In today's supermarkets, it is common to see canned fried rice on shelves, which are golden and transparent, packaged in delicate bottles or bags... They have been washed, dried, cooked, experienced intense heat and baptism, and rice has been transformed into another delicacy: they are fried rice...
Open the door to memory... Let's look at the long river of memory, the present life and the afterlife of fried rice, let's unpack the package, and see the true color of fried rice... I still remember when I was a child, there was no refrigerator, grain was precious, rice was purchased in limited quantities with a grain and oil supply certificate, and when cooking at that time, it was not a rice cooker, but a round wooden barrel, adding water to the pot, boiling, pouring the boiled rice into the pot, when it was cooked to six or seven ripe, it was fished out, put in a bamboo sieve, filtered out the water, and then poured into the barrel and steamed over high heat...
If on the same day, there are relatives who do not go home to eat, the rice will come out more, the mother will put the leftovers in the wooden barrel, put it in a bowl, catch the sunny day the next day, put the rice in a sieve early in the morning, take it to the small river in front of the house, rinse it with flowing stream water, rinse the clean rice, and put it together with the sieve in the low roof ventilation place to dry...
thereupon...... Another interesting thing, soon after the sieve was put up, only to hear the roof sparrows cheerfully, chattering friends calling for friends, and then, my mother and I would take an enamel washbasin and knock, a loud sound, scare the sparrows away, they stood on the high side of the roof, watching us warily, once we left, they thought it was safe, and in a few minutes, they flew back again... So, the rice dried on the roof, in fact, is eaten by at least one-third of the birds...
The mother carefully collects the dried rice in a clean glass bottle, and when the bottle accumulates a certain amount, the mother will set up an iron pot and burn firewood... As the iron pot heated up, the slight heat began to bubble up, and the mother poured all the dried rice in the bottle into the pot together, and fried frequently on a low heat...
With the continuous stir-frying, the unique aroma of rice began to fill the kitchen, and I often couldn't wait for my mother to fry the fried rice well, so I impatiently put my hand into the pot and grabbed a handful and ran away... Every time at this time, my mother would repeat a sentence: Be careful of the heat... I giggled and went to share it with the other kids...
When the fried rice in the pot began to show a golden color, the mother poured the salt water that had been prepared into the pot, only to hear the sound of nourishment, and then the mist rose in the pot, the mother then accelerated the speed of stir-frying, took out the clean bowl, put the fried rice into the bowl, and when they cooled, then put it back into the glass bottle, when eating, grab a small handful, put it in the mouth, a crisp, fragrant, and crispy taste, spread in the mouth... In times of material deprivation, this was the most delicious snack we had in our childhood... At that time, childhood, there were no colors, no toys, no children's books, but the sky was so blue, the water was so clear, and the mother did not have a single white hair...