Shabu Shabu

One of my favorite cool weather dinners is shabu shabu. It's so simple, tasty, inexpensive, and easy to make healthy. Well, it's also very easy to overeat, so be careful there. :D Basically, we just get an assortment of things and add them slowly to the hot pot at the table. For instance, last night, we had the following:

• bunch of different types of mushrooms (e.g. oyster, enoki, shiitake)
• napa cabbage
• spinach
• scallions
• crown daisy (or any other bitter greens, just as contrast)
• tofu
• udon (you can use tofu noodles instead to avoid the empty carbs)
• some thinly sliced rib eye
• a couple of pieces of konbu
  
• two types of sauce (sesame seed based and soy sauce based ones)
  

It would be really good to get lotus root and turnip too, but it's the kind of thing I always forget. You put the konbu in the water and bring it up to a boil. Then you transfer the pot to a portable stove at the table and sit around adding things to the pot and fishing things out of the pot as they cook. The meat should be picked up one piece at a time and swished through the boiling/simmering water to quickly cook, instead of getting dumped in all at once.

We fed 5 people last night for about $3 per person, and we have a bunch leftover for tonight. Yay!