When people ask why I don’t fly with Will to New Jersey for the holidays…

When people ask why I never say pho ga at a restaurant is any better than “okay”…

When people ask if there’s one dish I can eat for days without getting tired of it…

This is why:

Pho ga lovingly made by my mom and aunt.

Mature chickens stewed for hours.  Fresh chicken poached, cut into pieces, and marinated with a bit of fish sauce. Thinly sliced chicken skin, freed from any chicken fat.  Rich, savory slices of chicken liver. Rice noodles just made from the factory this morning. The house perfumed by the aroma of chicken broth. The incomparable first spoonful of slippery noodles, hot soup, and a bright kick of a single bit of scallion.

Nothing beats homemade when homemade tastes like that.