So Much Food!

Hello all!

I promise not to inundate you with blogs this often for the entire mission but this event just earned its own spotlight moment. As if we hadn't eaten enough already since arriving here, on Wednesday we received an invitation to join one of the other senior couples for a dinner with some members. The details we got were a little vague but since we're always game for something new we showed up at the designated subway stop as instructed. We met some of the people there and got on the train and took a 40 minute ride out to the New Territory's out close to the the Chinese border. It was an older part of Hong Kong with buildings that were old enough to have been here when Grandpa was on his first mission  When we got off the train we walked down some small narrow streets and when we got there the restaurant seemed to be a just a small hole-in-a-wall kind of place. We were not prepared for what was to come! As people gathered it eventually became clear that this was a group of foodie members who get together every few months just to eat out at a good restaurant. Eventually there were twelve of us all seated around a big round table in the room they had reserved at the back of the restaurant. As everyone sat down the food began to come. It started at 7:00 p.m. and didn't stop until they had served 15 courses!! 

Buckle up, what follows is a whole bunch of food pictures!

This was our hostess Mazie, her husband is one of the bishops here in Hong Kong.
Here we are walking down the ally to get to the restaurant.

Meet Dan and Marian Sellers. Dan served in Hong Kong when Grandpa did back when they were young and they are the ones that scored us the invite

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Before I start sharing the menu just keep in mind that while we like our salmon and sword fish, Grandpa and I have not ever done been huge fans of  shell fish.... or poultry feet.  Just sayin!

    

The meal started with a plate of squid, it was hot, spicy and very tentacle-ly, the second appetizer was cubed, deep fried been curd. And then a plate full of deep fried pumpkin.

After a few minutes we discovered that it was expected that everyone take pictures of every plate as it came out.  This was good for us, because as we figured out what this meal was going to be we wanted to get the pictures without being rude!

First course was a pile of warm clams and garlic. It looked scary and slimy to me at first but ended up being pretty tasty!

 

Second course was prawns, the head on the left, the body on the right. I was doing okay crunching my way through the head until people start making conversation about the brains-- and it got tricky to eat after that!!
But luckily the body on the right was delicious on it's crunchy "plate" of crispy fried rice.

Things started getting really tricky in this pot....

...but they did their best to dish up the duck feet and abalone and make it look good! Look at that webbed foot circling the abalone!

This ws the moment that I just turned off my brain and dove in! I wouldn't go straight to yummy but it wasn't really nasty either and I only gagged once while sucking it off and spitting out the bones!

It was a great relief when the fish soup broth with bean curd sheets and mushrooms came out!

After we ate out of the soup pot they put it back on a burner and brought out thinly sliced beef that we dipped in the boiling soup with our chopsticks till the meat was cooked. You really only had to have the meat in the pot about 5-7 seconds depending on how rare you wanted it to be. After we all cooked some meat in it they served another round of the broth that had even deepened in flavor.

Then cold chicken fee. Enough said!!!!

Next was crab legs

Deep fried crab meat...

and if this picture were better you could tell that this is the crab shell filled with fried rice cooked in the crab fat, topped off with caviar. 

By this point we were very very full but Pampa chose this moment to make a joke intended just for the 4 of us missionaries; he muttered  under his breath saying, "all this food and no sweet and sour pork!" Embarrassingly, Mazie heard him and jumped up declaring she would get some made for us! We begged her not to but she insisted and rushed off to the the kitchen. We were simultaneously laughing and glaring at Grandpa!!

But 10 minutes later they came out with this gorgeous plate of the traditional favorite.  It was as delicious as it was beautiful, even though eating it was painful!

But they weren't done yet, next they brought out this amazingly tender chicken with sesame seeds. 

And then then there was shrimp wrapped in bamboo paper.

And finally dessert, a very gelatinous current (I think) layered medallion. It was very chewy but they promised it would be good for my complexion!

And then of course, more dessert! It was amazing

When it was over we all waddled out of the restaurant for a picture.

By now it was 10:30 p.m! We had been eating for 3 hours and Grandpa and I had been up an hour longer than we had managed since we arrived.

But Grandpa enjoyed the walk down memory lane.

It was an evening for the record books, so much food,  so many new textures and flavors and so many bones to spit out. We didn't get back to our apartment until 11:30, way past our usual bed time and we just dropped into bed. But it wasn't over yet,  I woke up in the night with dreams of the duck feet! 

                                                               A remarkable experience!!