Text: Wang Yeqin
Yam, a plant that can be used as both food and vegetables, is now being praised as a health food in some media. Yes, the yam is the tuber of the sweet potato, also known as sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, etc. There are two kinds of red and white skins, commonly known as sweet potatoes and white potatoes. It is widely cultivated in various parts of the mainland. The yellow flesh of the red skin of the yam has a sweet taste; The taste of white-skinned people is slightly lighter. It can be used as a staple food to satisfy hunger, steamed and roasted are fragrant; It has also been tested to have certain medicinal value. Yams contain a lot of starch, carbohydrates, vitamins A, C, B vitamins and various salts. Among them, the content of vitamin A and C ranks first in the main food category. Yams contain collagen and mucus polysaccharides. It is a mixture of polysaccharide proteins, which can maintain the elasticity of human arterial blood vessels and prevent the occurrence of fat deposition and atherosclerosis in the cardiovascular system.
The efficacy and role of yam will not be described in this article. Its requirements for the growth environment are afraid of cold and not afraid of heat, one season a year, planted in April, harvested after autumn, and cellared in winter.
In Wu Village, the people in the village also have a soft spot for the yam, because, during the "three-year natural disaster", the yam as one of the staple foods, has been with corn, buckwheat, and kudzu, fern roots, wild vegetables and other plants to save the lives of people in the mountains, according to the former deputy director of the Revolutionary Committee of the Wuhe Brigade Sheng Xinzhi's memoirs "Here was once brilliant" recorded that "the party branch headed by Comrade Yu Mingjiang, the secretary, is anxious in the eyes and in the heart." They believed that food was always the top priority, so the branch decided to go up to the mountains to cultivate wheat. In the spring of 59, it was arranged that all the mountainous areas that could be planted had to be planted with buds (corn), yams, and other miscellaneous grains. At the same time, each production team is required to organize laborers to go up the mountain to dig kudzu, fern roots, bitter herbs, etc. These methods were effective, and the people of Wuhe survived the great famine of those years, and not a single one died of starvation. It is the only brigade in the Yangtan area that did not starve to death. However, Comrade Yu Mingjiang was criticized in 59 for cultivating wasteland, and then removed from the post of branch secretary. After the famine, the people of Wucun did not forget the contribution of the yam and planted it as an important food plant. It can be used to satisfy hunger, to make dishes, and to feed pigs. In today's farmers' markets, yams and their stems and leaves are still a vegetable sold by vegetable farmers.
When the brigade calculates, Wucun plants more yams, generally in the tea field intercropping, most of the members in their own vegetable fields, planting three or four ridges, before the frost to cut back the potato vine cut into small pieces and reserve in a large round barrel to feed the pigs. Then, dig out the yams and pick them back, do not wash them, put them in the kitchen, and the potatoes that are seeded are also not washed (it is best to bring mud), and several primitive ways to eat them are still in my memory:
Steamed yams, wash the yams, when cooking, after the rice is boiled, put the rice soup up, cut the yams into pieces, and put them on the rice to steam;
Roasted potato, the stove in the kitchen of Wucun was firewood, after the potato after the autumn was ripe, the "rice cooker" dug some potato back from time to time to cook, or steamed or boiled, but the "bald cowherd" and "girls" like to put the unwashed potato into the stove, cover the "fire roast" with ashes, after cooking, although the outer layer of the potato is baked or burned, but the inside is sweet and delicious;
Yam slices, washed, steamed, cut into small slices, dried, etc., waited until the wax moon, fried with peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and other "New Year's goods", and served guests in the first month;
Yam hemp sticks, wash and remove the skin, steam, mash, mix with sesame seeds while hot, cut into strips, dried, fried with sand, or fried in oil, cooled, put in the mouth and chew sweet and crispy;
Wash the powder, make vermicelli, wash the yams, crush them in the machine rice factory, pick them back, in the yard, or by the Tong River, build a hanger with a wooden stick or penny bamboo, and then tie it tightly on the four feet of the hanger with a white handkerchief, pour the crushed potato into the white handkerchief and shake it with water, and then use a wooden basin below, after squeezing it dry, the yam residue is used to feed the pigs, the basin is filled with white potato water, let it precipitate, three days later, pour out the wastewater precipitated on the powder, and remove the potato powder in the basin to dry it into starch; Flour and skin are all used as raw materials, but back then, I only knew that I used boiling water to cook and add sugar to eat, and there was also to make vermicelli, add an appropriate amount of starch and water to be even, put it in a special wooden box, steam it on the stove, and after cooling, use the planer of the shredded cabbage, planed into a filament, and dried it to become vermicelli.
Also, the raw yam is washed, cut into strips and dried, and ground into dry powder with a stone mill to make yam baba to eat.
The yam is delicious and difficult to hide. Yam is not a flowering and fruiting plant, it is dependent on the mother to breed seedlings, cold, winter storage of yam is a very troublesome thing.
Wu Village is located in the Wuhe Mountains, after the frost falls, the temperature gradually drops, below 5 degrees, easy to deteriorate and rot, a small number of families dig a cellar by the "fire pond" (at that time, the village housing, the general kitchen level is mostly mud soil), put the yam in. There are also most families who choose to dig a hole of about one meter on the slope of the loess hill in Chaoyang, and the hole should not be too big 30 Centimeters, put some charcoal inside, put some straw on the charcoal, and then spread the old cotton wool on the straw; the potato that is seeded, there must be no breakage, even if it is a little broken skin, it can not be cellared, it must be smooth and round, the weight is more than half a catty, the potato cellar, after it is installed, the hole is made of a wooden board to make the door, the door should be drilled with a few small holes, and the door is covered with straw, so that it can be breathable, it is not possible to fully enclose and not breathe, the anoxic potato is easy to rot in the cave, and it is necessary to prevent rain and snow from entering the cellar. Do the seed potato, enter the cellar, but also take care of your body, safe hibernation, this sleep is nearly half a year.
Around the spring equinox of the coming year, open the cellar, take out the yams, put the breeding vegetable fields that have been prepared for loosening soil fertilization, put the potato seeds of the seedlings, cover with straw, and then cover a layer of film, more than ten days later, the fresh and tender seedlings, shyly slowly stretch out the branches and leaves from the mother, and grow into a vine section by section, and after growing to a certain length, you can cut the cuttings.
Wang Yeqin, a retired cadre of Guangde Taxation Bureau, is now a member of Xuancheng, Guangde Writers Association, History and Culture Research Association, and New Fourth Army History Research Association. Over the years, his works have occasionally been published in newspapers, magazines and literary platforms, and when he was in office, he mainly focused on newsletters, and after his retirement, he began to study prose writing and historical and cultural research, and many articles have won awards.
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