At Last! Nabe at Home

Although it’s been on my “would be nice if I had one” list for a long time, I’m not sure why it took me so long to finally buy one. Perhaps it’s due to the limited storage space in our kitchen, our tiny dining table top, the fact that it can get pretty warm in our apartment, I don’t know. But at long last, we have a tabletop burner stove!

This thing is great. Now we can enjoy hot pot, okonomiyaki, and yakiniku parties at home. Plus, in the event of a power outage I can still cook hot ramen. (Traumatic memories from a 24 hour power outage following an earthquake many years ago are still fresh in my mind, when I searched high and low for any restaurant open and serving hot food. Eventually I found Golden Eagle Chinese restaurant – bless them – busily cooking up whatever they could on their gas stoves in the dark to feed the hungry that lined up at their door. From that day, they had a loyal customer in me).

So anyway, I cordially invited hubby to a shabu shabu party for two (then sent him off to buy the groceries). There’s something about cooking your own food that instantly turns a meal into an experience, an activity, a part-ay!

No disrespect here, but our dinner was so much better than Ichiriki. We started with a pot of water and had ponzu and sesame dipping sauces on the side. We ended the meal with udon noodles of course, enjoying the pure beef broth infused with flavor from mushrooms and green onions.

And then we ended up eating shabu shabu again the next day, but with pork instead of beef.