Gone Vietnamese and my baby girl

what's up blogger world... sorry been MIA lately... i'm so busy and stressed out at work, i have no energy to blog once i get home. Since I've been single, I started cooking much more often. One thing is obvious, it feeds me, another is, cooking truly is my stress reliever. The peeling, cutting, dicing, organizing, cleaning, in some way calms me down. Call me crazy, but that's how I roll..

So anyways, it's been pretty chilly in the big apple. my craving for PHO is out of this world when the temp dips below 40. it's like pregger craving for pickle juice, hahaha. so i decided to make my own, b/c i haven't found a good enough pho place in the city yet. My fav. is still Pho Pasture in Boston.

alright, ready to rock? let's roll...


Beef stock... the foundation of a good bowl of pho...
- Beef knuckle bones or ox tail
- 2 large onions
- 1 big ginger, about half size of your palm
- beef soup spice (cinnamon, star anise.. i have to go read the labels, but you can get those from any chinese supermarket)
- rock sugar or regular sugar
- fish sauce

Bleed the kunckle bones, which means boil it in water first, and dump out the water and dirty foam, rinse the pot. This is to make sure the left over blood is out of the bone, no foam, so that the soup is clear.

dump all the ingredients in. now some recipes calls for the onion and ginger to be broiled/grilled first. i have done them both broiled or just as it, honestly, i think it makes a very mild difference, only a seasoned pho eater would notice. so it's up to you.

simmer for 3 hours. YES it has to be that long, that's when all the flavor from the bones will come out.


Preparing the bowl...
- pho noodle... duhhh
- raw beef layered on top, could use eye round, sirloin or london boil. i had the eye round.
- cut some thin slices of onion and soak in ice cold water to make it crisp and put on the beef before the soup is poured...not pictured here
- lime

usually in the rest. they will have the bean sprouts, basil etc. but i don't like them. i know, i'm weird. i like my pho plain, beef on the side, and i eat the beef raw drizzled in lime and siracha. OH! and plenty of scallion in the soup. ahhaha..


SMILE~~


i cooked some bok choy in the soup to make peace with my body. i have been on an eatting binge, to be just a little bit health concious, i threw them in. and i had some awesome beef tendon balls around and threw those in too. i gotta show you this brand i use, it's $5 a pack, which is expensive in my world for beef balls, but they are absolutely the best. MUST have in HOT POTs!


pour HOT HOT HOT BOILING HOT soup over the beef... ohhhh yeeeaaaaa..... *shiver* remember the beef will get cooked through.. here i placed some more raw beef on top.. cuz i like it RAWWWW.. hahaha


my baby girl on the kitchen floor watching me cook.. and go after anything i accidentally drop on the floor.

will "paw" for greenies

"mommy, i said pleaseeee already.... gimmeeee"

yum yum yum

mommy and daisy... scary non-made up face... yuck

so anyways, that's my lame update on life, hahaha... it's exactly what it is, go to work, cook, eat, shower, play with the baby girl, andddd... yea that's it.

ya know, i thought i'd be dating given that i've been single for almost 4 months. but nada, not even one single date. i don't know what my problem is, too busy with work, too stressed, not interested, i don't know... but i gotta tell ya, give me another month or two, i'll jump at anything with a penis. a rabbit can only do so much, hahahahaa....

mine looks something like this. this shit was so sick when i first got it in japan. it vibrats, twists, lights flashing, 8 speeds and pulses, like, damn it's like a freakin' disco party up in here! i miss those little japanese porn shops, you'd be surprise that office ladies go there to shop too! and they totally act normal inside. i remember holding this vibrator and watching it being used on the DVD that's playing by the register, i was all like, i'm so getting this one!!! in every single color!!!

but yea, dating is dreadful. it's just the whole "putting myself out there" thing is like a freaking chore to me! being emotionally open to someone gets difficult as you get older. i wish i could go back to my whoreish ways like my younger days. but times have changed and i'm a total housewife now.. lame, i know. i feel like a single mother, everytime i set up a dinner date or something, i have to call my mom or friend to walk and feed daisy for me, so i try to keep this to 2 times a week, so i don't bother them too much. i've had daisy for almost 2 yrs now, and i still just want to run home and see her every night....

alright, enough of my blabing... hope everybody's having an awesome week.. i'm going to Stratton, VT for a ski trip this weekend. we'll see about my sore asses on monday, hahahaa...