The mugwort noodles made by my mother, Yang Zhiyong's mugwort noodles, were used to satisfy hunger during the famine years. I often ate them before I was a teenager. After the land was contracted to each household, the family had enough white rice and thin noodles, so I never ate it again.

As time goes by, I gradually forget about this delicious food.

A few days ago, I went back to my hometown to visit my parents.

My mother prepared a table of farm side dishes, and after having a few glasses of wine with my father, my mother served two bowls of glutinous rice noodles with sauerkraut and artemisia to the two of us.

I couldn't wait to eat, and while praising my mother, I put down my glass and started to devour it.

My father watched me eating, and the recipe for making wormwood noodles started to flow out from the corners of his mouth.

Baogu glutinous rice noodles with sauerkraut and wormwood are a delicacy in my hometown. It is made of four main ingredients: Baogu glutinous rice flour, sauerkraut, wormwood, two ginseng flour or pure wheat flour. Of course, cooking oil, salt, MSG and other seasonings are indispensable.

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Baogu grits is the local common name, which is the small golden particles left after corn is crushed and the flour and bran are sifted out.

Two ginseng flour is flour made from wheat and peas mixed together.

Pickled cabbage is a pickled green vegetable. This kind of vegetable is a housekeeping vegetable grown by ordinary families in our hometown. Some locally called it "Bengcai" and some called Gaicai.

Each name has its own reason. It is called Bencai because it can only grow in the fourth month of the lunar calendar; it is called Gaicai because it has bare leaves and no stems. No matter where it is planted, as long as there is a little soil, it will grow.

The vegetable leaves that come out can cover the sky and the earth.

Collect this kind of green vegetables home, rinse them with water, put them in a pot of boiling water, and when they are wilted, take them out and put them in a bamboo basket to dry, and then put them in a jar or a large earthen porcelain basin.

, and then add the noodle soup water below to it. The amount of noodle soup water should be enough to cover the vegetables. Cover the jar or pot lid. After a day or two in summer, it will become sauerkraut and it is ready to eat.

When eating, take it out of the jar and squeeze the sour water dry with your hands. According to your personal appetite, you can cut it into thick or thin pieces with a knife.

When making wormwood noodles, pickled cabbage is usually used. In my hometown, the pickled cabbage is basically fried with lard, with an appropriate amount of MSG and chili added, and even better with some ginger.

With pickled cabbage and corn glutinous rice, if there is no mugwort, then mugwort noodles will not be made.

Artemisia grows everywhere in my hometown. It grows in front of and behind houses, on both sides of mountain roads, on the edges of fields, and wherever weeds grow.

There are many kinds of mugwort. This kind of edible mugwort is called white mugwort. Its shape is almost exactly the same as the mugwort that is planted on the door during the Dragon Boat Festival in our rural areas every year. The only difference from mugwort is that the back of its leaves is whiter.

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The standard for picking wormwood for making wormwood noodles is that the fresher the better, and you cannot eat it when it grows old.

Wash the picked wormwood with water to remove dust and other impurities attached to the surface, then cut it into fine pieces with a knife, knead it into a mud ball with your hands, and then wash it in clean water until the water is clear.

After this process is completed, mix it with pure wheat flour or two ginseng flour. You can make wormwood pimples by hand, roll them into wormwood noodles, or wormwood dough sheets, or use a dough pressing machine to make them.

In addition to these basic steps, the last step that determines the taste of the wormwood noodles is that after the water in the pot boils, first add an appropriate amount of corn grits and cook them into porridge, then put the wormwood noodles into the pot and cook, and finally adjust the

Add the pickled cabbage and wormwood seeds, and a fragrant meal of braised glutinous rice noodles with pickled cabbage and wormwood seeds is waiting for you to enjoy.

After more than twenty years, eating wormwood noodles made by my mother has a special taste in my heart.

Nowadays, life at home is better, and people in my hometown rarely eat this kind of food anymore.

The brother and sister were both away from home, and the parents had been cultivating all the land in the family. They would leave early and come home late. They never had a day's work. Sometimes the two of them would just eat together.

I asked them, now that they have enough food and clothing, why should they treat themselves badly? They said they had time to do farm work for a day and when they came home, all the bones in their bodies seemed to be falling apart, so they still had time to "fiddle" with food.

Therefore, I thought that the mother could specially cook such a meal, and the hidden meaning in her heart was to "treat" her long-lost son.

The wormwood noodles in my hometown contain the story of my childhood.

The mugwort noodles made by the mother express her deep and long-lasting love for her son, as well as her endless attachment and blessing to her son.