Chicken Pho

Out of the four of us, three really love Pho.  The other, well, he doesn't like much.  :)  We're pretty fortunate to live in an area that has a ton of Vietnamese restaurants.  We have our favorites and we frequent them regularly.

Dave has mentioned a few times that I should try my hand at making pho, but it's always seemed like too much work for the time I had available to me.

Last week I bought 2 whole chickens to roast and wound up throwing each of the carcasses into a crockpot to make stock.  I wound up with 8 quarts, which, coincidentally was how much I needed for a chicken pho recipe I'd read recently.  I decided then and there that I was going to commit to it.  I headed out to the store to grab a few things I was missing and boom, dinner was decided!

I followed a recipe, but adjusted it to taste as I went along.  It wasn't terribly hard and I would absolutely make it again.  Our place smelled amazing and we had plenty of leftovers.

Baguettes, salad, pho and fixin's  :)

 A closer look at the fixin's.  Bean sprouts, cilantro, green onion, jalepenos, hoisin, sriracha and sambal oelek.

The pho itself.  Not bad for a first shot.  I think the broth is too cloudy, but the taste was there, so I'm happy with my first try.

Cars. Old and Older.

At the end of the summer Dave was in an accident that left his car totaled.  He was fine, some ugly cuts but he was able to walk away.  In that moment, that was all that mattered.

Of course, days later when we found out that his car was a total loss, we were bummed.  It was paid off and we didn't really want to take on any car payments.  After some deliberation, it was decided.  We'd buy another car using only as much as we got from the insurance payment.  It seems easy enough.

Then you actually have to start searching for a car.

I'd forgotten what an ordeal it can be when you have a very rigid number in mind.   Our bank has a section of their website that shows cars for sale at local dealerships that are "approved" (I guess thats what you'd call it).  It seemed like as good a place as any to start.  Almost immediately we were looking at a Montero Sport.  He liked it, looked at a few more on the web site, printed out 3 we were interested in and off we went!

When we arrived at the dealership, we realized that had it not been for our banks backing of them, we would NEVER have chosen this place.  But hey, we were there, so full steam ahead!

The Montero was a no go, from the first look.  Gave it a test drive and that confirmed it as a solid no.  Next up was a 2003 BMW 325i.  This one wasn't much to look at either.  Test drove it, drove pretty well, AC worked (it was late August, this mattered a lot while we stood there sweating on the black top), it was a contender.  Then we tried the third car.  I can't even remember what it was.  There was one final car on the lot that we were interested in, but it was $1200 above our agreed upon range.  It was a beautiful, low milage Cadillac.  We debated about wanting a car payment (no matter how small) and finally agreed to stick to the original plan.  We took the BMW and signed the papers.  The guys at the dealership were very nice and they told us, if we weren't happy before the registration came in, bring the car back and they'd let us trade it.

Okay, so this is when things go downhill. Within a couple of days of getting the car home, we're realizing that it's quite a bit more than well loved.  Hehe.  Not too long after that it starts riding a bit funny and rapidly following engine light pops on. Dave says he'll deal with it.  We only need the car to last til he's done with school.    Now the car just sits in it's spot.  

Fast forward to Christmas day.  He takes it to the store and almost immediately gets stopped.  The officer tells him the car isn't registered and his temp is no good.  Gah.   We fret fro a few days but get in touch with the dealer.  They say come in we'll give you a new temp until we can sort out why the registration didn't get done.  About halfway through our drive Dave realizes they said we could get a different car before the registration came in, assuming we weren't happy with this one.  I kind of thought they'd say no, since we were supposed to have had the registration by now.  He figures, what can it hurt to ask.  So he did.  They were totally fine with it!

Took a couple of days for them to smog check our new (used) car, but it's in our possession now, it's older than the BMW, but has 50,000 fewer miles and seems to be in much better condition.  All's well that ends well.

Trying Again...

2015!  What?

Okay so here I am, with what I hope to be some solid plans for this year.  Admittedly, I think the same thing at the start of each new year, but hey, who am I to buck against tradition?

Being that I'm not currently working, I'm feeling confident about getting stuff done.  Whatever the "stuff" may be.   For now, that means, cooking more, keeping on top of a household schedule and keeping my family on track.

A few weeks before Christmas I had my last work day.  The expectation was that I would get all sorts of things done before the holiday arrived.  Funny, that, I got practically nothing done.  I did some laundry, so that was good.  ;)   Mom and Dad flew in for a week and I feel as though I did everything I needed to that week.  Hang with them and enjoy their company.

So, what now?  It's January 3rd and I'm ready to sort out week one of this year.  For now, I'm focusing on trying a new grocery budget, getting a menu planned (at least for dinners, though, all meals would be even better) and actually cooking.  Last year a lot of food was wasted in our house, which I'd like to see change.  Sometimes food was bought with the hopes that someone would get to cooking it, but unfortunately our schedules got away from us and things went bad.  Somet,imes we had the food available but everyone was just too tired to cook.  I'm pretty ashamed of that fact, but, that's life.  It's not always perfect.

This week we've got a few meals planned.  Chicken/potato vindaloo with rice and salad, copycat Zuppa Toscana with salad and bread, spaghetti and meatballs with salad and bread,  breaded pork with rice and sauteed veggies, quesadillas (varied fillings depending on each family members wants) with refried beans and chips and roasted chicken with mashed potaotes, gravy and salad.   Nothing spectacularly exciting, but enough to get me back into the habit of cooking nightly.

I set a weekly budget of $125 for the four of us.  I'll be doing my best to keep with that but I'm not intending to take myself to task if I go over once in a while.  Now if it happens weekly, that's another story.  ;)  So far today I spent $71 at Food 4 Less, I skipped getting the chickens (whole) and ground beef there.  The prices seemed very high to me.  I'll either hit the commissary or Costco in a day or two.  We have a fair amount of left over baking supplies from the holiday so I didn't buy much snack stuff.  I assume I'll be spending at least $30 more on meat.  Anything left over I'll just roll into the next weeks grocery budget.  This will work especially well since I'm in need of stocking my pantry with some basics that have been missing for a while.  When you eat out as much as we did towards the end of the year, you barely notice that there's no more pasta and the rice is almost gone.  Eeeek!