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In my memories, the summer of 2008--the first summer I was living and cooking on my own, away from home and without the college safeguard of a dining hall--is marked by my mother repeatedly asking what I was eating. It was a question that came out of some mixture of concern and curiosity: I had declared myself a vegetarian somewhere in there, and although I ostensibly knew how to cook the real question was whether I could cook for myself, day in and day out. Did I have the wherewithal? Grocery shopping only once every two weeks, would I be able to gauge what I needed, and how much? Or would I end up anemic, or otherwise malnourished?

The good news: I made it through that summer, and more after, with little to no significant changes in health. But the question still manifests itself occasionally, though: what are you eating? What am I eating?

Soup, mostly. And other things, but I like food that I can toss in one big pot and store in one big tupperware, so if it's not soup it's something that's true to the spirit: a pot of black beans jumbled with sauteed vegetables and maybe some cheddar cheese, served on top of rice, or shepherd's pie with lentils replacing the ground beef. Right now, though, at this precise moment: I'm eating pho.

I'm mentioning this because making my own pho is something that's new to me, and it's been an inroad into making my own vegetable stock, which I'd never done before. That in and of itself is kind of strange, because most of my soups use water in place of stock, and so I'm effectively making a stock over the course of making a soup. But these broths are, for lack of a better word, thin--the broth doesn't carry the soup.

Pho is traditionally a beef noodle soup, and the first time I tried to make a vegetarian version the lack was pretty apparent: it was just noodles and broth, and while the broth was good it wasn't good enough--it needed a lot of salt, and I ate giant bowls of it because it wasn't particularly filling. It's probably my own fault for not liking tofu particularly, but here we are, second time around.

I used this recipe as a base and expounded from there. Start with a pot of decent size: add onion (1, quartered with skin), shallots (2, halved with skin), garlic (8 cloves, halved), ginger (~1 inch piece, sliced), star anise (2 pods), cinnamon (2 sticks) and carrots (chopped). Dry roast until vegetables begin to char, and then add white mushrooms (~10, coarsely chopped), and celery (2 stalks, coarsely chopped). I used some rice wine vinegar here to help get the brown bits off the bottom, and then add water (10 cups) and soy sauce (3 tablespoons).

Bring that to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer and cook for an hour at least. I tasted the broth along the way until I thought the flavor was strong enough--there may have been a compromise here because I was hungry, but when it was done it had a nice rich color and was fairly flavorful. Then I removed the aromatics, onions, etc. but left some of the mushrooms and carrots in and added vermicelli rice noodles (200g--though you could use less, mine basically took over the pot, which rice noodles tend to do), and some fish sauce. This where it starts to veer a little from traditional pho (if you didn't guess it would when I left some vegetables in the broth): I also added an entire head of chopped bok choy, the juice of one lime, and cilantro and basil (a loose half a cup of each). The last three are normally added to the bowl at the table; this way I can store all my pho in the fridge and reheat without worrying about lime wedges and herb garnishes (though I did add the srichacha by the bowl, because I always go overboard with that stuff at least once).

There you go, then: what I'm eating.