Mom made sweet potato rice

Sweet potato rice made by my mother Author Dai Ting Just after the New Year's Day in 2020, I returned to my hometown from Wuhan to visit my mother, planning to spend a lively Spring Festival with my mother. Who knows that a few days later, a new crown pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan was transmitted from person to person, and in order to block the spread of the epidemic, Wuhan resolutely locked down the city. Therefore, I stayed in my hometown in Hunan, which was more than seven months. One day, when I was helping my mother sort out the daily necessities at home, I saw a tin can, which my mother used to cook rice. At that time, there was no gas stove, no electric stove, no rice cooker, and the firewood was cut from the mountain. My mother finished her farm work every day, and when she came home to cook, she put the tin can on the wood stove and cooked rice while stir-frying. Due to the smoke and fire for many years, My mother's eyes were destroyed by the fireworks. At that time, I was not yet two years old, and when I was spinning around my mother, she was afraid of the fireworks burning me and never let me take half a step near the stove. Today, when I saw this tin can, my eyes were wet: I grew up eating the sweet potato rice cooked by my mother with this tin can, this tin can hold the sweet potato rice cooked by my mother, but it can't hold my mother's deep love for me! It was the early sixties, and our agriculture suffered from natural disasters for three consecutive years, and food was scarce. I vaguely remember my father and mother always talking at home about cherishing grain and saving food. Although Dad was the secretary of the party branch of the brigade (equivalent to the current village), he never returned an extra grain of rice to the house. The whole family of five in order to eat enough, brother, sister let me, dad, mom love me. What if there is not enough food to eat? Mom mixed sweet potatoes in the rice instead of rice. Every time you cook rice, you always cut the sweet potato into small cubes, wait for the rice to boil, uncover the lid, then put the diced sweet potatoes in, and then cover the lid. After a while, my mother made the rice and dishes ready, and when I sipped the rice, I opened the lid of the pot and there was a strong sweet potato smell. Because I was young and my health was not good, I smelled the sweet potato smell, I wanted to throw up, and I sipped the rice cooked with sweet potatoes, and I had a stomachache. I, an ignorant little fart, couldn't take a sip of sweet potato rice, sitting on a small bench and crying. Mom saw me crying, couldn't sip sweet potato rice, she was distressed. What to do? My mother only selected rice from her rice bowl, one by one with chopsticks, and put it in my rice bowl. Then, with chopsticks, I picked out the diced sweet potatoes from my rice bowl, little by little, and put them in her rice bowl. After some time, my mother saw that I still couldn't smell sweet potatoes, so she said to me: "Tingting, my mother will cook you rice without diced sweet potatoes from tomorrow." "Mom counts and never lies. The next day, when cooking rice, my mother opened a little rice in the jar and put it on the side of the jar without adding diced sweet potatoes, so that in the same jar, two kinds of rice were cooked. I sipped the white rice, my father, mom and brother, and my sister sipped sweet potato rice. During that difficult time, they often starved for me. In those years, she did not have more than one grain of rice and no more vegetables. Coupled with the heavy farm work, so that the overwork became a disease, her dizziness fell. Today I carried the tin can, gently, gently wiped the dust off it, carefully opened the lid, and seemed to smell a faint, faint sweet potato smell. Somehow, I didn't feel like throwing up at all. Although this tin can is small, it is filled with mother's great maternal love, full of mother's diligence and kindness. Now I am a grandmother, because of the epidemic, traffic barriers, in the days when I accompanied my mother in my hometown for more than seven months, she always regarded me as a little Tingting. Every day I was asked to sit next to her, take me in my arms, and use her calloused hands to stroke my head and make me laugh happily. Every morning she would boil an egg, peel it and feed it to my mouth, smiling and squinting as I finished eating. Mom, more than fifty years have passed, and I will never forget the sweet potato rice you made! I want to sing a song for you: "Only mothers are good in the world"!