Homemade Pho Sate

Got up this morning and saw that there's a rainfall warning in effect, all I could think of was a hot bowl of pho sate soup. I had bought some beef soup bones a month ago, and still sitting in the freezer. So, I got it out, and started making the broth. After searching for some Pho Bo recipes online, I decided to go with the one from www.vietworldkitchen.com (http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/10/pho-beef-noodle-soup.html), which included spices like star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks. I skipped the fish sauce, which I know was one of the most important ingredients in Vietnamese cuisine! I substituted with a bit of tamari sauce.

Now the sate part... I looked for sauces at a couple of Asian markets but couldn't find any sate sauce that contained no MSG or peanuts (can't have them due to allergy). So, I decided to make my own. Again, Viet World Kitchen had a recipe for vietnamese style sate chile sauce (http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/lemongrass-chil.html), so, I just followed it. I used all the ingredients besides peanut oil (substituted with olive oil), red chili (substitued with jalapenos cause I couldn't find any red ones!), and siracha sauce (which has misc preservative that I wasn't sure about).

Voila! 

Despite no fish sauce, the soup turned out good. The broth could be simmered a little longer (I cooked it for only 3 hours).

A Tray of Goodness

I've heard a lot of good health benefits about wheatgrass but had never tried it myself. On the weekend, I saw a beautiful tray of organic wheatgrass at the farmers market, so I decided to give it a try.

I cut a handful of grass everyday to put in my smoothie or squeeze it through my juicer with other fruits and vegetables. It doesn't have much of a strong taste to it, so it was easy to combine wheatgrass into smoothies and juices.

After 6 days, this is what's left. I've been watering and giving the wheatgrass lots of sunshine by placing it outside for a few hours a day. After a few days, the patch that I had cut earlier started to grow taller. The grower of these wheatgrass told me that it will last for about a week. It's hard to tell from the picture, but some tip of the grass has started to turn yellow.