Do it yourself. No seriously, do it yourself. I don't wanna.

That's a bald-faced LIE! I DO wanna do it myself.

Brian and I have done-it-ourselves again. This time, it was Pho (which is pronounced 'fuh' or 'foo' or something else other than 'foh', which apparently sounds like the word for poop. Or something. Anyway. Oops!). Brian loves Pho. He loves the way it makes your eyes water and your nose run, and the fact that you have to work your way through all of that broth to get to the solid parts. Naturally, we had to try making it ourselves, which involved:

- 5 pounds of beef knuckle for the broth

- 3 pounds of additional beef

Thirty dollars worth of animal parts, in other words. Thank god it provided us with enough broth to make lots of Pho AND ALSO potentially drown a person in.

Throw in some star anise, cloves, charred onions and ginger (putting my burning-stuff-skills to good use) and you're just about there.

Pair it with a bottle of the world's finest home brew, and you have a night to remember.

Scone of the week: Apple and old cheddar with streusel topping

Behind the scenes, it ain't pretty. I make a big mess every time I bake. I always have to wash my clothes afterward, because I still can't control my habit of wiping everything on myself instead of, you know, a towel, or whatever adults do. But while I'm sharing, you should know that beneath all of those burnt blobs and blips of miscast streusel lies one of the best investments I have ever made: a Silpat. I've been known to create full-blown fires in our oven, so anything that cuts down on the likelihood of burning food gets my approval.

Anyway. Scones. These puppies are good. No, great. They are the best scones yet: they've got chunks of apple, hunks of sharp, old, white cheddar, a pinch of cinnamon and cloves, and crunchy, buttery, oaty streusel on top. I have, in effect, recreated apple pie with a slice of cheddar (a favourite pairing of my father's I used to find puzzling, if not revolting. Alas, just like his peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, I've come around to it and regretted wasting the first 20-odd years of my life not eating it.), only in scone form, so it's acceptable breakfast fare. Right? Right.

Plenty of soup for you

I do not think of myself as a lover of soup. As a rule. It doesn't feature on my desert island list. It's not one of the foods I daydream about while camping in the backcountry. It wasn't one of the things I doodled, salivating, with a pencil and paper, when I had my wisdom teeth and tonsils out (separate incidents; perhaps because it is one of the only things you're allowed to eat when you've had those particular body parts yanked out).

But something happened tonight - something with roots stretching back into the beginning of the week, when I surveyed the contents of my refrigerator and tried to figure out what to do with the odds and ends left over from meals gone by. (It's a perpetual problem; especially when dealing with buttermilk. Who ever uses the whole carton without some serious, frantic, pre-expiry-date recipe searching?) In any case, something happened. I had to make buttermilk biscuits, and I found myself planning to make soup to go along with them. And not to spoil the ending for you, but clearly I don't know myself that well at all. I really, really liked this soup. It also reminded me of other soups I adore, and which I only have a month or so left to make before the Ottawa summer sets in (optimistic, je sais) and barbecue becomes the only realistic means of preparing food.

Anyway. You need a diversion from the soup so LOOKATTHESEBISCUITS! They are... well... perfect. I love them. I think you should make them, say, tomorrow. I've served them with chili, turkey stew, jambalaya, chowder and all alone for lunch. They're the ideal mix of salty and sweet, with a kick of onion and the tang of buttermilk, all packed into one fluffy, moist little circle. Tonight, Brian made them, because I was too busy chopping and slicing and simmering and sauteeing, and I will say it with pride: the man can bake. (If you make them, don't skimp on the sea salt on top. Just ask my dad.)

But the soup was so good, it was hard to decide whether to take a bite of biscuit or a slurp of soup (so very hard! The humanity!). You should probably make it too. You'll like it because it's earthy, with precisely the right broth:chunks ratio. And you might just fall in love with dried porcini mushrooms, which I did, about a year ago.

Now. What am I going to do with the dark green parts of those leeks? Seriously. One billion dollars to the person who comes up with a truly delicious and worthwhile recipe that uses the part of the leek nobody else has the huevos to do something about.