PREPARING FOR TÉT - Flower market and Local Snacks

angielettenmeyer (59) in travelfeed • 5 years ago (edited)

Read "PREPARING FOR TÉT - Flower market and Local Snacks" on TravelFeed.io for the best experience

Lunar New Year is the biggest and most important festival in many Asian countries, and Vietnam is no exception to this. During my time in Da Nang, I was lucky enough to stay with a lovely host family who not only opened their home for me but also let me be part of their traditions and culture. Today I want to show you how Vietnamese families prepare for the event of the year and for that I have to introduce you to a traditional local snack called Banh Tet or also Banh Chung. Afterwards, I want to show you some special flowers that only bloom for Tet.

The square-shaped ones are called Banh Chung and the round ones are called Banh Tet.

Both kinds are filled with the same ingredients. The difference is where they are made. Banh Chung is more typical for the northern part of Vietnam and Banh Tet is more common in the south. Since my host dad is from the north and my host mum is from the south we are making both kinds today.

Let's take a closer look at our ingredients

Black beans

Green beans

Peanuts

Bananas in sugar

Pork and onions

We are making two flavours today: Savory, filled with pork and sweet, filled with bananas, peanuts and beans. The shape of these delights do not determine the filling. It's completely up to you.

My host dad is teaching everyone how it's done. (Including other locals)

I made quite a few of them myself. Let me show you my first attempt. If I can do it, so can you!

Lay out the banana leaves. You will need four in total

Spread out two small bowls of uncooked white rice.

Cover it with one bowl of green beans. (Also uncooked)

I made a banh tet with pork filling

Cover everything in white rice.

Roll the Banh Tet and tie it together with a Bamboo string.

Close the sides.

Secure with more banana leaves.

Use as many bamboo strings as you think are necessary.

Do the same on the other side.

Almost done. But this one might still fall apart while cooking.

That's better!

Can you distinguish which one was made by me and which one was made by the expert?

Everyone is working hard. It took us almost eight hours to finish all the ingredients.

A day's worth of hard work!

They should boil for at least 12 to 15 hours!

It takes the whole night and morning for the Banh's to finish and the water needs to be changed every three hours. Nobody is sleeping tonight! Preparing these traditional snacks is a social event! You invite all your family, friends and their kids. We are going to stay up all night!

Here they are - still cooking the next morning!

Making sure the Bang Chungs are staying in shape!

Our Banh Tet harvest.

The moment we all have been waiting for.

They look and taste delicious!

So now we figured out what to eat on this special occasion. But what else is there to Tet?

We went to visit the flower market the next night. You can't just find them at any time of the year but only shortly before Lunar New Year. If you are lucky enough to be in the country during this time of the year you will see a variety of flowers from all over Vietnam.

A tree like this goes for 15 Million Dong (590€)

Red and Yellow are considered good luck.

Orchids

Pink and purple

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travelfeed food family lunarnewyear festival

5 years ago by angielettenmeyer (59)

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phortun (74) · 5 years ago

I have always admired people who can take decent food photos as I am absolutely horrible at this discipline (although I am an avid eater :D) so you have my utmost respect for this spectacular photo collection :) The food looks delicious but I am not sure if I could stay awake all night for it :D

Btw, if you have any cool sea/ocean photos, feel free to submit one in the Ocean Tuesday photo contest ;)

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angielettenmeyer (59) · 5 years ago

Haha thank you! I actually was the first one to give up and fall asleep. But I really tried haha

Thanks! I will definitely check it out!

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hanggggbeeee (67) · 5 years ago (edited)

For us, Tet is very traditional and meaningful time of family reunion. enjoy your Tet holidays in Vietnam. sure that the vibes will be totally different to any time of the year.

Congratulations your mention in Travel Digest of @steemitworldmap. ^^

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steemitworldmap (75) · 5 years ago

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steemitboard (66) · 5 years ago

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steemitworldmap (75) · 5 years ago

Hiya, @LivingUKTaiwan here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made into our Top 3 in Daily Travel Digest #746.

Your post has been manually curated by the @steemitworldmap team and got an upvote from @blocktrades to support your work. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting us so we can keep the project going!

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angielettenmeyer (59) · 5 years ago

Oh my god thank you!!!

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travelfeed (73) · 5 years ago

Congratulations @angielettenmeyer! You received the biggest smile and some love from TravelFeed! Keep up the amazing blog. 😍 Your post was also chosen as top pick of the day and is now featured on the TravelFeed.io front page.

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