Celebrating the harvest festival (Thanksgiving) made me recall the Rice Festival in Vietnam when I was an agricultural student. November was a busy month for students taking part in the Rice Festival.

The Rice Festival is an event to honour agriculture and to award businesses with high quality agricultural products. The prizes for the agricultural expansion competition was a motivation for six provinces in the country: Can tho, An Giang, Tra Vinh Soc trang, Bac Lieu, Dong Thap, and Muoi. As well, the Rice Festival was an opportunity for university students studying business to learn about investing in agriculture. The event also includes activities related to aquaculture and fruit trees.

Rice is the staple of the diet in Vietnam. We used to have two harvest seasons for rice in a year. This created the best rice. In more recent years, rice has been grown over four seasons each year to meet the demand and the quality is not as high. Gao nàng Huong rice, Nàng Thom rice, Nanh chon rice, and Jasmine rice are the most popular varieties of the white rice which is eaten with every meal.

Nep tròn, nep dài, and nep than are the names of sweet rice, sticky rice, or glutinous rice which is steamed, sweetened, and mixed with fresh fruit and condiments. It is eaten for breakfast or as a dessert with exotic fruit carvings.

Cõm Tam is broken rice and is the result of the second stage in the process of removing the husks from the rice. This rice takes much more time to prepare and is part of a complete meal such as Cõm bì sýon cha: broken rice, grilled pork chop, and shredded pork rice. Also included in this dish is shredded pork seasoned with roasted rice powder, a crab cake with green onion oil on top of it, and tangy fish sauce to add to the rice. You can order it at most Vietnamese restaurants in Edmonton. You may have the option of steam minced pork instead of the crab cake.

The byproducts of rice are bún (rice vermicelli), pho (rice sticks), and bánh ýot (fresh rice papers). Bánh tráng – dried rice papers – were used in imperial rolls, one of the foods served to our King.

The national dishes of Vietnam are pho (noodle soup) from the North, Bún Bò Hue (spicy noodle soup) from the Central region, and Hu tieu tôm thit (seafood soup with sticky rice) from the South. Bánh tét – bánh dua (rice cake wrapped in a banana leaf or young coconut leaf) is a popular item at the festival market. During the Rice Festival, you would have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and finger food throughout the day for two weeks. What we considered a treat at home you can buy at any Vietnamese grocery in the frozen section or in the local restaurants here in Edmonton.

I will finish with a folk tale about rice. In ancient times, rice would appear from Heaven in the form of a large ball in every house. On one occasion, a housewife was sweeping the floor of her house to welcome the rice ball. The large rice ball rolled to the next house. So, the lady wanted to sweep the rice ball back to her house. The broom hit the rice ball and then broke into many pieces. Since then, people have had to work hard with their hands to grow rice.

Nhan is originally from Vietnam and owns Pacific Cafe (10874 97 Street).