We arrived at the hot pot restaurant, all of us not really very hungry - it was only 5:30 and we hadn't finished lunch until 2:00, but we had our vegetables in our arms and we were ready for the next food adventure. The first picture is a picture of the actual kitchen in the restaurant. the food displayed are the little packages of fish, meat and vegetables you could pick out to put in the hot pot.
We were given a tour of the options - from snake to turtle, to every imaginable innards of every animal. Our table group decided to keep it simple, skip the feet and just chose some chicken, some little pork meatballs, shrimp balls, and some beef strips. The first thing we did was watch a short version of how they made the liquid that would be used to cook all this - imagine a giant fondue pot - that holds about a gallon of liquid. This is not soup - you just use the liquid to cook what you want. But watching how they made the two stocks - one a very, very spicy liquid stock (and quite oily) and the other - more of a chicken or other mild animal stock, with spices, but not spicy. After watching them make the different liquids (with over 30 spices for the spicy one) we were taken to the back of the restaurant where they had bowls of water set up to wash the vegetables and then we got to actually chop them up! We then went to our tables with our vegetables and chosen meats. The tables are round and in the middle is a huge hole with huge pot in the hole - under the table is a propane tank and a gas flame heating
the two liquids - you can see in the picture that the pot is split - one side spicy and the other plain. Then everyone threw all the meat in and let that cook about 3-5 minutes, and you add the vegetables - and then you pull the food out strained, put it in a bowl and eat it - that is it - no rice, no noodles (although someone brought noodles from the market and threw it in one of the pots and the cooks and waiters from the restaurant were yelling at them that noodles do not go in hot pot and were a bit upset - but no one cared and enjoyed whatever they put in their pots. Then one of our families had also picked up lychee fruit and fresh mango. They cut it all up and we ate that for dessert - the fruit was fabulous. Frankly, the hot pot was good, but not the favorite - but it was great fun making it and since we were full from lunch we didn't have to each much and it was just a good time.Sadly, after this meal, Celia, her mother Kathy and Celia's sister Libby (Ben's age) had to leave - they were breaking off from the group to do their orphanage visits and then were going to do some other traveling - this was quite sad as we had all become very close - Kathy and her daughters live in Colorado and we hope to visit them in 2011 when we go out to the Ranch which is in Colorado - Hannah and Celia were especially sad - all the girls were becoming very good friends.
After the hot pot, we were off to he airport where we were to catch a 9:00 flight to Guillin. We weren't going to arrive until almost 11:30, so we knew it was going to be a long night - what we didn't know was how long - our flight ended up being delayed almost 2.5 hours and we did not arrive to our hotel in Guillin until 3:00 in the morning - exhausted, kids cranky, many adults cranky --I won't tell you what happened exactly when we arrived at the hotel...but it wasn't fun -- but it ended up working well, thanks to Louie and his amazing ability to make thing work out wonderfully...but can't blog anymore tonight - must get to sleep now! Oh, the picture near the top that is of the fruit stand is actually at the airport - they always have all this fresh fruit at every airport!
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