My hometown is located in the inland area by the west of central China. We mainly use pasta here, so the material is not particularly rich, and people's new year's goods are mainly snacks made of pasta.

I remember when I was a child, every household would choose a day as "Fried Cake" every year after the twelfth lunar month. This day was the most solemn day before the year. It was not only to fry rice cakes, but also to fry oil cakes, fried dough twists, fried rice strips and so on.

Later, with the changes of the times, things became more and more abundant, and you could buy whatever you wanted in ordinary days. This beautiful tradition was gradually abandoned. However, I still remember my happiness during the Chinese New Year before I was a teenager. What I miss most is fried dough twists, glutinous rice strips, oil bags, sugar dates and so on.

As we all know, the big twist in Tianjin is particularly famous. My own fried dough twists are also very delicious. They are real, sweet, crisp and crisp. It is said that fried dough twists are very particular about noodles, and some people don't know how to make noodles themselves, so they have to go to the village to ask people with good noodles for help.

One of my uncles is a good hand at dough mixing. Whoever wants to fry dough twists during the Spring Festival must ask him for help, and it is not easy to ask him. You must go home several days in advance to say hello to him, or he will be called away by others. He didn't eat at home almost every day that twelfth lunar month, and some people asked him for help.

The fried dough twists have been made up, so the leftover fried rice noodles, oil bags, candied dates and so on can be used, and the results are all very good.

I'd like to tell you about the oil bag, which is a popular name here. I don't know what the official name is. However, everyone should have seen this thing. In fact, it is a sugar jujube that is not wrapped in sugar. Sugar jujube is just a pimple, and then it is covered with a layer of sugar. The oil bag just doesn't wrap sugar, and the pimple is fried directly.

For glutinous rice noodles, we usually use this white flour in our own home. Although it is called glutinous rice noodles, it is not made of glutinous rice noodles, which is still different from what we bought outside. The biggest difference between glutinous rice noodles made of white flour and glutinous rice noodles is that white flour is solid, unlike glutinous rice noodles, which can swell up. Therefore, the glutinous rice strips made of white flour are hard to bite and do not have that crisp feeling. At that time, the living conditions were like that. We didn't produce glutinous rice here, so we could only use white flour instead.

although these things are all too common now, I was really looking forward to them. After so many years, people's living conditions are getting better and better, and they don't lack anything to eat, but they don't have the feeling of expectation at the beginning of the New Year. It's a pity to think about it, but I still miss the lively atmosphere of Chinese New Year when I was a child.