What is the taste of life? For me, fireworks are my most inseparable thing, and the delicious food in life is also my most precious gift.
The best thing when I was a child was that banana leaves became our most practical "gift" every year during the holidays. We can use them to make all kinds of rice cakes, including sesame, coconut and peanuts. All kinds of sweet smells are mixed with boiled banana leaves, which are fragrant and mellow, and people can't wait to eat them right away. Also, pineapple tree's leaves are our little experts in making Ciba. They like to see the patterns printed on Ciba by pineapple tree's leaves, one by one like a beautiful picture. The older generation likes to use all kinds of vegetable leaves to make Ciba wrapped in pineapple into various colors, including yellow, red, green and white glutinous rice. They are scrambling to show their posture. The scene is simply not very pleasant.
Because I don't like sweets, I especially like zongzi. I especially like dumplings made of clams and clams. Clams and clams are wild plants, which are very common in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. They grow in thorns or bamboo forests. Rice made of clams and clams tastes oily but not greasy. We locals especially like to make "meat-flavored clams and taro clams and clams and clams". Fried rice with oil clams, clams and jiaozi, etc.
When I was young, I liked to play with my sisters, holding my own vegetable basket and choosing among a green clam leaf. Although it takes me 1-2 hours to clean the clams every time I make zongzi, I enjoy it. Watching the older generation and their parents busy kneading dumplings, the younger brothers and sisters happily added firewood beside them. The air is filled with the smell of firewood, the smell of glutinous rice, and the unique fragrance of clam leaves, pork belly and spiced powder. This is a unique taste that belongs only to our good memories.
The thorn leaves of zongzi are carefully removed every time. The fat reed stalks in the pond are scalded with boiling water and torn into long ropes to wrap zongzi, which is also my best. The busyness of my family has formed a beautiful scenery in my eyes. At that time, the skilled older generation could also make all kinds of toys with zongzi, such as lanterns, birds and all kinds of flowers. It's really unpleasant
I remember that every time I make zongzi, I have to wait at least 3 days before I can eat it. On the first day, I cooked rice with rice. It takes 5-6 hours for glutinous rice to soak, and then I wait for it to be ground into powder at the end of the town. Every household has to queue up early, when there is plenty of time. When we put the buckets in that row, the familiar neighbors began to wait patiently. If we meet our partner, we can spend the whole day waiting, and our parents won't urge you to go home. Our favorite things are catching stones, playing glass balls and patting childe (it was a small square card, at that time it was about 50 cents a box, and everyone put it on the chair or table, about 10 cards. If you hit hard and how many cards are reversed, you can win on the road. At that time, you envied people who had a lot of cards, because 50 cents was a lot of pocket money, and the time of day always passed quickly. The next day, we began to prepare all kinds of stuffing and packaging materials. When all the zongzi were wrapped and put on the steamer, it was the next night. After a hard day's work, we fell asleep early, and only our parents were still watching the fire cooking zongzi.
Early in the morning, we were all awakened by the smell of zongzi. My brothers and sisters and I can't wait to wash our faces and brush our teeth, scrambling to choose zongzi with our own special marks, such as marking the leaves with color or making an ugly shape. The unique taste of streaky clam leaves, spiced powder and zongye conquered my bud at once. I really can't forget that smell all my life. Zongzi is delicious, but you can't eat too much, because glutinous rice doesn't digest. But I always eat secretly, and the consequence of stealing food is that my stomach swells tightly and I have no appetite for dinner for the next few days.
It's always interesting to recall that scene. At that time, although parents would blame us, they would also get us all kinds of herbal tea for emergencies, or they just ate lightly in those days. I especially like to eat the kind of cool grass powder (similar to tortoise jelly). Pick cool grass from the ground, wash it and poke it with a dustpan until the juice of cool grass flows to the plate, then filter it, boil it, let it cool, and then put it in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours. When it is ready to eat, add 2 spoonfuls of sugar, which is green, cool and sweet, and add 2 pieces of mint flavor to mix. Usually, one bowl is not enough for another.
Each flavor has a different meaning. The taste of delicious food made by the older generation with love bit by bit taught us the wisdom of life, and they gave us the healthiest, richest and most precious gift-"the most delicious taste in the world is Qing Huan".
At that time, eating became our favorite, as well as frying, dustpan cooking, ding ding sugar, glutinous rice chicken, shrimp paste, oil angle, maltose and so on. All kinds of pickled mangoes, plums and wines made from mangoes, lychees and longan. In retrospect, the elders' love for us is hidden in life, and they conquered us with the taste of ups and downs. They are industrious and intelligent. They told me that the experience of life is full of various flavors, and each flavor is a test for us. Just like some people always like to eat certain flavors, such as "bitter" and "spicy", while others are the opposite. But life is not what you like, whether you like it or not. This is life, you have to go through ups and downs.
Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Wang Han for writing A Tasty Gift, which reminds me of a different taste in my memory and belongs to my Tasty Gift only. What impressed me most was this sentence: I suddenly felt how good it was to describe these things. How happy a person should be when he doesn't want to occupy anything, just like my good friends, such as Park Yun-zi, who makes piano, Lao Li, who makes tofu, and Yu Dad, who makes carpenter ... I use words to achieve collage of my daily life, and try to use wooden pots, feather dusters and quilts.
As the Polish poet milosz mentioned in his poem Gift, there is nothing I want to possess in this world. I know no one deserves my envy. But what I want to say is: there is nothing I want to possess in this world, only the familiar taste of life and love in my memory. This is my best gift!
PS &: The pictures are all selected from the Internet.