As you may or may not know, I recently shared that I made pho for the first time. And, well, on reflection of that day after the fact… I realized that the massively enormous pot of soup that came out of our kitchen that night was a pretty accurate representation, in its creation and in its completion, of my life at present.
Why? Well, let me explain. Here’s here it all went down.
First, I should explain that I’ve had a steadily growing desire to make pho for a long time. The reason for that would be that 1) I love cooking, and 2) I didn’t understand what made it taste the way it does. So, I was incredibly curious and needed to understand why. Have you ever had that? I think I have a decent understanding of the flavours of spices and various foods: In fact, though I’m not perfect at it, I can usually guess the general contents of a dish when I put something into my mouth.
But… Pho. It’s savoury and PACKED with flavour (as if it has been cooking for days), yet it has a delightfully fresh taste and slight sweetness to it. Somehow I couldn’t place everything I was tasting. So, I just felt that I needed to understand. How hard could it be?
So, one day, when we needed something to eat for dinner, about 2 hours before we should have been eating that thing dinner… I decided: I’m going to do it tonight. Meanwhile, I had no idea how long it would take, what I would need, or anything. So, I pulled up a recipe I’d saved on Pinterest a while back, glanced over the ingredients, went out and got the stuff, and then headed back home, intending to make it to be ready in 1 hour if at all possible.
Then, poised over my kitchen table with my freshly purchased ingredients nearby, I started to read the recipe: “This soup normally takes about 6 hours to make.”
Ooooh… shoot. “Well, I hope this will be good,” I thought to myself. “Because I’m going to make it anyway, and I’m going to do it in 1 hour.”
So, I looked at the recipe.
Ingredient #1: Asian beef broth. What is Asian beef broth, I wondered? Here I was with a hunk of raw beef, ready to make my own beef broth, when it occurred to me… Maybe that wouldn’t cut it.
So, I quickly looked up a recipe for Asian beef broth. Oooh, I see. It had like 20 other ingredients that I didn’t check if I needed to buy.
So, knowing I was running low on time, I filled up the pot with water, put the beef in it with some onion and began riffling through the fridge and cupboards to find anything and everything that would give me something similar to “Asian beef broth,” as best as I could figure it would be.
Pretty much, I was running from one end of the kitchen, and back to the pot; then to the other end of the kitchen, and back to the pot again, and then from the pantry and back to the pot, throwing things into it the whole time… Until I felt satisfied that the broth coming out of that concoction would be “Asian” enough to work for this recipe. Thankfully, it smelled great. Yay.
Then! To keep reading the recipe. Oh wait, first get some water on for the noodles… I was running out of time.
Back to the recipe. Skim over it – Add the first 4 ingredients.
Back to the recipe – Check. Oh shoot, I wasn’t supposed to add them yet. Or was I? Add some more things.
Back to the recipe… Oh wait, no, I need to get those noodles cooked.
Wash the vegetables, cook the noodles, set up dinner bowls, chopsticks, and sauces…
Taste the soup. Hm. A bit too salty. Add some water.
Taste the broth again. Mmmm. So good.
Check the recipe again? Well, quick. Yeah, it’s all in. Didn’t follow the directions, but it’s all in. Cook it for about 20 minutes longer to get the flavours incorporated.
And voila! Done. A 7-hour process completed in about 1-1/2, with a few liberties taken of my own.
And… against all odds, it was delicious. (Yes – Even with my foibles, This Recipe is totally a winner, and you should try it sometime.)
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My days often feel like that these days. Racing the clock to do more than is actually reasonable to do in the amount of time that I have to do it… And then somehow, in the end, things seem to turn out ok. That is, if I even get them started. 😉
*sigh*
One day, I hope, things will calm down. Or maybe I’ll just learn to be more prepared? We shall see.
Regardless of how life goes from here on out – The comfort I take from this metaphor is that… In the end, when all was said and done, the soup was delicious.
Back soon!
–Naomi
