homemade favorites

My mom is blaming me for requesting all my favorite home cooked meals because she claims she's gained ten pounds since I got to Boston five days ago (and still another five days to go!).  Usually, my mom would cook the dishes, but I've been preparing dinner lately since I don't want to wait until 10pm to have dinner (parents don't get off work until 8pm).

My mom wanted to go to Costco on my first night here, and she went gaga over how cheap the pork was, so she bought a ton.  As a result, she told me to boil and shell a dozen eggs to make "braised pork with eggs in coconut juice" for dinner.  Basically, I just boiled the pork and then washed it clean.  Next, I put a liter of coconut juice into a large pot, added about three cups of water to the pot; waited until the liquids came to a boil before adding the cooked pork and shelled whole eggs into the pot.  I added some fish sauce and black pepper for taste.  Then I let it sit over medium high heat for a couple hours.  Here's a similar recipe I found online.
The next night, we had my all time favorite meal -- Make Your Own Springroll!  Okay, that's my name for the dish, because it's like fondue and you basically do roll your own springroll.  This is just a shot of what is laid out for the dinner.  My dad went out to buy a new electric griddle since we couldn't find the electric cord for the one we had.  So while he was out, we used the Lean Mean Grilling Machine to grill the beef in butter.  And once the beef was done, you make your own springroll with rice noodles and veggies, then dip it into a sauce for eating.  YUM!
And then the next night, I made Bun Rieu, which surprisingly is best described by Wikipedia. =)  I would have described it as a seafood gumbo of sorts, or maybe Vietnamese sphaghetti.  Either way, it was good.  I probably ate more than I should have too.  Still, YUMMY!
Last night, my mom gave me a break from cooking and ordered fresh eggrolls from someone she knows.  So you call this lady, tell her how many eggrolls you want, and she'll make it, fry it and have it ready for you to pick up in a couple of hours, which was easy enough for my mom to swing by the lady's house after work to pick it up.  And since we had plenty of rice noodles and veggies left from the Bun Rieu, I just made a bowl of Bun Cha Gio with the leftovers.  It was a nice meal to end a long day of shopping in the cold weather.  I was hoping it would put me into a food coma, but due to a massive headache, I laid in bed staring at my eyelids for two hours before going to seek out sleeping drugs.