Let’s go to Vietnam… or just make a bunch of Vietnamese food bc we poor

The star of the show is lemongrass pork vermicelli bun, using this marinade. We got bean sprouts, butter lettuce, cucumbers, mint, Thai basil, and homemade pickled carrot and daikon (water, sugar, salt, and rice vinegar for 2 hours) all ready for dinner this week!

Holding the meals together is ‘crack sauce’ or nuoc cham, using this recipe. Found I was out of sambal and wasn’t thinking when I chopped AND ADDED 10 bird’s eye chilis to my sauce. I skimmed most of it out, but the oil was already in there- FIRE! I had to add more water, sugar, fish sauce, and lime to get it to cool down!

Then I got the idea for a Vietnamese chicken salad from this reel. Even though he says recipe in link, there’s nothing there but busted nuoc cham sauce. Salad has Napa cabbage, cucumber, tomato, bean sprouts, mint, Thai basil, cilantro, poached chicken, and air fryer tofu (salt, garlic salt, white pepper) BC SOMEBODY only defrosted 1 chicken breast (so had to add the tofu but secretly not mad). Was supposed to add peanuts but my back was killing me. She did enough!

Then I made these bentos (I know this is Japanese) with frozen potato mochi I made another meal prep day – SO CUTE – miso pasta (except half the butter, double the miso, no cheese – healthy innit); this bean salad I posted maybe last week; and some of the quality crab stick from the Asian supermarket, salted and with lemon slices (taste tested – YUM)!

Then we ate STEAK and extra Vietnamese salad for dinner bc the grill was still hot from the pork! FTW! And I got all the crack sauce leftover!