The jelly made in Tianshui, my hometown, has long been famous in the northwest region and has become a very unique regional delicacy.

When I was a child, every family in the village would make jelly every Dragon Boat Festival. Jelly is delicious, but it takes a lot of work to make. The buckwheat is first carried to the mill and the outer buckwheat skin is peeled off. Then put the peeled buckwheat on a large chopping board and roll it into sheets, like mud rolls that have been exposed to the sun after rain. Then put these buckwheat flakes on the sieve, which is a lot of hard work. The sifted buckwheat flour is the raw material for making jelly.

Sprinkle buckwheat flour into the pot and cook it into porridge. During this period, you must control the heat. When the porridge is boiling in the pot, use a simmer. After the porridge is cooked, the next step will be much easier. Take the porridge out of the pot and scoop it into an enamel basin. After it cools and hardens, it becomes jelly.

Summer is the best time to eat jelly. At noon, I happened to come back from working in the fields and was both thirsty and hungry. Cut the jelly into potato strips and add sesame oil, salt, vinegar, spicy oil and minced garlic. A bowl of cool jelly fills our hot stomachs with great anticipation. When the jelly enters the mouth, it is smooth and refreshing, and most of the heat in the mouth is absorbed. Like a coolant, our heads, which have been under the sun for a long time, feel much lighter in an instant, and our drowsy nerves are also awakened.

A bowl of jelly can be eaten without realizing it. Hunger, like a heavy burden, is lifted from us. When you sit and rest, you are still savoring the taste of jelly and the fragrance of buckwheat noodles, spreading on the tip of your tongue, spreading in our hearts, and spreading in the years of poverty. Food not only satisfies our appetite, it also brings us spiritual comfort and soul peace.

Wazi, a little friend in the village, loves to eat jelly all year round. Of course, he also has this convenience. His father is in the jelly business. It is common to see his father pushing a 28-year-old bicycle with several pots of jelly on the shelf. He shouted into the portable speaker: "Change the jelly." The sound was like a bell, with a long pitch. Our little friends followed and shouted: "Change the jelly." The clear child's voice reached a few steps away, and the sound seemed to be suppressed at the bottom of the pot, losing its stamina. The child's father showed his teeth blackened by drought smoke and smiled.

Among the children in the village, no one is better at eating jelly than Wazi. The child loves to bring a bowl of jelly to the village to eat. I put a lot of vinegar, and you can smell the aroma of vinegar from a distance. You can't help it, but when your cheeks get sore, you'll be drooling all over the place. The shape of the jelly in Wazi's bowl is also constantly changing: sometimes it is rectangular, half as thick as a mahjong tile; sometimes it is cut very finely, as thick as a sliver; sometimes it is as thick as a potato strip. The crispy and oily spicy seeds wrap up the white jelly noodles, making your fingers tantalize. When the friends looked at the baby, their eyes shone with longing, as if the baby had become a bowl of fragrant jelly.

In winter, Wazi rarely eats cold jelly. He eats fried jelly. Cut the jelly into rectangular shapes, it is best to stir-fry with minced meat, and add some garlic sprouts cut into thin strips. Wazi made his debut with a bowl of fried jelly. On a winter morning, the sun shines warmly on us. Watching the baby eat steaming fried jelly is also a pleasure. His happiness is contagious to us, giving us a virtual sense of fullness in our empty stomachs. At that time, the baby became the happiest child in everyone's eyes. Sometimes I wonder: Why does my father want to be a carpenter? The work was hard and the money wasn't much. It would be great if my father also changed the jelly!

Although buckwheat jelly is delicious, it is troublesome to make. Therefore, in the fast-paced city, jelly made from pea starch is everywhere. Buckwheat noodle jelly is like a charming beauty whose fragrance is hard to find. Seven pounds of pea starch can be used to make one pound of jelly. This kind of jelly is crystal clear and smoother, but the taste is much bland and does not have the grainy taste of buckwheat jelly. It's like falling in love with a pretty girl. As soon as the other person opens her mouth, she becomes so vulgar that you immediately feel bored. Beautiful scenery often lies in remote places, while delicious food often lies among the people.

Nowadays, every time I hold a bowl of jelly from my hometown, I feel like I have found a secret passage to the past. Those memories about jelly connect many times together. The coolness lingering in the body, the fragrance of buckwheat stored in the depths of life, brewed the poetic imagination of a northwest man.

So, after eating a bowl of Tianshui jelly, I was still not satisfied, so I typed the above text on the keyboard to add some green and nutritious ingredients to our increasingly numb taste.

I’m tired of reading the article, so let’s take a guess. I believe your IQ will not lose to that of a pig. It is said that half of the people guessed wrong.