Summer Bums

For my first blog post back, I wanted it to be about my summer, so I asked my best friend — who's now my roommate — what we did over break. She said, "We just ate food and watched TV all day 😭." Our third roommate couldn't stop laughing at us. For a second, I thought I'd wasted my whole summer. But honestly I wouldn't change a thing.

Cooking together has always been one of our favorite things to do. Ever since we were able to do things in the kitchen ourselves(sometime at the start of middle school), we would test out different recipes. The meal of this summer was pho. My two roommates and I got together, pulled out the bone broth, limes, and seasonings, and got to work. It took us four hours of adding things to try to make it taste "normal," but it finally came together. We even garnished with bean sprouts and had the pho sauces on the side like they do in the Vietnamese restaurants. I've noticed that cooking with people always makes food taste 100x better.

Now that we're back for school, cooking and meal-prepping with my roommates is how we bond, especially since we're all so busy with our own lives during the week. Both of my roommates are Filipino, and last week I finally got to try sinigang. It reminded me of something I'd had before called Rasam which is an indian soup dish I grew up with. My roommates said that Filipino food is heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian cuisine which might be a reason why I love it so much. I really liked that sinigang had a tomato soup base, and okra is one of my all-time favorite vegetables, so I got excited when I spotted some in the pot. They also added white taro, boiled right in that broth. It was my first time trying white taro, and it's now one of my faves. I'm a big fan of sweet potato, which tastes kind of similar, so I had a feeling I'd like it. The flavor of the soup was really savory and the warmth of it was really comforting. I think there was a little too much tamarind for my liking but I definitely would add this to our weekly meal prep rotations, especially since cozy season is coming. 

One of my roommates and I also meal-prepped pasta together after a long day of classes. We kept forgetting to actually boil the noodles while we made the sauce, so it took way longer than it should have — but the spaghetti turned out so good that maybe that's the method.

This week, we're actually stocked on groceries for once and I'm making butter chicken for everyone. I can't wait to see what we come up with throughout the week. 

6/24/2026 pho (photo by me)