Neijiang Longchang Bayberry
Last year's rice dumplings still left their lips and teeth, and the calendar turned to May 5th, and it was time for my mother to be busy again.
For decades, my mother always regarded the Duanyang Festival as a "big event", no matter in the era of material scarcity or the current situation of abundant materials, she could always manage the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival.
On the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival, she will start brewing "gray wrapped eggs". Mother walked around the market, choosing the duck eggs of honest farmers, she first let the duck eggs slip in the rice soup, hung a layer of rice milk all over the body, and put them into the mashed grass ashes.
After years of not being a farmer, God knows where she found the grass ashes? The duck egg wrapped in grass ash instantly became a "black baby", and the mother grabbed the duck egg, dipped the large one in the oil dish with some oil, and then dipped a little salt and star anise spices into another dish, just like giving the ash-wrapped egg a small hat and gently placing it in the altar for sealing. Sealed January duck eggs can be eaten, the amount of salt mother to pinch appropriately, her salted duck eggs are not salty nor light, egg yolk crimson also "turned sand", this sand red egg yolk is my favorite.
When the Dragon Boat Festival came, my mother soaked the glutinous rice early in the morning, washed the rice dumplings clean, and then wrapped the rice dumplings. She rolled the rice dumpling leaves into a triangular nest, filled them with glutinous rice, regardless of the size of the leaves, they were all packed in quantity, and the thin rice dumpling leaves instantly bulged and sacs, and the mother cross-bound with cotton thread, and the rice dumplings were made. I don't know what tricks my mother has, but the rice dumplings she wraps are tight, resistant to cooking, and not sticky leaves. I tried to do it, and the grain of rice always wanted to "make independence", so I gave up with peace of mind and let my mother do it.
When cooking rice dumplings, the mother comes with a small bag of grass ash, when the rice dumplings in the pot are boiling, the mother turns off the small fire, slowly boils, boils and boils, and the rice dumplings float all over the house, and the incense makes us full of fresh food. When the rice dumplings rolled into the plate, the white and yellowish fragrant dumplings were shy of the belly, and they were so cute that they were simply a work of art, and I was reluctant to clip it.
The mother was very generous, grasping the rice dumplings with her left hand, a white line in the middle of her teeth, and wrapping her right hand around the rice dumplings, following the trend, and a piece of white and yellow rice dumplings slipped down, and one piece after another overlapped into a hill. The grains of rice are completely fused together, and the borders are almost transparent.
Where we can still hold back, roll into the water sugar dish, and the dripping sugar dumplings are sent to the mouth. The water sugar is made by the mother long ago, thick and lubricated, and the rice dumplings dipped in sugar can enter the mouth, sticky and sweet, moist and silky, emitting a fragrance from the bones, which makes people addicted. Sometimes, we can't wait for the rice dumplings to be cold, we can eat them, my mother said "hot rice dumplings", it is better to eat when it is cold, my mother is right, the cold rice dumplings are more chewy, and it is not easy to stew. Seeing that we were eating happily, my mother made a lot of pots and pans, so that we could continue to enjoy after the Dragon Boat Festival.
There are more rice dumplings on the market, what bacon dumplings, spiced dumplings, peanut dumplings, let their flowers and branches show off, the five flavors are complete, but there is never a kind of ordinary "family dumplings" that can catch up with the mother without any additives, and no one can. In particular, the long aftertaste is fragrant and cannot be found in other rice dumplings.
On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, smelling calamus Chen Ai, eating duck egg dumplings, and my mother had the next program - making Duanyang sachets. Putting on her reading glasses, she began to piece it together. She pulled a bunch of strips of cloth out of her sewing kit, placed them on the couch, stroked, cut, stranded, and then began to thread the needles. The reading glasses slipped down to the wings of her nose, and she occasionally held it up, but her eyes kept staring at the work in her hand, because she was too focused, and the "rich bag" on the back of her neck was protruding, which was the "memorial" left to her by the young shoulder picking and back grinding. The molded Duanyang bag also has to be filled with "Duanyang incense powder", the mother's fingers are thick, she carefully uses three fingers to gently twist a pinch, pour into the sachet, and then make up a small handful, to the tip of the nose to smell, take a deep breath, a intoxicated look.
Don't underestimate these useless rag strips, but the mother can make them into all kinds of "chicken hearts", "little monkeys", "purses", heart-shaped, square, half-colored, blended color, one by one in her mother's hands. Especially the "little monkey", the round head, the four limbs hugging, and the naughty tail, really love it. When I was young, my mother was mostly busy in the farmland, no matter how busy, she had to put down the farm work on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, and the string of Duanyang sachets hung on our chests, attracting the onlookers of their friends, who rubbed the Duanyang buns with their hands, leaned close to their noses and breathed greedily, "So fragrant! "I wish this sachet hung on their own chest." Of course, this yang sachet has also become a careful treasure in childhood, when washing, it is undone from the button to avoid wetting; hang it on the bedside when sleeping, and before going to bed, you must smell the medicinal fragrance, and then sleep with the fragrance. That duanyang sachet was thus accompanied by the childhood and youth of our three sisters and brothers, until now, my mother said that it was a mascot to avoid evil, a tradition left to us by our ancestors.
Dragon Boat Festival is the mother's Dragon Boat Festival, she concocted a unique taste for this day, because of her persistence, we dare not slack off the Dragon Boat Festival, but have expectations, have a yearning, so the Dragon Boat Festival has become the eternal Dragon Boat Festival in our hearts.