A mere day after I posted about eating chicken legs, I find myself being drawn back into a discussion on the exact same topic.

A friend on our team took us out to a Sichuan "hot pot" restaurant last night.  I think these hot pot restaurants are China’s answer to fondue.  In the restaurant, every table has a heated pot on it which is filled with a soup/broth of a certain flavor.  Then the customer gets to choose from many different types of raw vegetables, seafood, beef, chicken, mushrooms, and a bunch of other foods.  You just load up your plate and then dump the items in the cauldron to cook.  (They aren’t really cauldrons, but how often do I really get to use that cool word?)

Anyway, after you cook the food, you pull it out and dip it into a sesame sauce or a chili sauce or whatever other type of sauce you can create with the provided seasonings.  And then of course you eat it (unless you’re like me and you let the cooked food fall from your chopsticks onto the empty raw food plate.)  What I ended up actually eating was pretty tasty.  I’d like to try it again some time…

But the point of the story is that Anna became fixated on eating a chicken foot.  I think she independently decided on this and chose this from her various options.  We weren’t really sure whether or not she would actually eat the chicken foot after it was cooked…but we thought, "Hey, why not let her give it a try?"

Much to my surprise, Anna loved the taste of the chicken foot.  She worked a very long time consuming poor Foghorn Leghorn’s little kicker.  It was a bit horrifying to me, but at the same time pretty cool.  She’s got a lotta heart that kid.

We didn’t bring the camera (again) and so Christa felt compelled to orchestrate a re-enactment of the "eating of the foot". She actually brought the remains of the chicken foot home so Anna could pose for pictures!  I’m not sure which is more disturbing to me: the fact that Anna really likes to eat chicken feet OR the fact that Christa felt the need to pack it out of the restaurant and bring it home.

I think I’m quickly becoming the least Chinese member of this family…