A phonny blog post.

When Jon and I were dating, he enjoyed introducing me to new foods that I had never tried before. I loved it all (hence my gut!), but there was one that really stuck out for me... this Vietnamese soup, called pho (pronounced "fuh"). I think I like it so much because he told me he loved for the first time over a steaming hot bowl of this soup!

What exactly IS pho, you may ask? Well, let me tell you! Pho is a Vietnamese rice noodle soup. You can order it with beef (pho bo) or chicken (pho ga). When they bring it out to you, they also bring a plate filled with yummy things like bean sprouts, limes, Thai basil, culantro, peppers, and cilantro. The table is also filled with various sauces, like soy sauce, fish sauce, sriracha chili sauce, and a few other things that I don't use.

After we got married, I got a bit phobsessed about it. I wanted to go all the time. I craved it. And in fact, I still do. Yesterday, Jon humored me and we went to our favorite pho spot, Pho 88, for lunch. I had been drooling ever since he agreed to go with me the night before (while Jon does, himself, love a good bowl of pho, his like for it is much healthier than mine. He doesn't dream about it, drool at the mention of it, or ask for it every night for dinner). My personal favorite is #26, Phở Tái, Chín: Noodle soup with eye round steak and well-done brisket (description straight from the Pho 88 menu!). They know us there now.

My bowl of pho takes a few minutes to prepare once put in front of me. The ratio of limes, to bean sprouts, to cilantro, to fish sauce, etc. has to be perfect! And perfect to me means I use the juice of probably two and a half limes and half a bottle of soy sauce.

My pho before perfecting it:

I'm drooling already! Jon likes to go a different route with his pho. He requests that they insert things like the stomach lining, tendons, and maybe even the brains of various animals (really, he had his with tripe, tendon, meatballs, flank, eye round, and well-done and fatty briskets.) Compared to my eye round steak and well-done brisket, he is quite adventurous. Here is Jon's pho. The things that look like small tentacles on the left are really tripe. And yes, he does eat them.

The plate of wonderful flavor:

And now, my pho, after spending a good 5 minutes making it the most salty, limey thing anyone could ever imagine:

I am in pho heaven, pho real!