Apologies, the past two weeks have been Crazy Furniture Moving and Room Renovation Time at my house, so I haven’t had much chance to devote to Cheap Eats. So, I’m just going to have to leave you with this one pic of my attempt to make a bowl of chicken stock based (as opposed to the beef bone stock variety) Pho the other day. Pho (pronounced “fuh”, but I often say “foe”) is a Vietnamese culinary staple of rice noodles and broth, and is one of our favorite things to get when we eat at Vietnamese restaurants.

I’d recently gone to the Chinese market and stocked up on a few odds and ends, including some of the fresh rice noodles used to make pho. We have the dried variety in the pantry, but I think the fresh one tastes a lot better. Broth in this case was chicken stock, ginger, star anise, cinnamon, rice wine, fish sauce, brown onion (I know: this isn’t an authentic recipe). Usually, I throw on cilantro, mint, basil, green onions, etc right at the last minute. Add some leftover cooked shrimp, vegetables and pork meatballs to the noodles and broth and you’ve got a nice lunch!