When I was a child, apart from eating white rice three times a day, the only food I often ate was sweet potato. Every rainy day in July is the best time to plant sweet potatoes. My father quickly cut the twisted sweet potato vine into several sections with scissors, each about four or five inches long, with two or three green leaves attached to the vine, and then inserted them into the newly trimmed fields one by one. As the saying goes: "Sweet potatoes are not afraid of falling soil and rotting, but only want to be passed down from generation to generation." Sweet potato has a strong vitality. After a while, the sweet potato vine crawled on the ground and spread everywhere, and the duck egg-shaped leaves unfolded. Looking from a distance, it is a vibrant scene. Soon, dotted with pale white flowers, swaying in the wind. Autumn in October is the season when sweet potatoes mature. My father and my brother and sister are happily digging sweet potatoes in the field with hoes and baskets.
As soon as the hoe was dug down, I screamed, "Wow, four or five sweet potatoes are tightly hugged and United like brothers."
? "I dug a heart-shaped sweet potato!" Cried my sister in surprise, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
? "Hey, I accidentally dug a huge sweet potato!" Brother is a little sorry.
"You should carefully dig down the sweet potato vine. It's a pity to dig it out! " My father said in earnest.
In less than half a day, the ground was full of sweet potatoes of all sizes, like a hill.
The next step is to eat sweet potatoes, the most common of which is dried sweet potatoes. We put sweet potatoes in a big pot, burn them, steam them, cut them into pieces like dried tofu, put them neatly in a dustpan and expose them to the sun. A few days later, it became as big as dried radish. Take a bite, it's very chewy and memorable. I often grab one at school and put it in my pocket. When I am hungry, I eat it as a snack. The most convenient thing is to stew sweet potatoes. Every day when I go home from school to cook, I will carefully select a sweet potato from Huang Chengcheng and bury it in the ashes. Listening to the crackling sound of firewood, I think this is a wonderful kitchen symphony. When I smelled a tangy smell, I took the sweet potato out with a poker. Blow off a layer of dust gently, only to see the sweet potato skin cracked, tender outside, especially attractive.
The most interesting thing is hanging on the wall to dry and eat. Every autumn, when the leaves rustle, the wind blows against the window lattice, and even the door crackles, as if it can't be closed. Father climbed a tall ladder and hung a string of sweet potatoes on the shiny black wooden wall. Sometimes I inadvertently look up and see the attractive sweet potato teasing me. I was so greedy that I picked a dried sweet potato with a slender bamboo pole. At this time, the sweet potato was blown away by the north wind, and the yellow skin was wrinkled like wrinkles on the face of a weather-beaten old lady. After peeling, especially the sweet potato with red heart is crisp and sweet, which has a special taste.
My favorite is to make sweet potato powder, which is full of festive joy for me when I was a child. When the first ray of sunshine in the morning shone on the earth, my father came to the well with a big basket of sweet potatoes. He carefully washed the sweet potatoes with clear water to remove the dirt and dirty edges. The washed sweet potatoes looked watery and then pressed them into mud. Then my father held a wooden mold in his right hand, and his left hand grabbed a handful of mashed sweet potatoes and sprinkled them evenly from the wooden hole, floating down like a spring rain, so it became a sweet potato fan. Whenever this happens, I always try to do it by holding the mold, so my father patiently said, "Don't worry, take your time!" " "As a result, the sweet potato powder I made is as thick as a stick and can be used as a gun. So my father burst out laughing, and his eyebrows and beard trembled with laughter. Then we hung these wet powders on slender bamboo poles and set up a sweet potato curtain in the open space in front of the house. My little friend and I shuttled among them, tore off a sweet potato vermicelli and stuffed it into our mouth to satisfy our desire.
What I look forward to most is potato chips, the carnival before the Chinese New Year. At the end of each year, my father will "make a hot pot" with freshly slaughtered chickens, ducks and fresh pork, that is, put soy sauce on it and soak it in boiling tea oil, which will be more fragrant and lasting. Watching my father work slowly in front of the stove in an apron covered with oil stains, the prosperous fire made his cheeks red. At this time, greedy, I dragged my father's rough hand and begged: "Dad, I want to eat potato chips!" " ""good! " Father always readily agrees. Then, he carefully cut the sweet potato into pieces, live flour, and fried it in a boiling oil pan until it was golden brown, crisp and fragrant. This is my favorite New Year food. Sometimes, I put sweet potato slices together, and the result is a golden crab, which looks very cute. Father's hearty laughter floated from time to time in the kitchen, and the laughter drifted away with the wind.
Now, the dazzling array of dried sweet potatoes in the supermarket looks delicious and attractive, and you can take a bite. It tastes strange, not authentic dried sweet potatoes; You can also buy golden chips in the high-end KFC McDonald's. They look delicious, but when you eat them, they don't taste like childhood chips.
? For me, sweet potato is not only a kind of food, but also a kind of affection and warmth of father's love.