When I was a kid, the only food I ate regularly at home was sweet potatoes, in addition to three meals a day of white rice. Every July, when it rains and pours, is the best day to plant sweet potatoes. My father used scissors to cut the tangled sweet potato vines into seedlings, each section about four or five inches long, with two or three tender green leaves attached to the vines, and then inserted them one by one into the freshly thinned out rows of the field. As the saying goes, "The sweet potato is not afraid of falling into the ground and rotting, but only seeks to pass on its branches and leaves from generation to generation." The life force of the sweet potato is very strong, not for a while, the sweet potato vine creeping on the ground to spread around, duck egg-shaped leaves spread out, from a distance, a vibrant scene. Soon, the stars dotted with pale white flowers dotted with them, swaying in the wind. In the fall and October it is the season of sweet potato ripening, my father took us three siblings carrying hoes and baskets to dig sweet potato in the ground with great joy.
I dug down with a hoe and screamed, "Wow, four or five sweet potatoes hugging each other tightly, united like brothers.
? "I dug a heart-shaped sweet potato!" My sister exclaimed in surprise, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
? "Hey, I accidentally dug up an oversized sweet potato!" The older brother lamented a bit.
"You have to carefully dig down the sweet potato vine, it would be a pity to dig and rot!" Father said in a serious tone.
In less than half a day, the ground was filled with large and small sweet potatoes, like a small mountain.
The next thing to do was to eat the sweet potatoes, most often made of dried sweet potatoes. We put the fire burning, a big pot of sweet potatoes steamed and cut into pieces like dried tofu, neatly arranged in the dustbin, in the hot sun exposure, a few days later became like dried radish size. When you take a bite, it is very chewy and has a great aftertaste. I often grabbed a handful of them and stuffed them in my pocket when I went to school, and ate them as a snack when I was hungry. The most convenient is the stewed sweet potatoes. Every day after school when I come home to cook, I will carefully select a yellow hearted sweet potato buried in the ashes of the fire, listening to the crackle of the firewood, I think that is a beautiful symphony of the kitchen. When I smelled a pungent aroma, I pinched out the sweet potato with a fire poker. Gently blow off the layer of ash wrapped in the outside, only to see the sweet potato skin cracked, the outside of the charred, especially attractive.
The most interesting thing is to hang it on the wall and eat it. Whenever the wind starts to fall in the fall, the wind is blowing the window pane, and even the door seems to crackle as if it can't be closed. My father climbed up a tall ladder and hung the bunches of sweet potatoes on the greasy black walls. Sometimes I looked up inadvertently and saw the tantalizing sweet potatoes teasing me. So I used a long, thin bamboo pole to pick down a dried sweet potato. At this time the sweet potato by the north wind blowing away the water, the yellow skin has a layer of folds like the weathered old lady face wrinkles. After the skin is removed, especially the red heart of the sweet potato is crisp and sweet, there is a special flavor.
My favorite thing is to make sweet potato flour, which was full of holiday joy for me as a child. When the first ray of sunshine in the morning when the earth, my father picked a large basket of sweet potatoes to the well, in the fresh and clean water carefully wash, remove the mud and dirty side, after washing the sweet potatoes all seem to be watery, and then the sweet potatoes crushed into mud. Then my father held a wooden mold in his right hand, his left hand grabbed a handful of mashed sweet potatoes and evenly sprinkled down from the small wooden holes, like the silk of the spring rain floated down, and then it became a root of sweet potato fans. Whenever this happened, I always grabbed the mold and scrambled to make it, so my father patiently said, "Don't be in a hurry, take your time!" As a result, the sweet potato vermicelli I made was as thick as a stick and could be used as a gun. So my father laughed so hard that his eyebrows and beard quivered. Then we hung this wet flour on thin bamboo poles and built a sweet potato curtain in the open space in front of our home. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to get a good deal on a new one, but I'm sure you're going to be able to get a good deal on a new one.
The most eagerly awaited is the fried potato chips, which is the carnival before the New Year. At the end of the year, my father would like to put the freshly slaughtered chickens and ducks and fresh pork "to go red pot", that is, coated with soy sauce in the boiling tea oil over a little bit, so that the more flavorful preservation of a longer period of time. I watched my father, with his grease-stained apron on, slowly and happily cooking in front of the stove, his cheeks reddened by the roaring fire. At that moment, I was so greedy that I tugged on my father's big, rough hands and begged, "Dad, I want to eat potato chips!" "Okay!" My father always agreed quickly. Then he carefully cut the sweet potato into slices, live flour, put in the boiling frying pan, until fried into a golden brown, crispy and fragrant, is my favorite New Year's food. Sometimes, I also put the sweet potato slices together horizontally and vertically, the result is fried into a golden crab, the appearance of lovely. From time to time, my father's hearty laughter drifted out of the kitchen, traveling far and wide with the wind.
Now, a wide range of supermarkets sell dried sweet potatoes, looks very attractive color, can bite, taste strange, not authentic dried sweet potatoes; in the high-grade KFC McDonald's can also buy golden fries, looks showy, eat down is not the taste of the childhood fried potato chips.
? For me, sweet potato is not only a food, but also a feeling, fatherly warmth.