Cooking with Rice

Over the weekend, the study abroad group and I went to a small rice-farming village to experience the agrarian lifestyle. The objective of the day was to harvest rice from the fields. We all woke up at early and met at the front gate of our university at 6:30 to arrive at the village by 7:30. When we arrived we found an idyllic village with a pond next to the main red-brick gate, complete with an old tree to sit under.

We all shuffled into our the large house of our host, Mr Coi. His two daughters helped us ready for the fields. Unfortunately for me, I had signed up to cook, and so didn't have the experience of harvesting the rice. I volunteered because I had promised myself that I would learn how to cook traditional vietnamese dishes, and this seemed like a unique opportunity to do so for about 50 people.

While I had missed out on scything and threshing rice, I actually enjoyed preparing the vegetables, mushrooms, other items needed in our dishes. We sat in the concrete courtyard under a banana tree, sitting on small wooden stools while cleaning our vegetables. We got the water from a faucet jutting out from a moss covered wall. All of this made me think of life in a home, the feeling of purpose in working diligently to have lunch in time for all our hungry rice-harvesters in the fields. It was interesting to imagine the life of the homesteader. At the same time, I was wondering about what I was missing in the fields.

We finally finished the meal around 11:30, and the spread was impressive. The meals were arranged on two floors of the house, a total of 50 people with  6 people per set. The meal included morning glories (greens), tofu and tomato, pork slices with shrimp sweet and sour sauce, and of course, some rice. There were so many people that we ate on two separate floors of the house.

After we finished, we all slumped over full and satisfied, napping for an hour before we explored the village to interview the locals about their lives and livelihoods. I met a man who was renovating his house, and I watched as his workers helped pulley a water tank from the ground floor to the roof with a single twine rope. He said that everything would take about 2-3 months and about $80,000 dollars.

It was interesting to see the village moving from a small rice-producing village to an outer-suburb, complete with corner stores and its own small outdoor market. There was an organized soccer game with oxes and calfs for spectators, along with some of the locals boys sitting around the pond. I wondered if the pond would still be there in 10 years, and I couldn't bear the thought.