Food, Glorious Food!

I am going to have to learn how to eat large quantities of food, since the portion sizes here are quite large, and of course an anthropologist must eat what she is served. What I eat compared to the average is a very small amount. I am told this will not fly in the country. Stomach-stretching training to commence shortly.

In the meantime, here are some photos of last night's dinner. We went out to a "hot pot" restaurant, which is kind of similar to fondue, only completely different. Ass you will see, there is a large bowl in the center of the table which is heated from below and filled with water and various spices, fruits, and vegetables. The water boils, and you put the food you want into the water to cook. It was quite delicious. The bowl is divided into a spicy side and a sweet side. I nibbled on a bit of broccoli from the spicy side and it was far too hot for me, who can only really tolerate Spokane white girl spicy. I mixed up a dipping sauce out of the supplied ingredients of sesame paste and vinegar, forgoing the parsley and hot pepper.

In the first two pictures you can see the divided bowl. The third picture is the lace-like lotus root I talked about eating in Beijing. Prepared in the hot pot, this had a completely different flavor, very delicious. The last picture is my plate, with broccoli, garlic, goji berries, hot pepper, and needle mushrooms. There were also long, noodle-like strips of tofu skin and a kind of sourdough bread, both very good. Everyone else was eating all of these things in addition to lamb and beef. To give you an idea of the process, I took this helpful video(in which you can see Dr. Z, Mrs. Z, little Z, and AnNar):

And to end the post; Ziya the Duck.