The public and press gush over celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Madonna, and Katherine Heigl adopting kids from abroad, yet there are plenty of regular (read: unsung) folks who are giving love and opportunity to children in Vietnam. Everyone once in a while I receive a message from adoptive parents asking for suggestions on Vietnamese food and culture, and I’m happy to oblige. Most recently, I received this message from Lisa in Victoria, B.C., who will soon be adopting a beautiful little girl from Bac Ninh, Vietnam:
Like so many others, I'm learning so much from your blog and have tried quite a few of your recipes, with success each time. My husband and I are in the process of adopting a baby from Vietnam and for me, as a person who loves to cook and who believes that how a culture prepares and enjoys food says a lot about who they are as a people, when I wanted to know more about Vietnam, the first place I started was with my stomach.
We began by trying every one of the 8 Viet restaurants here in our mid-sized Canadian town. We've always enjoyed Vietnamese food, but now we were looking at it differently and seeing the connections between what was on our plate and what it said about the history, geography and values of Vietnam. We saw how even the same dishes were different in each restaurant and we tried the "house specials" which often reflected where in Vietnam the owner was from.
Then it was on to cookbooks and blogs like yours, to learn how to make some of our favourite dishes at home. We know that we will never truly be able to give our child Vietnamese culture as we know it's far more than what's in your bowl at dinnertime and what holidays you celebrate, but it's just one of the things we can do to help our child feel proud to be Vietnamese. We feel that we are adopting the culture, not just our child, so we are working to make connections within our Vietnamese community and with the much larger community in nearby Vancouver and we plan to make trips to Vietnam as a family as often as we can.
Although we have travelled a lot in Asia, our upcoming trip to bring our child home will be our first time in Vietnam and we are already compiling lists of all the dishes we must try and the restaurants we want to visit. Even before thinking about what hotel we would stay in or what sights we wanted to see, we were eagerly talking about what we wanted to eat! Learning to cook the foods of Vietnam has been incredibly satisfying - our next step is trying to learn to speak a little Vietnamese, and I only wish that was going to be as easy! Your blog is such a great resource for me, as it's about more than just the food. It's about you and your family and the Viet people and how food relates to culture. Thank you so much for your continued hard work!
Lisa
Victoria, BC, Canada
Serving your loved ones good Vietnamese food (shoot, any food) that you crafted yourself is an uncommon gift these days. The emails I received this last week prove that. First, Suzanne sent an SOS email asking for help with cooking Viet for her persnickety father’s birthday. Then a Canadian man living in North Carolina wrote about romancing his Ha Noi-born wife by making her favorite Vietnamese dishes. This message from Lisa highlights another way that you can cook your way into someone’s heart.
If you have adoption-related experiences and insights, please share them.
Book suggestion:
If the topic of adoption from Vietnam interests you, pick up a copy of If You Lived Here (Harper Paperbacks, 2008) by Dana Sachs. It’s a page-turner of a novel about the Vietnamese adoption process. Dana lived in Vietnam for years and speaks the language. She is really spot on about the cultural nuances of Vietnamese culture in Vietnam and abroad.
ravenouscouple says
We also get questions from parents of adoptees and some recipes of ours was posted on the . Good luck with learning Vietnamese...the rosetta stone software is not too bad!
jai says
Andrea, you started something here. The culture and cuisine of Vietnam are a real hot button for many people, and not just Asians. Thanks for sharing these touching experiences of your readers.
Natasha Perryman says
Hello all,
Wonderful post- thank you!!!
We have two kiddos born in Vietnam. A 3 1/2 year old daughter and a 16 month old son. We have traveled twice within the last 3 years- lucky us! We are in LOVE with the culture and people.
A tip to all about the language... we have hooked up with a VN church that has an awesome language school after their service. Every Sunday, my daughter, mother and I all attend. (dad and son stay home while he sleeps)So for an hour in the afternoon we get to be fully involved in with Vietnamese people/language.
We have been beyond well received and SO love our time learning the language and having new friends as well. There are over 200 children enrolled in the language school and parents helping out everywhere. We are the only 2 white people there and while it is intimidating at times, we have to be multi-cultural on purpose. SO go for it and see if something like that is offered in your community.
My other tip is while in VN buy, buy and buy. You can never have too many gifts for your child from their birthland. Purchase tons of paintings, plates, ao doi's for different ages, VN hats, trinkets from all the provinces you visit and of course take PICTURES of it all!!!
We too love the food and like Lisa stated, you are adopting the culture as well as the child. Delicious food and all.
Thank you Viet World Kitchen for all your wonderful resources!
Natasha
http://www.perrymanadoption.com (blog and pics)
Jessica A says
Great post, Andrea. My husband and I adopted our son from Binh Duong almost a year ago. As we awaited the adoption, we devoured (literally and figuratively) as much Vietnamese food and culture as we possibly could. Though I really doubt my son was fed much besides formula and rice porridge in the orphanage, he loves anything and everything Vietnamese that I prepare for him. I am thankful for blogs like yours, and appreciate all your hard work.
andrea says
We've been home with our daughter from Thanh Hoa for almost a year now. We spent almost 6 weeks in Viet Nam and loved it! I was lucky to get to know a Vietnamese woman who graciously shared her recipe for beef pho. At the time I was writing it down, I thought I had an understanding of what to do, but reading the recipe at home, I noticed all the small details that were missing. By using your recipe here, I was able to fill in those gaps and make a very respectable pho. My daughter eats it with gusto which makes me happy!
We're about to celebrate our first Tet Trung Thu together and I'm putting together a menu right now. I didn't start the salted eggs soon enough, so the mooncakes will have to wait until next year!
Thank you so much for your wonderful recipes and insights. I hope to be able to attend one of your workshops in the future.
Andrea Nguyen says
Goodness, I should be thanking all of you for engaging and supporting the adoption of kids from Vietnam (and elsewhere). There are many who need a loving, caring home.
I'm quite honored that all the recipes on this site and all the information that we are building go to such a wonderful cause. You've got some of the luckiest and most well-fed adoptees around!
Lark Bui says
Hi Andrea,
My wife worked in international adoptions. This isn't food related, but one of the things she recommends to families who are concerned with how they will celebrate their child's native culture is to purchase a single gift for each of their child's future birthdays through 18 or so while in country. Nothing big, but on each birthday, they give them one of those presents from their birth country. It's just another way of re-affirming and celebrating their country of origin and culture.
Andrea Nguyen says
Hi Lark,
What a great idea. It's serves as an extra special reminder to the child about their heritage. Many thanks to you and your wife for adding that tip!
Kirsten says
Hi Andrea,
I have a two year old from Vietnam and she "makes" pho in her play kitchen all the time! I love your blog and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. I was given two copies of it for Christmas last year and was told I could return the dublicate but I am keeping it so my daughter will have a copy of her own (when the time comes). I attempt to cook Vietnamese meals and we go out for Vietnamese on a regular basis. My daughter will yell in a loud voice "I want my pho"! (She is not very patient for her food to cool!)
By the way, our Trader Joes (CT) does have the rice cracker with nuts..they are delicious. I bought them and the sesame crepes for our Tet Trung Thu party. I think we will be vacuuming up sesame seeds for weeks to come!
thuy says
That is great to hear that parents today are willing to be open with their children's heritage. When I was growing up, alot of friends who were adopted from Asia was always ashamed that they were Asian. They hate to eat foods from their native born country. But as soon as they head to college, they become a sponge and want to learn all and see all about about the country and people from where they were born. It makes me wonder if their adopted parents were pressuring them to forget that piece of who they are.
Annie N says
I have to disagree with Thuy. I don't think it's the adoptive parents pressuring the adoptees to forget their heritage, but more of the child wanting to fit in with a White Society. I have nephews and nieces who at some point or other didn't want to have any association with anything Asian, much less Vietnamese. Even though, my siblings and I encourage and support our culture and history, it takes the young ones time to figure out who they are and that there are great things to be found in the Asian culture. Basically, once the hormones subside, they can't get enough of the Viet-ness. Our first boy is heading off to college in a year and he was the child who refused to eat anything but burgers and fries for the longest time, despite his mother (my sister) being one of the best Vietnamese cooks that I know (next to Mom, of course).
Andrea Nguyen says
People push and pull their ethnicity away and toward them. Given them time to figure it out. It's hard to parent and kids are finnicky too. "We tried our best with what we knew," my mom said a few years ago. Then you hope things will be okay in the long run.
Thanks for contributing your candid thoughts.