One of my daily dominant thoughts is where, when, and what my next meal will be. I love to eat. From time to time, I like to think about my five favorite foods. They are: vegan cheese pizza with pepperoni, acai bowls, Christmas sugar cookies with sprinkles, blueberry bagels, and pho. Out of these five foods, I eat pho the most. Pho is easily accessible for students with a meal plan and presents a nice twist from the ubiquitous grilled chicken.

For those who don’t know, pho is Vietnamese soup consisting of broth, rice noodles, a few herbs, and meat; it is most commonly made with beef or chicken. When I make a bowl of pho, I use the same base as the original dish, but with a few customizations. I like to think of these customizations as “Cassifying” the pho. Cassifying pho makes me think of how the pho I create represents influential people in my life. The qualities in my pho remind me how each individual in my life should be embraced and celebrated.

When I concoct my delicious pho, I start with a base meat. I choose chicken because it is difficult to mess up, constantly available in the dining halls, and easily identifiable. In this respect, my base meat represents my mother. She is the constant in my life, the person who supports and loves me endlessly. My mother supports me through all that I put her through, including my decisions to box over ballet, attend Arizona State rather than Georgia Tech, and cut my hair short even though she likes it better long. My mother supports me through my sad, anxiety-ridden, blonde, and happy moments. She reminds me to enjoy college and put forth my best in each class, as well as exclaim her college philosophy, “C’s get degrees.” Lucky for me, she always adds, “But don’t follow in my footsteps; you’re smarter than I was.” Her humor, strong will, and determination have rubbed off on me and drive me to make her proud. She is the one person I can identify with my eyes closed, by her footsteps or my father’s facial expressions while he’s on the phone with her. Ironically, she also cooks a lot of chicken, making her the base of my pho.

After I add my base meat, I like to add mushrooms. Mushrooms are the international all-stars of herbs, as they are savory and add mouthwatering flavor whether baked, sautéed or fresh. Mushrooms give off a unique, piquant flavor sure to enhance any meal. I think of mushrooms as my new friends, able to shake up and bring in new outlooks on life. This semester at college, I met an abundance of unbelievable students. For example, I met Katie for the first time this semester in English class. Now, every Tuesday we eat pho at Pitchforks together after class and make jokes about life, assignments, and whether it’s better to ride a giraffe or elephant into battle. Her entrance into my life gave me a friend to eat lunch with, a new mixture in my boring lunch hour. New friendship is like mushrooms because no matter how they’re presented, they benefit well-being and keep life refreshing and delectable.

Other herbs enhancing my soup are basil, mint, and lime. These herbs intensify the pre-existing flavors swirling around inside the bowl. These enhancements are like my close friends. My close friends are all phenomenal people and always spicing up my life, much like herbs do the soup. One of my close friends, Maggie, is always a phone call away and down to act spontaneously at any time of the day. The peak moment of her spontaneity in my life was when she bought us tickets to see Jersey Boys from a sketchy man in the middle of Times Square thirty minutes before showtime. Our motto for that moment was “At least when we’re dead, we can say we saw Jersey Boys off-Broadway in New York.” Her spontaneity invigorates my life, just like mint, lime, and basil invigorate pho.

After the meat and herbs, I plop my noodles in the bowl. In true Vietnamese pho, rice noodles are used, but since I’m allergic to rice, I routinely use egg noodles. Any type of noodle is essential for constructing savory pho, which is why I think of the noodles as my family. My family is an essential part of my life, as they make me laugh, I spend a large amount of my time with them when I am home, and they support me in all I do. One of my favorite family memories is family game night. Over Christmas break, we played Family Feud, children versus adults. Since all of the adults were drunk on mulled wine, they could not answer the questions quickly or correctly. At one question, “What do you gamble when you have no money?” my seventy-five-year-old grandpa said, “Well if you have no money, gamble your wife!” My grandmother smacked him so hard he had a five star on the back of his shiny, bald head, leaving me laughing so hard I snorted Coca-Cola out of my nose. Such belly-hurting laughter and fun are critical parts of my life that keep me happy and sane. Noodles in pho are essential, just like my family is essential to me.

Lastly, I add broth. Now, I’m not a fan of regular broth, so I use miso. It is not as traditional as a chicken broth and in theory should taste worse since it doesn’t carry the chicken flavor, but it is heavenly. I am a sucker for miso soup in pho, as it holds my heart as one of my all-time favorite soups. When poured, the broth fills all the gaps between the noodles, meat, and herbs. The broth has an important job of adding flavor, letting the herbs float, keeping the soup hot, and mixing the different ingredients together. With all these duties, the miso is like God. God brings people together in perfect harmony. God has a plan for my life, and I have to trust in him to make my life whole. If broth existed as a person, it would have the plan to mix all the ingredients into a community. God holds one’s life together, similar to how the broth holds together the soup. Without the broth, the soup wouldn’t be soup; it would just be noodles, herbs, and meat. Without God, people would simply be desperate individuals; they wouldn’t become a community or get to know and love one another.

By Cassifying pho, I am able to embrace my differences because not many people can relate their community to a bowl of soup. The people in my life have influenced who I am today and have added to my unique nature, just how the ingredients mixed into my pho determine how it delectable it will taste.