Illustration: DANG HONG QUAN
It was corn sweet soup, with some not-quite-full corn kernels picked from the garden. We often called it “toothless corn” because the kernels were sparsely rooted and had few teeth. To make a pot of sweet soup, Mom also had to dig up some waxy potatoes from the garden. The sweet and chewy corn and waxy potato sweet soup was served with rich coconut milk.
There is also banana sweet soup, if you are lucky enough to have a bunch of ripe bananas in the garden. The riper the bananas are, the more delicious and sweet the sweet soup will be. Mom also adds sweet potatoes or cassava, which are also available in the garden, to cook together.
Banana sweet soup has the sweet taste of banana and the rich taste of sweet potato. Add coconut milk on top of the bowl or a few pieces of thinly sliced coconut and crushed roasted peanuts, the soup is both fragrant and strangely delicious.
There is also young pumpkin and green bean dessert to cool down, because the garden has some pumpkin vines that are bearing fruit.
It was a pot of mung bean or black bean sweet soup with sticky rice. The beans were harvested in the summer and kept in glass bottles in the kitchen cupboard. The sweet soup had peanuts, mung beans, tapioca, potato starch, and some cassava.
On fancy days, like the full moon, Mom would soak sticky rice and grind it into flour to make sweet rice balls. Sweet rice balls are so formal that they are rarely eaten often. And with this sweet dish, everyone loves the "che deo" balls, which are just balls of dough without filling.
The rain continued for a long time and there was no market for trading. The rice and paddy could not be dried. But my mother found a way for us to have a cozy atmosphere, to eat sweet soup and porridge together with everyone present, to share and give in to each other even though we were still hungry.
Cooking sweet soup on a rainy day is also bustling. Everyone has something to "put in" the pot of sweet soup. One peels the coconut. One scrapes the coconut. One squeezes the coconut milk. One peels the potatoes. Every child has to run errands: get sugar (thanks to that, I always ask my mom for a small piece of sugar to suck on - when we still used raw cane sugar); soak tapioca starch and potato starch...
The pot of sweet soup was put on the stove. Mom sat watching the fire to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. The kids huddled nearby, chattering and telling stories. Or playing games while waiting for the sweet soup to cook. The pot of sweet soup was boiling, the sweet soup smell began to permeate every leaf in the small kitchen. The sweet soup was scooped out, waiting for Mom to offer the portion to the ancestors, then we could eat it.
A hot cup of tea, while it's still drizzling outside, is warm and sweet, delicious to the core.
During those rainy days, Mom would take out all our clothes to see if any had loose threads, torn hems, or missing buttons so she could fix them. Then Mom asked me to take out the old, black-covered folk song book and read her some of her favorite songs. The scene of us lying in layers on the old bamboo bed on the rainy porch, Mom sitting next to us, diligently sewing, kept us warm until now.
Remembering the meals of eating sweet soup cooked by my mother on rainy days, thinking about her way of "suppressing negative emotions", I feel sorry for her. Back then, we children did not know the sadness of adults in the face of the persistent rain.
I only heard my mother complaining: "What a rain, it rains all the time!" but didn't pay much attention to her sighs. Sitting sewing and cooking in the house, but my mother's mind was probably wandering in the garden: the fruit trees easily rotted, the ones that bloomed easily fell, the garden had a bad harvest that year.
The rain continued for a long time and there was no market for trading. The rice and paddy could not be dried. But my mother found a way for us to have a cozy atmosphere, to eat sweet soup and porridge together with everyone present, to share and give in to each other even though we were still hungry.
Now, when it rains for a long time, I also imitate my mother, carrying a basket to the market to find some corn in the garden, stopping to buy a bag of coconut milk, and then turning on the stove to cook sweet soup. The pot of sweet soup I cooked was slowly steaming away, not smelling fragrant, or perhaps it was lacking the bustling atmosphere of this person doing this, that person doing that, bustling and cozy in the small kitchen.
The smell of burning wood and black smoke at the bottom of the pot is missing. My son would never be willing to dig into a piece of raw cane sugar like I did in the past to dig into a piece of sugar and feel overwhelmed with happiness.
But surely the warm smell of the kitchen on a rainy day, with a simple dish that anyone can cook, will linger in the child in its own way, no matter what era.
That lingering, private and individual, keeps every individual in the house coming back. Home, I think, is still the ultimate safe haven for every life, for every person, no matter who that person is.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/mon-che-trong-bua-mua-dam-20240929095957036.htm
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