Prose - sugar burns

When I was a child, my family lived in a tight schedule, all year round, most of which were two meals a day of pickles, polenta and nests. If you want to relieve your hunger and eat something good, I look forward to the holiday. In my impression, there are two major festivals: Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival.

Needless to say, after the twenty-third day of the Lunar New Year, my mother will begin to prepare ingredients for the New Year. In addition to steaming enough white-faced buns of various shapes, my mother's important task was to go to the big butcher shop and the lamb shop to buy meat. At that time, the meat was divided into one, two and three grades, and the first-class meat was the fattest and the most expensive. My mother always picked the fattest one in the second class to buy. On the way home, my mother walked very energetically: throughout the year, my mother felt that she had the most pride at this time, and she could make the best dish, so that the family could eat a full meal and eat well, and it had been a year's wish. Chinese New Year's Eve noon, according to the custom to eat eight dishes, although the meat is less vegetarian, but also hearty, eat that is called a pleasure. The key is the dumplings of the first year, which have a lot of exquisiteness and have been followed until my generation still insists on not changing. It is to wrap two dumplings with one cent coin, who can eat money, this year the heart will come true, eat two, and the blessing will be doubled. In order to eat money, several of our brothers held up their stomachs round, and in the middle they all pretended to eat money, which made others envious, a dumpling, and a year's celebration.

In fact, I prefer to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival compared to the New Year.

It has to do with my love of sugar. When I was eight or nine years old, white sugar asked for sugar tickets, and the little sugar at home was used to brew water for my two younger brothers. At first, sugar cans were placed on the table. I love sugar and often steal it. Seeing that there was less sugar in the sugar jar, my parents asked me, I was drunk and did not recognize half a pot of wine money, and my parents had no choice but to hide the sugar jar. One day, when my parents were not at home, I rummaged through the boxes and cabinets to find the sugar cans, and I was addicted to it one by one... At this moment, I heard the voice of my parents outside the window, and I hurriedly hid the sugar canister, wiped my mouth, and pretended to be fine. As soon as my parents came in, they looked at me with a stupid smile, and my father asked me: Have you eaten candy? No! I still don't have a hard mouth as usual. My father laughed and said nothing, walked up to me, squeezed a few grains of white sugar from my mouth, and said: Don't admit it?

It was the first time in my life that I felt the embarrassment of lying.

This brings me to the story of my love for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

My hometown is in Shandong, and there is a custom in my hometown in Shandong, that is, in addition to eating mooncakes on August 15, every family must burn sugar. Eating mooncakes is a very luxurious thing, generally one person, parents are reluctant to eat, left to two younger brothers, my one entered the stomach early. But sugar fire can be made vigorously until it is full.

Every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the mother's sugar fire is very exquisite and generous. Mother said that three hundred and sixty-five days a year, just today the moon is round, today is open to eat, the stomach is round to eat before it is blessed.

No matter how poor the days are, the materials used by my mother to burn sugar are quite exquisite. In addition to using Bayi flour and noodles, the filling must be made of brown sugar or Cuban sugar, and the sugar cubes should be dissolved, filled with lard residue, and then stirred with chopsticks to form a viscous shape and wrapped into a palm-sized cake. When burning, the pan should be evenly oiled, the heat size is appropriate, the fire is put into the pot to turn three times, the process of burning should be covered, when the fire is burned out of the pot, both sides have a uniform paste, and then put into the basin for half an hour after the pot is released. Mother said. The lard residue is cold and slow, the child's mouth is hungry, and it is easy to burn the mouth when it bites into the sugar filling.

Every year, the Mid-Autumn Festival's sugar fire is the most satisfying meal for me.

The neighbor has a little hair named Gavazi, who is two years older than me. One year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, I had a fire at my house, and as a result, I couldn't forget the taste for a year, and the next Mid-Autumn Festival, he was stunned to exchange a month cake for a sugar fire for me.

Gavazi has a specialty, and the slingshot is accurate. My family lives at the foot of the Red Mountain, where the trees are lush and there are all kinds of birds in the woods. Gavazi often asked me to hunt birds, and as long as a few were shot, we would go to a cave at the foot of the mountain and roast and eat. Once, he even beat down a chicken, and we burned it to eat, and he suddenly said: What is not as delicious as your mother's sugar fire!

To this day, I can't forget the taste of my mother's sugar burning. Until I graduated from high school, the Mid-Autumn Festival became the most anticipated holiday in my mind.

Nowadays, every Mid-Autumn Festival, there are all kinds of beautifully packaged mooncakes in the home, but the taste is not as good as the sugar fire burned by the mother.

I haven't eaten my mother's sugar burn for decades. Because, mother is old!

March 25, 2021