Remember the mussel season

My hometown is located on the winding Mai Giang River, the water flows cool. When I was a child, I often followed my mother to the river to scratch mussels. The time when people often scratch mussels is at midday, at that time, the water is as calm as the sheets, the sun shines clearly to the bottom of the river. I was small then, so my mother just let me stand on the shore. Every once in a while, I would give the basin to my mother to pour the mussels in. Tiny mussels the size of a fingernail, an adult’s toenail lay neatly in the aluminum bowl, mixed with them were grains of grit, rotten wood… I patiently picked them up out of the bowl with joy and excitement. Lunch has a delicious mussel soup.
Mother mussels scratched the part to eat, the rest brought to the market to sell for money. A pound of mussels doesn’t cost much, but mom still works hard from noon to noon, soaking in the water, under the summer sun like pouring fire to scratch each small mussel. Mother always said that when you are young and healthy, you should work to squeeze, if the next day you are sick or old and weak. Later, when I think about it, I feel sorry for my mother. I love the farmers in my hometown, all my life, hard work, but life is not happy forever. Love the exhilaration when people rake the mussels full.

From a young age, my body has soaked in the taste of mussels, the smell of the brackish sweetness of Mai Giang river water penetrates the skin into the salty meat. The smell of a basket of freshly boiled mussels, smoke rises when I carefully separate each one into a small bowl. The smell of simple, frugal meals with mussel soup, fried mussels, mussel rice, or mussel porridge. A bowl of mussel soup cooked with vegetable soup is a favorite of both my sisters and me, never getting bored of eating. The food is also very simple to prepare. After being picked up in the river, mussels rub off all the sand. Next, put it in a pot, add a little salt and start boiling. Boiling mussels does not need to be boiled thoroughly, just boiling to be able to remove from the stove. The mussel boiling water is settled several times to clean the sand. Shell and mussel meat are poured into a clean pot, stirring repeatedly with chopsticks to let the mussels fall out. Mussel meat is washed with clean water until the sand is gone. Put the pot of mussel broth on the stove to boil, drop mussel meat and vegetables, wait for it to boil, season with spices to have a delicious pot of soup. My sisters and I grew up through hard mussel seasons and from such delicious bowls of mussel soup. Growing up, I had the opportunity to go here and there, enjoy many different delicious dishes, but I still remember the mussel dish from my hometown the most. Text: Tang Hoang Phi