Winter kitchen smoke

In the early morning, while I was still curled up in my thin blanket, clinging to the warmth and rare moments of sleep, a familiar scent suddenly wafted into my nostrils, waking me up. It was the familiar smell of kitchen smoke, a scent that had accompanied me throughout my childhood, evoking images of the simple country kitchen where my mother meticulously prepared breakfast for the whole family. That scent was like an invisible thread, pulling me back to those gentle, warm memories that time could never erase.

Illustrative image.

Back then, our family was poor, and we didn't have a television to watch the weather forecast. My grandmother said that you could tell whether it would be sunny or rainy the next day just by looking at the smoke rising from the kitchen chimney. Smoke rising straight up into the sky meant sunny weather, while thin smoke spreading horizontally foreshadowed a rainy day. Therefore, every time my mother bought me a brand new outfit or a pair of plastic sandals, I would eagerly run out to the yard, tilt my head back to watch the evening smoke from the chimney, hoping for a clear sky the next day so I could show it off to my friends at school. Even now, I can't forget those thin wisps of smoke, swirling and lingering above the kitchen roofs of the houses in the neighborhood at dusk—like ethereal mists, both simple and strangely poetic.

From a young age, children born in the countryside became close to the kitchen. In the old thatched kitchen, my mother taught us how to stack firewood to start a fire, how to cook rice, boil water, and stir pig feed... and also told us stories about the legend of "the vegetable vendor," about the camaraderie and neighborly spirit on cold winter afternoons. Every day, on my way home from school, my stomach rumbling with hunger, I just wanted to run home as fast as I could. My mother's kitchen fire was always the first image that came to mind because it had the pungent, spicy smell of straw and hay mixed with the aroma of rice bubbling in the pot on the stove, or simply the smell of the dishes my mother cooked. Without anyone telling us to, my sisters and I would gather around the fire after school, warming our cracked, cold hands and listening to my mother's stories, feeling an unusual sense of peace.

Back then, firewood was scarce, so my family mainly cooked with straw, rice husks, and dried leaves. Because of this, our drinking water was sometimes tainted with smoke; our white rice would sometimes turn yellow in one corner or be covered in ash – a very familiar occurrence for clumsy, playful farm children like us. I remember one time, my younger sibling was punished by our mother for being so engrossed in playing that the rice buried in the ash had its lid lifted. When our parents came home from working in the fields and took the pot off the stove, half the rice was stuck with ash and inedible.

On cold, rainy days, the straw was damp, so the kitchen was always full of smoke. The smoke didn't rise high but lingered on the tiled roof and swirled around in the small kitchen, making my face smudged with soot, my eyes and nose running. Yet I still grinned, blowing on the hot, fragrant roasted sweet potatoes or corn cobs to eat. I loved cooking with the straw stove the most; the leftover rice grains in the straw crackled and popped into tiny white puffed rice. Every time I saw puffed rice in the stove, I would quickly use a stick to scoop them out and eat them to stave off hunger. Sometimes, I would secretly take a few strands of rice crackers that my mother used to make soup, put them in the stove, and roast them until crispy—they tasted surprisingly delicious.

Time has quietly passed, and I've gradually grown up. Those simple, rustic memories are deeply etched in the depths of my soul. And then, somewhere, just by accidentally catching a whiff of kitchen smoke, childhood memories flood back, pure, dear, and incredibly warm. For me, the smell of kitchen smoke is the scent of the countryside, the smell of those childhood days that have brought tears to my eyes countless times, yet are enough to warm my heart for a lifetime.

Ngoc Phuc

Source: https://baohungyen.vn/khoi-bep-mua-dong-3189576.html