pho bo!

yesterday was hubby's birthday. when i asked him what he wanted to eat he said he wanted pho and fresh vietnamese spring roll (goi cuon). we both love vietnamese food and usually that's what we get whenever we go to tucson (no vietnamese restaurant here where i live). but with patrick just under 3 weeks old there's no way i'm going to tucson and leave him behind and there's no way we can take patrick with us. luckily hubby'd bought me a vietnamese cookbook, so i tried the recipe instead.

turns out it takes a lot of preparation and stamina to make pho. but it turned out really good. mine tasted as good as the ones you usually get in the restaurants, although it'd be better if i had more variety of meat and meat balls, and bigger bowls. but i'll settle with this one. the secret is the broth.. you have to make a really strong flavorful broth.

anyway, here's the recipe. it's pretty simple kok. the recipe makes for 8 servings, so i don't follow it closely. you can adjust the amount of ingredients you need.

broth:
4-6 pieces of beef bones about 5inch each
5 star anise
1 cinammon stick
6 whole cloves
1/4 cup fish sauce
salt
beef stock
1-inch yellow rock sugar (i use raw cane sugar.. about 4 tablespoons)
beef chunk (pilih yang ber-urat)
1-2 small yellow onion (bawang bombay), don't peel the skin off.
a 4-inch fresh ginger (i actually use only about 1 inch..), don't peel the skin off.
6 quarts (24 cups) water (kira2 aja lah, pokoknya sekuali gede)

how:
boil the bones until the broth becomes frothy. spoon away the froth so the broth becomes clear.
in the meantime, burn / charred the onion and ginger until the skin becomes black. cool off a bit, then remove the blackened skin with knife.

back to broth: after 15 minutes of boiling pour out half of the broth and change with fresh water, return to boil while keep spooning away the froth (that's the impurities of the bones, you don't want that). add beef chunk, star anise, cinammon stick,cloves, fish sauce, sugar, salt, beef stock, onion and ginger. keep simmer for about 1-1.5 hour.

in the meantime, prepare the bowl ingredients.

bowl:
thin flat rice noodle: boiled then rinse with cold water
variety of meat (chunk, rib eye, tribe, meat balls) - boil everything just before serving, sliced thin.
cilantro leaves just top part, chopped
chopped scallions (just the green part, but i use all)

put everything in the bowl prior to serving.

garnish:
mint leaves, basil leaves, bean sprouts, thin-sliced yellow onion, chopped jalapeno pepper (atau cabe rawit kalau ada), hoisin sauce.

serving suggestion:
bring the broth to boil again, adjust the flavor according to taste with the salt, fish sauce and sugar. pour to bowl, add garnish, .. and enjoy.

supermom in the making

after having patrick i now understand how God created super moms. basic training includes pain. all kinds of pains.

after birth the pain doesn't go away. you'd think being in labor was the most intense pain you could ever experience. wrong. well, sort of. labor pain was so intense that you wish you weren't pregnant. but then after giving birth you're experiencing another kind of pain. the not-so-painful-but-yet-very-annoying-and-can-make-you-cry kinda pain.

well that's what life's like for me now, almost 3 weeks after giving birth to patrick. first came the dull pain of stitches. you feel so sore down there that you actually feel reluctant to walk, pee, shower, let alone poop. and then there's the sore vagina too. mine was so swollen a few hours after that i actually feel like i had a double vagina.

oh not to mention my swollen feet. they don't hurt, but they make you feel stiff. and at night they started to itch real bad.

after that came the sore nipples. mine was chapped and cracked due to patrick's still-poor latching ability. at first it didn't hurt as bad but as time comes the pain intensify from a bee sting to shoot-me-in-the-head pain. then after 4 days milk came bursting from my breasts. good, yes, but they also made my breasts very engorged and that's painful too. i actually cried because my manual breasts pump didn't work and hubby had to run to walmart in the middle of the night just to buy me an electric breasts pump. last night the pain was so extreme that i wanted to cut my nipple off.

apart from the pain there's also the psychological issues. i don't know why but every afternoon i feel like crying out loud. and it can be for a number of reasons too. mine varies from mom's critics, pain, seeing patrick strapped into a carseat, hubby asking me what i wanted for dinner.. anything.

and to top things off: lack of sleep. first night at home patrick spent the night fussing and demanding cuddle and nipples. so i didn't sleep at all until 5am when my husband woke up. it's getting better now, i managed to steal a 2-3 hour sleep between his nursing schedule. but still, i get tired every afternoon. i need to learn to sleep when patrick's sleeping. really.

so now you'd forgive me when i say i cry like a baby when nighttime falls, wouldn't you?

(st) patrick's day

so. what's new? big. i had patrick. who's he? my darling cute son. what? when?

patrick was born march 3rd, 2010. he was actually due to be born march 1st, but alas, no sign on labor. i spent 3 weeks dialating only 1cm, so finally doctor said i needed to be induced.

"it's up to you, do you want to wait a week, or do it tonight?"
although i've been expecting this the word 'tonight' sounded so sudden and alarming. but i don't want to wait another week either. i was so huge and uncomfortable that i was ready to be de-pregnant.

so finally my husband and i decided we'd do it the next day. doctor contacted the hospital OB to reserve a room for me while i and husband went to the ER (his work place) to find replacement for him. i was nervous, excited, scared.. everything rolled into one. i was gonna have a baby.

so the next day we spent the day getting everything ready for the baby home-coming. then 6pm came and we drove to the hospital. believe it or not i was crying because i was sad to leave the dogs behind for several days. silly, i know.

once in the hospital they put me on the IV fluid and inserted some kind of a pill into my cervix. to make it dilated a bit more, doctor said. once the cervix reached 3cm he was gonna break my water. lemme tell you something... having someone insert their fingers deep into you (let alone probe around in it) was very very V E R Y unpleasant. i hated that part. and sadly the pill didn't do its job. i had to repeat the process every 4 hour. and once inserted i had to lie flat on my back, hooked up to IV and monitors attached to my belly. sleeping had never been so uncomfortable and annoying.

at around 7am doctor came in and finally announced that i've dilated a tight 3. then he broke my water. my husband arrived sometime around 8 and took me for a walk, which the nurse said will help with my dilating. at around 10 something nurse came back in and put me in pitocyn, a drug that was used to speed up the labor. soon i was contracting really bad, like 4-5 mins apart but was still dilating only 3cm. so she wanted to put more pitocyn, but thank God there's something wrong with my IV needle that everytime she put more dose in it the needle burned my hand. finally around noon or past i was dilating 4cm, and allowed epidural. it took forever for the anesthesiologist to come and by then i was in pain. you cannot believe how much pain involved in the process. each contraction came twice, one backpain and then immediately after that bladder pain.

after epidural though, i was in heaven. i can't feel a thing on my right side, but still able to feel pain on my left side. not too much, just like menstrual cramps, annoying but i was too tired to respond. after a while the nurse help me sleep sideways so the epidural will flow evenly to my body. soon i was numb waist down. and that's when she announce i was complete and ready to push.

so push i did. for half an hour, not knowing when (except for when they told me to), how (couldn't feel a thing), and what to push. but they said i was doing great. after a while nurse suddenly said "ooh he's coming. i'll get the doctor." so doctor came, told me to push, and with one push out came patrick. my husband was so excited that he forgot to record the moment patrick came out. duurrr!

nothing can describe my feelings when i first hold him in my hands (they immediately put him on my chest after birth, and scrub him dry there). amazing. i still can't believe that i managed to push something so cute and scrumpled like him out of my vagina. :D anyway, he weighed 6lbs 15oz, and 19inch long. a bit small but perfect in any other ways (apgars test 9/9).

and my life is never the same.