tis the season

I know I have my food blog for this kind of stuff but...

Today I'm going to write about hot pot (aka nabe).

Most people like to eat hot pot during the colder months of the year (like, starting from now). I personally love to eat nabe all the time. Even in the summer. Although for the summer months sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant is an additional condition to be met lol

Apart from being one of the best foods, I have many memories connected to nabe.

Eating hot pot was always a thing that we did at my late grandparents' place. My grandfather would always bring out a pot that was heated with charcoal. A very traditional contraption. I haven't seen one ever since. Sometimes I miss it. Don't know if it was the charcoal but the taste of the nabe was always a bit different from when we'd eat it out of a regular pot.

My first ever home-cooked meal at my host-family's place back in 2004 was also nabe, sukiyaki to be precise. So that's also a very memorable meal for me. After that, making sukiyaki with my brother and sister back home in Germany became a bit of a thing as well and it was awesome. My family also very often has nabe, a Vietnamese kind, which I wrote about on my food blog here.

My Tokyo host-family also made nabe a lot, particularly oden. And eating oden together became a great memory during my university days here. And even now, whenever my host-mother busts out the big nabe pots, it just feels so good and homey.

Which leads me to another great memory. Eating nabe with my parents and my host-family in Tokyo.

When my parents came to visit me - and effectively came to Japan for the first time ever - a few years back, my host-family invited them to stay over at their house (when my host-family visited Europe, they also stayed at my parents' house, so my host-mother said she wouldn't have it any other way). It was the first time ever for one of my homestay families (and I've had quite a few) to meet my actual parents. It was a strange but also great experience. Haha.

Anyway, which is your favourite kind of hot pot?