sour soup hot pot

While T was here, we had dinner at her uncle's home, who prepared a delicious hot pot of sour soup (lau canh chua). The soup base for the hot pot was similar to that of Vietnamese sour soup (canh chua) and there were a variety of things to cook in the soup: shrimp, slices of beef, quail eggs, all sorts of veggies I cannot name in English but I do remember lotus stems and banana blossoms. We ate it over some rice noodles, and I think I ate one too many servings. It was so good to have homemade Vietnamese food!
For dessert, we had a version of bubar cha cha. This version had a bunch of diced exotic fruits, basil seeds and coconut milk in it. If you google "bubar cha cha," you'll get a variety of recipes for this not-too-sweet-but-just-enough-sugar dessert. I might try to replicate this again one day.

Photos courtesy of T.*

*The reasons I have been using T's photos lately is because although we both had our cameras, she had hers at the ready and I thought one picture crazy person was enough for her family to deal with, especially upon meeting their neice for the first time (I didn't want them to think she had crazy friends too!). =)