience real Sichuan Hot Pot for the first time. 

As we all sat down , this is what was brought to the table. 

The light liquid is some sort of broth with onions, peppers, and tomatoes floating in it. 

The darker liquid in the center was really spicy oil with peppers, peppers and more peppers. 

The waitress came by and handed us the order form. 

We wrote down how many plates of each food item we wanted. 

Obviously, the people there who are fluent in Mandarin did the ordering, as I probably would have ended up ordering something truly disgusting. 

Before the meat and vegetables were brought, this is what my spot looked like.
I had my water and peanut milk all ready to save me from my first mouth full of flaming hot spiciness. 

In the bowl there is onion, garlic, and cilantro mixed with a bit of oil. 

The can on the table is just oil that you can pour into your bowl to mix with the other items for added flavor. 

On my plate is some sort of sweet pineapple bread. 

It was really good. 

But then, the real food came.
We got plates and plates of meat and vegetables. 

We got beef (on the left), pork (on the right), lamb (which came later), goose intestines (which I did not try), cow tongue (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it was), and all kinds of mushrooms. 

What you do is pick up whatever you want to eat with your chopsticks, and place it into the boiling broth or oil. 

We also got two plates of quail eggs.
These were really hard to fish out of the bowl once it was dropped in. 

This is a shrimp ball.  This was the first thing I cooked in the spicy oil. 

I was really nervous to take a bite, because everyone always talks about how spicy hot pot is. 

But, I survived.
It was actually really good. 

These are some of my dinner companions. 

They all work at the same company as Crystal, and were really nice. 

This is one of the mushrooms that I cooked in the broth, and then dipped into the spicy oil. 

Turns out, this is the way to go. Simply dipping it in the oil gives you enough of the spicy flavor, without making you want to die. 

This is what a piece of lamb looked like when it got delivered to our table. 

Step 1) Pick up meat with chopsticks. 

Step 2) Dunk meat into boiling bowl of oil until cooked. 

Step 3) Dunk cooked meat into bowl of onions/garlic/cilantro/oil

Step 4) Eat.

Apparently people in China like to cook their lettuce. 

So much lettuce went into the pot. 

This is the bowl of goose intestines.
Again, I did not eat this item.

This is a photo of Crystal and I.
However, this was near the end of dinner. After spending a couple hours in a really hot and humid room right next to a boiling pot of broth and oil, you get really, really sweaty. 

Yeah....we really don't look that great. 

This is our table after we left. The broth had cooked down a couple inches in the bowl.
Once it all cooled off, it looked really gross. 

Crystal commented, "Just think...that's what the inside of your stomach looks like right about now."

All in all, I loved my first experience at hot pot. 

It wasn't too spicy for me, and I can't wait to experience it again.