Interesting timing for that question! Truth is, I don't usually drink plain water UNLESS I'm at Disney, because (a)it's free (b)our trips tend to be in the summer, and you'll die without it! I drink a lot of diet cola... like almost exclusively... but I was thinking today of how horrendous it is for the environment, all those plastic 2-liter bottles (I recycle them, but still...) and fast-food cups. So I was thinking of trying to increase my plain water and iced tea... so I downloaded the plant nanny app, and we'll see how it goes...
Happy Year of the Boar!!! We made Chinese hot pot tonight... here comes another story!!!
Ok, so my DD15, like many American teenagers, is obsessed with anime these past few years... last winter, I noticed several of them mentioning hot pot, so I did a little research and found a place about an hour from here. What a *COOL* experience!!! They brought us a paper with all the different choices on it in both English and Chinese, and you just check what you wanted, starting with the cooking broth, then what type of meat (if any), what type of vegetables, etc.
We learned that first time that we *DON'T* like the red spicy broth... but the "clear" broth was very good. We got the beef sampler, which was thin slices of beef that you cook in the broth in a big soup pot at your table. We also got the veggie sampler, which was a WHOLE LOT of leaf vegetables... and we also got a side of lotus root because I'd always wanted to try it. DD15 wasn't impressed, no soup for her!
Then in the spring, DD11 was going through the mandatory "meat is murder" phase, so we went again, just her and me, and instead of beef, we tried the tofu sampler and mushroom sampler. That is how I discovered enoki mushrooms and tofu skins! We also ordered scallion pancakes, which were just amazing...
Ok so allll of that backstory was necessary, along with this fun fact... It costs us close to $100 each time we go there, just me and one or two of my girls! There are always lots of leftovers to bring home, but still... pricey! And actually, this is something that people all over Asia do at home, especially in China for the new year... translation, if they can do it at home, so can we! (Go ahead and laugh, you know this isn't going to end well...)
K, so first, we had to locate a place to get the ingredients. There are no oriental groceries in my town... but we found one 35 miles away and took a field trip there last night. I tried to prepare the kids for the experience, but even so, there was a lot of pointing and gagging and "ICK!!!" and other cultural insensitivity, I regret to admit... They loved the tanks of live fish and the trays of giant live crabs, but the pig snouts and duck tongues and frozen pints of beef blood were a little harder for them to wrap their heads around. Still, we found the special thin-sliced meat, frozen scallion pancakes, dried tofu skins (you soak them overnight,) enoki mushrooms, daikon radishes, lotus root (*SO* cool, they grow in a string, like beads, I didn't know that!!!) as well as all the odd leafy greens (chrysanthemum? Sweet potato leaves? Snow pea plant leaves?) And lots of more normal ingredients like regular tofu, rice noodles, and napa cabbage, too. But even grabbing the smallest amount of the leafy greens, we ended up with a *LOT.* Still, it ended up being about half the cost of a restaurant trip for a LOT more "stuff."
Fast forward through the making-the-broth scenes... It came out well, 'nuff said. I pulled down an old electric skilled out of the attic, because I'm way too cheap to spring for a special pot if I'm not sure it's going to work out... the downside is that meant that it was a bit shallower than the restaurant. H hates most vegetables, hates mushrooms, and would rather die than eat tofu... but he did eat the meat and he really liked the pancakes (not surprising, since they're high fat and a bit pricey.) That's probably good, though, because he ate mine, so I just had a little of DD15's, to see what they tasted like... because again, fatty and delicious, better to only have a taste or two...
So the cool thing about hotpot is that the longer it goes, and the more things you cook in the broth, the more interesting the broth tastes... so basically, about the time you're stuffed, it's just starting to get really good... which is great, since in addition to leftover meat and noodles and broth, I still have about a gallon of raw vegetables left to go!!!
So I'll be eating weird vegetable soup and tofu for the next week or so!
And I guess I'll be washing it down with less coke zero and more water?
