When picking me, people peel the tubers and often cut the base close to the ground. And I must also know how to chop it so that it is easy to peel off, because with my trunk is rough and hard, it takes half a day to chop my bulbs. When cutting, cut each leaf sheath from the outside to the inside to get the very young and soft pulp. However, I am not always good and delicious every season. Especially when I went to the fruit-making room, I could not eat, because then I cut all the tubers. According to Ms. Ly Thi Liu, Sam Tren village, Trung Tam commune, Luc Yen district, Yen Bai province, normally in winter, people just cut me off and remove the tubers, because at that time there was little rain, I also had little water. When processing, I am fresh and sweet. “It takes winter to cut me down to eat, but in the rainy season I will soak up a lot of water, not bad and sweet. In winter, I eat my best food, this root is mainly cooked with chicken and very delicious bone stew ”- Ms. Ly Thi Liu said. My 10-year-old tree produces fruit. Tao after being cut back, will remove the hard old kernels to get the young tubers, cut small pieces about 5cm long; Then soak in a basin of water to create all the yellow plastic, when processing the new white, for beautiful and delicious color. Yen Bai Red Dao people often cook soup with chicken meat, I stew with bones, and I cook sticky rice for dipping … Especially, the dish I cook with chicken soup has a very sweet and refreshing taste. To have a delicious chicken soup, you need to prepare a chicken about 1-1.5kg. Clean chicken after pecking, cut into medium pieces, marinate with white salt for 30 minutes, and stir fry for meat hunt. When it smells good, add boiling water to cover the meat, simmer until the chicken is tender, add the pieces to the pieces and boil until I’m soft, then cut a little ginger leaves into the island, then turn off. a kitchen. “In order for my soup to be fragrant, sweet and correct, do not season with MSG, because my own roots have natural sweeteners. So I cook bone dishes only for white salt. When I cook chicken, I add some ginger leaves to create a delicious flavor ”- Ms. Dang Thi Nai, Khe Giang village, Truc Lau commune, Luc Yen district, Yen Bai province shared. Cu me is removed from the old kernels. The root is soaked in water before processing. The soup I usually eat hot, with rice is very delicious. My sweetness and the sweetness of bones and meat make my soup from a tree of this forest even more delicious. Ms. Nguyen Thi Hue, Hong Ha ward, Yen Bai city, felt: “When I first tasted this dish, I did not feel its sweet, fragrant and refreshing taste. However, after eating the second time, the third time onwards, I like it very much, the taste is very different from many dishes I have enjoyed. Especially the processing is simple, not picky about spices but very easy to eat. Now, the dishes made from me are not only popular dishes in the rice tray of Red Dao Yen Bai people, but also become specialties that many people love and want to enjoy every time they come to the villages. village here./.

For the melon to have a rich, beautiful look, the cheeks cut ginger, galangal roots and chili to ripen into thin slices, then mix into the subjects, add a little salt and sugar to taste, empty the rice, then pour water to wash the rice. slang to flood, then cover tightly. 3 – 4 days later, when the cantaloupe turns yellow, it is edible … Saying that, but to make a cup of melon is not easy, must be meticulous and have a secret, not playing around. Melon can be eaten with fish stock, or cooked in sour soup with perch, snakehead fish is all delicious. The ringing, earthy taste, the pungent, strong, sour smell of cantaloupe has seeped into my flesh and blood until now and has become nostalgia. My father cooks quite well, but every time he cooks porridge, he nods, and he just can’t wait to eat. To have a pot of delicious porridge for the whole family, the mother must choose large, bright yellow eels and young mussels to cook well enough. When the pot of porridge boils, the rice has just hatched, the cheeks let all of the mussels thinly into and cook together, while the eel is quickly cooked, then put in the last. Until all cooked, she put braised cilantro, minced chili lemongrass and coconut milk, then mentioned it down, served the tray … I don’t know, is it because of the porridge pot made with water. Did I give up on my cheeks blush, to go back to live with my baby’s cheeks, or because of their forgiveness? As for me, the smell of porridge water kept strong until now. On the phone, my mother said to my husband and I: “My father is now in the field because it rains, so I have a cold, I have to cook water for him to drink.” Listening to my mother, I felt so impatient, I loved my father more, but I loved her more. The cup of moth sweet is sweet, the fragrance is soothing to relieve poison, but the love of cheeks for her father is sweeter and more fragrant than the cup of cheeks cooked. I love my cheeks so much, I love all my youth because of my children and the gentle streak of Western women, the square of the family home. Knowing that I like the watermelon dish cooked in sour snakehead snakehead fish soup, my wife went to the market early on the weekend. My wife said there was no good snakehead fish today, so the whole family ate a pickle and pickled soup cooked with anabas. Put a little broth into the rice bowl, I hear the smell of melon, pungent, not strong, sour, fragrant like melon in the old days. However, living in urban areas, a little love from the countryside, even if not tasting, warms the hearts of those who are far away from home. This afternoon, the city suddenly poured rain. I watched the rain fall, suddenly heard my heart flutter, remembering my mother’s saying: “Love is a long life, not just a season for her to make medicine.” Injury!

Braised potato bud is a traditional dish of the people.

Potato buds here are not sweet potato buds, but buds of varieties with vertical (some places also known as sheaths or sepals) such as yams, galangal potatoes, sweet potatoes, spotted potatoes … which are common in the village. Every countryside has it, easy to grow, easy to take care of, and has many economic benefits and values.

The tuber is used for boiling or stir-frying to make soup. Along the way, potatoes are used to raise pigs, they often eat quickly. And the potato buds (except for the speckled potato, which is a very itchy potato that few users use) bring the soy sauce warehouse for us to eat very delicious soup, with a strong flavor of the countryside.

Potato buds that are not available all year round are only seasonal and for a very short time. Potatoes are usually grown from November of the previous lunar year to May next year, then harvest. The time from when the potato grows to mid-April, the potato grows and gives birth, so it is not picking buds. It was not until early May 1-2 weeks before harvest that they picked potato buds to both feed and for the dwarf potatoes to focus on nourishing the fat tubers.

To have sweet and non-itchy sweet potato buds, from preparation to cooking operations must be very meticulous, careful and attentive. Experience when picking potato buds is to choose the leaf buds that are still tightly wrapped and then bring them out to dry in the light sun for a little re (usually picking in the early morning, drying at noon to cook).

Before cooking, wash it and then fold it into a clay pot in layers, on the bow spread a turn of copper crabs, peeling off the bib and muzzle. Take 2 bamboo cross-pinned crossbones on the top of the pot so that the buds are not inflated when they boil. Take a delicious scoop of soy sauce, dilute with water, add the potato buds and cook. When effervescent, pay attention to reduce the heat, only give effervescent five. Absolutely do not immerse the chopsticks.

Watching when the water in the pot is exhausted gradually, use a water bath to dilute it with water with a little more lard (called row water), sometimes using a scoop to water it gradually. Just boil it almost dry and water the goods in, doing so from 4 to 5 times is nine. At this time, you can take the chopsticks dipped in to check the light salinity to adjust to fit. Then, depending on the large or small soup pot, more or less, you can add 1 or 2 longitudinal fruits that have been cooked, wash off the shells, seeds, then strip on top and add a little more water to cook. shallow is fine.

Lift down the pot and open the pot to cool down. When using the pin to lift the chopsticks, carefully pick each potato bud in the bowl, it looks like each potato bud on the outside is still hunted, but the inside is softly ripe, giving off a sweet aroma of vertical, crab, sweetness and flavor. typical taste of copper potatoes, it is unforgettable to eat.

What is octopus?

To answer this question, perhaps most of the public will think of a delicious, popular seafood, or at most remember the octopus Paul, who once attracted the world’s attention thanks to his “predictions. “Exactly about the 2010 World Cup matches.

For those reading Wikipedia “addicted” or good students in Biology, maybe the answer will have more about the superior intelligence of molluscs if compared with other inhabitants of the ocean kingdom. . These are the easy answers, for we naturally consider only the “common” octopus (common octopus or octopus vulgaris) to be an animal, nothing more, no less.

But for South African filmmaker Craig Foster, such a “common” octopus is not an animal, much less delicious food. That creature is the middle-aged man’s “teacher” about nature, life, and is also the main character of the excellent documentary. My Octopus Teacher (My octopus teacher).

Friendship between humans and octopus

Crafted by directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed for Netflix based on documentary footage of Craig Foster’s strange and amusing meeting with the octopus at the end of the black continent bordering the Atlantic. Cape of Storms, My Octopus Teacher recounts the seemingly impossible friendship between a man who has gone through all stages of his life with a seemingly inanimate octopus.

Craig Foster is not a dreamer with the ability to find soul in every creature in the world. On the contrary, he is a filmmaker tired of the events of his life, feeling helpless in communicating with even those he loves most, like his son Tom.

Filmmaker Craig Foster.

Therefore, Foster decided to give up the camera to go back to his homeland at Storm Cape alone, where he could enjoy himself in solitude amid the beautiful and mysterious kelp forest. contact people, not think about life.

It was in the underwater forest that he met an octopus, who had no name, no voice, but showed incredible intelligence in hunting or camouflage to avoid the pijama sharks who were always prowling in the darkness of the ocean. . Out of curiosity, Foster began to really pay attention to learn, only to realize that the “animal” has much closer to the lonely man in the cold southern water.

From here, Craig Foster tried to build a “friendship”, a seemingly impossible emotional chain with that unnamed and voiceless octopus. Throughout My Octopus Teacher, viewers can see many different moments of that friendship, from nervousness, sadness, to happiness, anxiety, and at the same time feel the maturity, toughness of the emotional rope between the two sides. .

In the end, all will have to admit that the friendship between man and the seemingly small, dark octopus is not impossible.

The film’s sincerity

If you have to pack it up My Octopus Teacher In a word, perhaps it is sincerity. In each movie describing the wonderful nature of South Africa in general and kelp forest in particular, or in Craig Foster’s words for her octopus or for the vast ocean world, viewers can feel sincere feelings.

It is the feeling that filmmakers and movie characters like Foster, like his son Tom, for her octopus and the natural world. Honesty and sincerity are of course the required qualities of a good documentary film.

The film is about the heartfelt friendship between Craig Foster and an unnamed octopus.

But the careful, meticulousness of Craig Foster and his colleagues to describe the most accurate, clearest, easiest to grasp the diversity and depth of life in the ocean has helped the audience understand. out a truth. That man is just a part of the big world with a real connection that always exists and waits to be unearthed, as the way Foster realized his feelings for the “octopus teacher” .

Perhaps for many viewers, the name “My octopus teacher” will bring many doubts because of the stereotype “octopus is just an animal” due to the lack of contact with nature in a natural way. . But Craig Foster, and My Octopus Teacher, will quickly resolve that skepticism thanks to excellent footage of a strange world at the end of the world.

On the ocean floor, in the shadow of the giant kelp trees, viewers will find a feeling of sedimentation. Seeing the way the octopus took the tentacle and touched Foster’s hard but trembling hand, many fathers and mothers will surely remember the moment they saw their baby born, holding the table. the small, fragile hand of a being who still could not speak, but already had a seed of affection within him.

Foster’s troubled gaze when talking about the dangerous moments – which filled the short life of an octopus in the raging ocean – perhaps reminded many viewers of the anxiety and restlessness they had. for your loved one in the stormy turns of life.

My Octopus Teacher there are many moments like that for the audience to feel the real friendship between Foster and the octopus teacher.

Humans are only part of the Earth

In the context of modern society gradually taking over the wild, people destroy natural life at a dizzying speed and then have to face the consequences of their own cause, many filmmakers have been try to call for human conscience in preserving nature, preserving the precious remaining life resources on Earth.

Usually, directors will choose to speak face to face, outlining the dire consequences that humanity will suffer as in An Inconvenient Truth (2006) by David Guggenheim, or specifying a variety of breathtaking yet fragile beauty, in need of the protection of the Earth as in Our Planet led by legendary David Attenborough.

Humans are, after all, only part of the Earth.

Also a beautiful work of nature, but My Octopus Teacher choose another way of giving your message. Through a seemingly rare encounter between Craig Foster and his octopus teacher, the film simply tells us that we – modern humans – are just inhabitants of a vast world on Earth. . There are many other residents here, with different destinies, different ways of life, different behaviors.

Only efforts to protect the environment, with a real desire to come to nature, to return to nature, can humanity have the opportunity to truly get acquainted, experience precious emotions like Foster in almost one. His octopus teacher track year.

From a beautiful lifestyle, people can find opportunities to make their life less lonely, to see life more beautiful, worth living, like how Craig Foster nurtured feelings for his son through feelings. The inspiration was obtained from the sea, from the octopus teacher.