Soups ON!

my pho inspired dinner

Since the man has been sequestered by clients who want to work into the evenings most of the month of May, I have been on my own for dinner. So far, I have been doing a lot of "on the run" or easy take out for the 1st part of May, but things are different now. My CSA Bells Bend Neighborhood Farms started!!! YAY!!! I have to cook now, and I have all these really great veggies I can cook with now. But, the 1st harvest is a lot of spring goodies, like spring onion, spring young garlic, and leafy greens. What do I do with these? As I walked with my bags filled with leafy greens, mint, cilantro (aka Chinese parsley), spring onions etc, my mind went to Vietnamese food, and pho. That is what I was going to make for dinner, a Vietnamese Pho inspired dish. I did not want to go buy anything new, so I dug into my freezer, looked at my dried herbs and peppers from my garden, and look in the pantry and I had the makings for my soup.

My pho inspired soup is mostly local, local organic, local organic from my garden, or made locally. Here are the ingredients I found in my house:
1. Rice noodles made fresh by King Market, which I put up some in the freezer weeks ago. These rice noodles are like udon noodles, but made with rice.
2. Small pork loin from DW Farms, which I put up in the freezer a while ago. Danny and Wendy are really nice, and it was a joy getting food from them. I cubed up the pork.
3. Greens, spring onion, young spring garlic, cilantro, mint, Italian parsley from Bells Bend CSA. These ingredients just made me think of S.E. Asian soups with greens in it.
4. Garlic clove cured from a local farm I forget which one. Sliced thin.
5. Olive Oil, not local, but organic from a small olive farm in the Sonoma Valley CA.
6. Two dried cayenne peppers hand-torn from Smileys 2 years ago. I love dried and preserved foods.
7. Canned beef broth. I know it is canned, it is not local or local organic. But I did not have enough time to make my own beef stock, and I was hungry and ready to eat before I was making my dinner.

The to do list:
1. Put olive oil in a heavy pot, stir around sliced garlic, diced spring onion, diced spring garlic greens, and hand torn cayenne.
2. Add cubed pork to brown.
3. Add beef broth and heat.
4. In a 2nd pot boil up the noodles.
5. Rough chop more spring onion, garlic greens, mint, Italian Parsley and Chinese Parsley.
6. In big glass bowl, put a pile of cooked noodles and a handful or 2 of the rough chopped greens leafy flavors and herbs.
7. Ladle the broth and pork over the greens and noodles.

Yum!