The Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon is less than 20 days away. People are preparing New Year's goods.

It’s good to buy ready-made New Year’s goods, but I always feel that something is missing. Oh, yes, it’s that rich atmosphere and fun!

I really miss the unique taste of the New Year food in my childhood hometown.

I especially like the New Year fruits from my grandma’s house. Grandma's family is a farmer in a small town in the mountains along the Xijiang River. They live a hard and frugal life all year round. When the Spring Festival comes, it is particularly grand and they must cook some delicious food.

The first thing is to make rice dumplings - this is not a patent for the Dragon Boat Festival. How can there be no rice dumplings during the New Year! I was on winter vacation and came to my grandma’s house. My uncle took me to chop wild rice dumpling leaves from rivers and mountains and took them home to cook. Grandma is soaking glutinous rice, cooking mung beans, marinating pork, making rice dumpling fillings, and twisting silk and hemp into strings to tie the rice dumplings. When making rice dumplings, place a layer of glutinous rice on the rice dumpling leaves, a layer of peeled mung beans, one or two pieces of fatty pork, and a layer of glutinous rice. Then fold and wrap the rice dumpling leaves and tie them firmly with a string. Grandma put dozens of wrapped rice dumplings into a large iron pot and boiled them with old wood roots. She had to cook them all night long. The fat inside was cooked to pieces, and the pork fat penetrated the entire rice dumpling. When you eat this kind of rice dumplings, the fragrance lingers for a long time.

There is also a kind of "grey water rice dumpling" among the rice dumplings. Grandma burned peanut vines and a kind of alkali-containing firewood in the stove, and then used the ashes to filter out the alkali water and soak the glutinous rice. When wrapping, put a piece of red sapphire wood in the center of the rice dumpling. This kind of gray water rice dumpling is salty; it can also be eaten dipped in sugar, which gives it a really unique flavor.

Grandma made "Bo'er Guo" again. Then grind out very fine rice milk, scoop a spoonful into a small clay bowl, and mix it with crushed peanuts, taro chunks, and radish cubes respectively. Put one bowl at a time in a pot and steam it into rice cakes. Once the pot is open, pour some cooked oil, soy sauce, and hot sauce into the rice cakes, wow! The smooth, tender and refreshing feeling in your mouth is like eating fairy fruit.

Put the ground rice milk into a cloth bag, squeeze out the water, steam it, and then grandma makes "Shou Peach Fruit". In fact, this is also a kind of rice cake, made into the shape of a peach, filled with sugar and fried peanuts, and marked with a red mark on the outside to show good luck. This longevity peach fruit is particularly fragrant and smooth, and is served on a plate as a snack.

When it comes to snacks, the most exciting thing is rice cakes. Grandma’s cake molds are passed down from ancestors and come in various varieties. There are twenty or thirty types, round, diamond-shaped, heart-shaped, fish-shaped, rabbit-shaped, peach-shaped... They are only used during the Chinese New Year. When making the cake, mix the ground rice flour with brown sugar and water and mix well. The filling is filled with peanut kernels and other spices, and some pork suet soaked in white sugar is also specially sandwiched. Then put it on the pan and bake it dry. After being unmoulded, the rice cakes are quite hard, fragrant and chewy.

Grandma also makes fried angles and crispy strips, which are made with similar ingredients to rice cakes and have similar fillings. The fried horns are made into a double triangle; the crispy strips are made into strips. After roasting, it will be crispy and sweet in your mouth, especially crispy and fragrant.

Of course, on New Year’s Eve, you have to steam sponge cake - locally called "fa cake", which means that life will be prosperous and prosperous in the coming year. It is made by mixing flour with water to form a dough, adding soda to ferment it, and then kneading it into sugar water and steaming it. Mixed with brown sugar to make yellow cake, mixed with white sugar to make white cake.

On New Year’s Eve, my uncle was making “rice krispie treats”. That is after popping the rice popcorn in a simmering pot, using sugar water to bind the rice popcorn together, and then cutting it into several small squares. Hey! That guy is so crispy, crispy and sweet!

There are still some New Year’s food from grandma’s house. I can't say too much, but I can't help but drool when I talk about it - greedy!

When we were making New Year’s fruit, my sister, brother, and I would always be there to “help” (the more we helped, the busier we were), laughing and joking, and the whole process was joyful. At dawn, I eat rice dumplings and sponge cakes to try out the prepared food. Then I put a lot of those rice cakes, fried angles, and crispy strips into my pockets, and play and eat while playing. Leer epilepsy!