Busy morning with some blogging done. The last guy I hired to blog with us ended up doing one post and buggering off to parts unknown. I’ve just hired a new blogger who volunteered. He’s young but he can spell and put a sentence together with a decent amount of coherence most of the time – at most, some constructive criticism and a few corrections should have him doing a halfway decent job. He definitely needs to develop some style though. He’s not bad, but his writing is fairly dry. I’m cool with that, but I think I need to nudge him a bit to loosen him up to get the more humorous and/or sarcastic and/or snarky juices flowing.
N.O.L. today is a new packaged pho I haven’t tried yet: Vifon brand Pho Bo. (Beef noodles) This one is … interesting.
To start with it comes with a wee fork and four packets: A soup base packet of course, a vegetable packet (looks like small leek or green onion bits), a packet of chili sauce, and a packet of palm oil that contains chili and beef flavouring.
I tried it with just the soup and veggie packet. Rather bland, and thin too. The oil packet baffled me a bit. It didn’t really add any flavour to the soup, and I couldn’t figure out why there was beef flavouring and chili added to a packet destined for a beef-flavoured soup with its own chili packet. But, whatever. It didn’t seem to add any flavour, just made it a bit oily. The chili packet added a wee bit of heat (very little though – black pepper would kick sand in this stuff’s face) and a bit of extra flavour.
It has an … odd … smell. Unlike any Pho I’ve had. The flavour is weak but also not tremendously beefy. There are also two pale brown … things … that I presume came out of the veggie packet. I’m assuming they’re supposed to look like bits of beef, but they have no flavour and the consistency of foam rubber, so I’m going to go with tofu. (The ingredients say “textured wheat gluten” … or maybe it’s the “eryngium” whatever the hell that is.) The noodles are soft and thin though – probably the best part about the soup.
It’s not unpleasant, but it’s hardly inspiring either, so I think I’ll avoid getting this one next time.
Also, “eryngium” sounds vaguely disturbing for some reason. It sounds like the medical term for a bit of internal anatomy. “I’m afraid there’s a blockage in the left eryngium. We’re going to have to operate.”
Also, it rained today. Hard. The thunder was boomy enough to set off someone’s car alarm.
Vbob - I think she should be called on it somehow. That’s just not right, especially stealing prescription painkillers. I’m not saying fire her ass if you’re trying to help her out, but it’s definitely gotta stop.
ETA: First on four! That makes up for the crappy pho.
), bought a memory stick to move my Firefox bookmarks, and went on a beer run. It rained a bit here.