Family plates

My home cooked rice

Treating a surprise visitor is sometimes as simple as a plate of boiled vegetables, a bowl of mussel and spinach soup, some hastily fried fish and a bowl of fish sauce, which is called a meal. After finishing, one is sweating because the chef has to take care of office work and quickly stop by the market to buy ingredients. Lunch therefore feels rushed.

Yet you can’t stop eating your 3-course meal. You say the food is delicious because you’re in your friend’s home. The kitchen is bustling with stories of long-lost friends. The clumsiness of the husband helping his wife, through your eyes, is also a sign of a happy, peaceful life.

You are 40 years old but you still do not have the chance to sit down with your partner for a simple home-cooked meal. The dream of having clinking bowls and chopsticks in a small house gradually fades away over time.

The trips, the meetings, both the successes and failures in work, all occupied the little friend's time and space. You said sometimes it was luck, so that his mind would not wander back to the dream of being a normal person.

I sat and watched you slowly pick up a boiled vegetable and dip it in the chili fish sauce - a fish sauce made from fermented anchovies from the coastal areas of Quang Nam, while eating, exclaiming at the spiciness and saltiness. You are from the South and are used to sweet dishes. The host from the Central region likes strong, spicy dishes. Yet the meal was... "excellent beyond reproach" - you said.

Lunch with you passed quickly because we had to go to work. But the lingering aroma probably followed you everywhere. I know this because sometimes you texted me: I miss home-cooked meals.

“Home cooked meal” seems to be reserved for family members only. But my friend, a successful woman with a high social status, sometimes just wants to text someone about “home cooked meal”, chose the word “home cooked meal” to remember the experience with friends.

Starting from the dinner table

In Vietnamese culture, dishes in family meals are often served on a tray. And instead of using the word meal, Vietnamese people call it “meal tray”.

Since ancient times, the meal tray has been round. According to folk beliefs, the round shape suggests wholeness, with the meaning of gathering and fullness. Serving just enough dishes on a round tray, the family gathers around the meal tray. Stories are also told slowly, not hurriedly or hurriedly.

“A circle has no beginning or end, just like traditional values that continue from generation to generation. At a round dinner table, no one is left out in the conversation.

"A small meal tray, enough to hold a few dishes, enough for family members to listen to each other, enough for arms to reach out to pick up delicious pieces for each other without feeling overwhelmed, enough for stories around the meal to not be loud, grumpy or unpleasant" - I read in an advertisement for... fish sauce.

The reason why the content creator for the dipping sauce brand chose a home-cooked meal to set the tone for the ad is because the dipping sauce is always placed in the middle of the meal.

I was thinking, our ancestors used to say that the sky is round and the earth is square, and the traditional round-shaped meal tray, perhaps it was a profound expression of life? That all the “spices” of the world will eventually return to the inside of this circle.

Everything starts from the family meal, by looking at a child holding chopsticks until an adult, every time sitting with relatives with a meal in the middle, suddenly the human ego returns to its most primitive state - the human with the version of himself when among relatives.

Then the "home-cooked meals" like in the old days gradually became rare in Vietnamese families. Also "home-cooked meals" but because of work circumstances, we ate together at restaurants. Or also the meal that our family served on a rainy afternoon, but missing a pair of chopsticks and a bowl. Mom scooped a full bowl, mumbling about the last meal...

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/bat-dia-tinh-than-3142659.html