The Spring Festival is a time for Chinese children to get together. From so many years in Spring Festival travel rush, we can realize that no matter how busy, tired and far away, we have to go home for the New Year. The New Year's Eve dinner, as the highlight of New Year's Eve, is different from family to family. Some families will choose to eat in the hotel, saving hard work. In our family, parents have always been traditional and thrifty rural elderly, and they are not particularly particular about diet. Big fish and big meat are not suitable for the elderly at this age. With the increase of parents' age, the diet has changed a lot. In our family's New Year's Eve, there is no gorgeous show off, but only love and simplicity full of affection.
Four-color cake is a staple food of our family's New Year's Eve dinner, because considering parents' bad teeth and poor chewing ability, the food is generally soft and rotten. Four-color cake is not only simple, but also has high nutritional value. As the name implies, four-color cakes are four colors, namely red, yellow, purple and white, and each color represents a kind of food. Red comes from sweet potato with red heart, yellow from pumpkin, purple from purple potato and white from yam. These four foods have both sweet and soft tastes.
I remember when I was a child, it was difficult at home, and it was unthinkable to eat white flour steamed bread. It was 84 years later that I was able to open my belly and eat white flour steamed bread. Before that, there was not enough noodles at home. In my impression, three meals a day were almost inseparable from sweet potatoes in the months after harvest every year. However, at that time, I still liked to eat sweet potatoes very much. Boiled sweet potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes and steamed bread with dried sweet potatoes were the way most families ate sweet potatoes. When steamed, sweet potatoes are often roasted under the pot. Slowly, the aroma of sweet potatoes gradually overflowed, holding hot sweet potatoes and eating them while blowing hot air. After waiting for the sweet potato noodles in the pot to come out of the pot, it is even more impatient. My Sweetie's sweet potato noodles steamed bread is a unique memory in that era. Now that I think about it, eating more sweet potatoes is actually a very good choice. Increased the intake of dietary fiber and carotenoids, which is much healthier than the current refined flour steamed bread. It is no wonder that there were fewer colds and strong resistance at that time!
Although purple potato is not genetically modified food, it is rare when it was young, and it has been seen more in recent ten years. At first, I didn't like the taste of purple sweet potato very much. The sweetness can't be comparable to that of red-hearted sweet potato, and it is also choking. Later, I gradually learned about the nutritional value of purple potato, which was originally rich in anthocyanins. We all know that the anthocyanins in blueberries are high, but the price of blueberries is beyond many people's imagination, so they can only stop at it. The appearance of purple potato, like the shining light in the dark, not only has high anthocyanin content, but more importantly, the price is civilian. Strong antioxidant capacity, can scavenge free radicals and enhance immunity. For our elderly parents, purple potato is very good and can replace the staple food.
Pumpkin is cute, round in shape and a little stupid. It is rich in pumpkin polysaccharide, amino acids, active proteins, carotenoids and various trace elements. According to "Herbal Medicine in Southern Yunnan", pumpkin is warm, sweet and nontoxic, enters the spleen and stomach, moistens the lungs and benefits qi, eliminates phlegm and expels pus, drives away the middle energizer, cures cough and asthma, treats lung carbuncle and constipation, and has diuretic and beauty effects.
Yam is mild, sweet and non-toxic, which is beneficial to kidney-qi, strengthening bones and muscles, strengthening spleen and stomach, stopping diarrhea, resolving phlegm and saliva, moistening fur, and treating spermatorrhea and amnesia. It is an excellent health food and traditional Chinese medicine material, and has been widely used as a medical tonic in Southeast Asia since ancient times.
First of all, clean the sweet potato, yam, pumpkin and purple potato, remove the skin and steam it in a steamer. For so many years, I have been eating yam, but I can't do it. Because saponins contained in yam mucus may cause allergies, contact dermatitis may occur after contact with the skin, and symptoms such as itchy fingers may occur. In severe cases, symptoms such as redness, swelling and tingling may also occur. Although wearing rubber gloves or fresh-keeping bags can solve these problems, just returning to parents' side, the daughter suddenly becomes weak and coquetry to her mother, insisting that her mother accompany her to do it. Every time she makes yam, she will present this warm scene in the kitchen.
Chinese yam, purple sweet potato and sweet potato with red hearts are steamed and pressed into mud, and made into round cakes, about one centimeter long. The four-color round cakes are stacked together, and then the top layer is decorated with strawberries and sprinkled with tomato sauce, and the four-color cake is ready. Simple production process, but it tastes full of home, full of affection flowing in my heart, love is as simple as that.
With author information:
Wang Guizhen
National first-class nutritionist and first-class health manager
Wechat WeChat official account: wangguizhenyys