Mmm vertebrae

So I went out for supper with a couple friends last night and had a leisurely time gnawing the meat off of what I believe was the spine of a goat. We weren't actually sure that it was a goat, but the bones seemed too big to be from a lamb, and we figured it was more likely a goat than a sheep. It came (already cooked) in a big copper bowl that was placed over the gas burner set into our table, then the servers added some spicy broth and lit the burner. I didn't have my real camera with me, but I couldn't resist taking some pictures with my phone.

Here's the bowl of soup.

You can see some bits of goat, but also some mushrooms I think. After you eat enough goat to make room in the bowl, you chuck other stuff in to cook in the soup. We got mushrooms, daikon radish, and some giant rice noodles.

It's pretty much impossible to handle the chunks of goat spine using chopsticks, so they give you plastic gloves. I don't have any pictures of the gloves, but here's a picture of one of the pieces I ate, before I ate it. There was actually a lot more meat than I expected on the larger bones.

To go along with that one, here's a picture of a vertebra that's had almost all the meat gnawed off it. It's really tricky to get some parts!

Finally, here's a picture I took in the elevator up to the restaurant

Also, as far as coffee goes. I'll just say that the best I've been able to do so far is a pound of blue mountain beans that I got for 128 RMB from a UBC coffee in DaWangLu. I have also been trying to get my hands on some green beans from Yunnan province so that I can try my hand at home roasting without paying crazy amounts for shipping, duty, etc. Anyway, I'll be writing more about that as I find out more.