I remembered an old song with a bright tune: "In the spring comes the fragrance of flowers, Langri Granri Grange..."
Spring is a beautiful season, full of flowers, competing for beauty. In addition to walking on the green to enjoy the flowers, in my hometown, the townspeople also have the custom of eating flowers and eating spring, picking all kinds of flowers, yellow flower cakes, steamed peach blossom cakes, boiling pear blossom porridge, making hundreds of flowers, eating spring into the belly, letting the beauty remember in their hearts, and looking forward to a bright and prosperous year.
In ancient times, the Chinese people had the custom of "eating flowers in spring" very early. As early as the pre-Qin period, flowers were loved by the ancestors because of their aromatic smell, and the literati and inkers traveled to the spring, picking flowers or directly tasting them, or cooking into the dishes. During the Warring States period, the Chu poet Qu Yuan, in the "Departure from the Troubles" and "Nine Chapters", had: "The fall of the drinking Mulan is revealed, and the autumn chrysanthemum of the sunset meal falls into the Ying." "Magnolia is used for jiao, and zhen shen pepper is used as grain." Sowing the river away from The Chrysanthemum, may the spring day be a mime. " verse.
Not only because of the freshness, elegance, beautiful cheeks and teeth, pleasant mood of flowers, but also because the ancients believed that spring flowers have the effect of beauty and beauty, disease treatment, "eat flowers like flowers, flowers are fragrant" and "flowers have their own immortal formula" and other proverbs, reflecting the ancient people's way of eating flowers.
Plum blossom is the flower of spring, but also for the Chinese people to talk about the flower of the gentleman, it ranks first in the Meilan bamboo chrysanthemum "four gentlemen", with proud snow frost character, indomitable spirit, quietly welcome the spring wind, is the spiritual model of the literati doctor. Plum blossoms, in addition to entering the poem, have produced such ancient famous sentences as "Remote knowledge is not snow, for there is a dark incense", "Plum suson snow is three points white, snow loses plum incense", "Who can incarnate into a hundred billion, a tree plum blossom a bird" and other ancient famous sentences, the ancients also loved to eat plum plums, leaving a popular american sentence, passing down a funny story.
When it comes to eating plum blossoms, we have to mention Yang Wanli, a Southern Song Dynasty literary scholar and one of the "Four Great Poets of Zhongxing". Yang Wanli has an indissoluble relationship with plum blossoms, others love plums to feast their eyes and nourish their spirits, and he not only has to feast on them. Yang Wanli loves plum blossoms is infiltrated into the blood, he wrote a poem "Night Drinking with White Sugar to Chew Plum Blossoms", shiyun:
Cut the snow to make plums only smell, and the honey is as new as frost.
A flower can swallow a cup, chew up a few glasses of wine.
He not only greedily sniffed the fragrance of plum blossoms, but also used plum blossoms dipped in sugar to drink wine, a plum blossom can drink a glass of wine, whether it is drunk or drunk plum, can not tell. He folded a few plum blossoms and inserted them into the bottle, and composed a long poem "Plum Blossoms in the Bottle", telling about his deep love for plums:
Ordinary life for the plum to judge the intestine, how did he know that there is Xu Xiang in the canal?
Remembering that his friends in the past set up a feast for him, Yang Wanli ignored the table full of delicacies, and with a little wine, he ran to the tree to pick plum blossoms to eat:
Drunkenly climbing to the top of the shadow, throwing leaves and flowers to illuminate the ice well.
To this day, only a few cold plums in the bottle are accompanied, and I can't help but sigh:
A lonely and lazy paper, like a plum blossom is the deceased!
Once a friend beckoned to drink, a glass of wine was not finished, it snowed, snow flakes and plum blossoms instantly aroused Yang Wanli's desire to create, a wave of ten songs, most of which wrote plum blossoms, and finally the poet was obviously a little drunk, wrote "Only cane frost can not be divided, the old man wants to chew plum blossoms" such a verse. From this, it can be seen that Yang Wanli loves plums, loves innocently, loves uninhibitedly, and loves to the bone.
How to eat plum blossoms? Yang Wanli's method is a bit simple and extensive, the most tasteful should be the Southern Song Dynasty veteran foodie Lin Hong, who authored the Southern Song Dynasty version of the "China on the tip of the tongue" recipe "Mountain Family Qing Offering", which records a lot of recipes about plum blossoms, and its method is called Qingqi unique. For example, plum blossom porridge, he wrote: "Mei Luoying, clean washing, boiled in snow water; waiting for white porridge to cook, cook together." He also quoted Yang Wanli's poem "Falling Plums Have Sighs":
Only to see the spring after the wax, sad to see the snow drifting before the wind.
The harvest will be boiled porridge to eat, and the fall is still good as a fragrant roast.
It's beautiful to imagine. Another example is the plum blossom soup cake, first use white plum blossoms, sandalwood powder to soak water, and then use this water to make a dough skin with noodles, press it into a plum blossom shape with a mold, cook it and put it in chicken soup, the color and flavor are complete, delicious and elegant.
Magnolia flowers are tree flowers that bloom earlier in spring and have the reputation of "the first branch in early spring". Especially the white magnolia, the petals are as white as jade, the flowers are rich and elegant, and Qu Yuan, the doctor of the Chu Kingdom, has long praised the magnolia flowers in the chapter of "Chu Ci". Wang Xiangjin of the Ming Dynasty recorded the eating method of magnolia in the "Qunfang Genealogy": "Magnolia flower food. The petals are washed, the noodles are dragged, and the sesame oil is fried at the most beautiful. ”
The petals of magnolia flowers are large and thick and can be fried for eating. Seasoned with magnolia petals, flour and sugar, and fried in a frying pan, it becomes a tender delicacy. The sweet aroma of food is delicious, beautiful skin, light body and eyes. According to legend, fried magnolia slices are a must-have recipe for the imperial dining room of Empress Dowager Cixi in the Qing Dynasty every spring, and they melt in the mouth and are crispy and fragrant.
Peony flowers are the most beautiful and dazzling flowers in mid-spring, because of their grace and magnificence, but also because of the Famous Sentence of the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi, "Only the peony is the true national color, and the blossoms move the capital", and were once regarded as China's national flower. Peony is delicate and fragrant, how can the ancients who are good at eating let it go easily. Su Shi, a Northern Song Dynasty writer and great gourmand, had a special love for tasting peony flowers, and he wrote a set of "Peony in the Rain", one of which reads:
A thousand flowers and a hundred grasses, all without contempt.
Did not tolerate the sludge, beef crisp fried rudder.
Peony flowers, together with ordinary flowers and plants, render spring so beautiful that it is not proud of its national color. The poet could not bear to let the beautiful peony flowers fall into mud, picked them up, fried them with cow's milk, and tasted them with a taste of pure fen. The delicacy of "crispy fried peony" must be incomparably delicious, which Mr. Dongpo will never forget, and he also mentioned this beautiful dish in "Peony Appreciation in the Rain", Shiyun:
The rain and dew are clear, and the sparkling lights are shining.
Tomorrow's spring flowers are not old, so they should not bear to fry.
The first two sentences write out the beautiful photos of the peonies in the rain, beautiful and vulgar, and the last two sentences mention that the spring is not old, the flowers are fresh, or hurry to fry the peony flower slices with beef crisp, and eat a handful of flowers. Gao Lian, a Ming Dynasty opera writer and health care scientist, wrote the "Eight Notes of Zunsheng", which also recorded the eating method of peony: "Its petals are washed and cleaned, and the noodles are fried in sesame oil." The new petals of peonies can also be fried and soaked in honey. ”
Pine flowers, also known as pine yellow, pine pen head, is the spring pine tree male branch pumped flower bone, sweet and warm, non-toxic, moisturizing the heart and lungs, good qi, removing wind and hemostasis effect, can also brew wine. Songhua has the function of strengthening physical fitness, prolonging life, and is a precious high-grade nutritional food raw material. The ancients understood the wonderful use of pine flowers very early on, and often mixed it with other flowers for medicinal food and medicinal wine. Su Shi of the Northern Song Dynasty was well versed in his ways and loved to eat food made of pine blossoms, so he steamed the pine flowers, locust flowers and apricot blossoms into rice, sealed the wine after a few days, and sang:
A pound of pine flowers is indispensable, and eight or two pu huang should not be fried.
Locust flowers and apricot blossoms are five dollars each, and two pounds of white honey are pounded together.
Eat or bath, red and white until old.
- "Song of Pine Flowers"
The Ming Dynasty official Yue Zheng was also familiar with the way of pine blossom health, and he said in "Puyang County's ZhaiGuan Objects have a Feeling":
Wild deer will drink the creek at night, and the grass trees along the creek are lost.
Tong slaves pick and eat pine flowers, only in the west of my family's grass house.
Yue Zheng recounted the experience of visiting xian qing, and the child picked pine flowers in the nearby pine forest and cooked them for guests, which was quite immortal.
Lily, named after "dozens of pieces of photos, shaped like a white lotus, a hundred pieces of synthesis", symbolizes the beautiful meaning of "Pepsi Harmony" and "holiness and elegance", and has been loved by people as an auspicious object since ancient times. Lily flowers in late spring and early summer, its flowers and bulbs are edible, is a kind of medicinal and food health food and commonly used traditional Chinese medicine, has the effect of moisturizing the lungs, cough, clearing heat, calming the nerves and diuretics. The Southern Song Dynasty poet Lu You loved to plant flowers, and lilies were also his favorites.
Fang Lan moved all over zhonglin, and the room was not to plant jade hairpins.
More begging two bushes of incense lilies, the old man seventy still childlike.
He planted lotus orchids and jade hairpins, and his favorite is the lily, which is not only considerable and appreciative, but also edible and delicious, and has more health care, so the poet sends out a personal feeling of "the old man's seventy children's heart".
Spring is a hundred flowers of the purple yan red, when you go on a green outing, you may wish to pick a few flowers back, with your feelings for spring, love of life, elaborately make a few flower dishes, taste a taste of spring beautiful taste, the flower years have a pattern of life, is not good!
-Author-
Liu Qirui, male, a native of Tancheng, Shandong, a veteran literature lover, published the essay collection "The Song of that year", "Nostalgia is a Curved Blue Moon" and the short story collection "Hedong Hexi".