(Continued)

Another big thing is fried fritters, which are called "fried horse hot" by people in my hometown. It's also a big thing to take at least a day to do alone. Like steamed buns, they need to be made the night before, and they often require a strong man to make them. I only remember that in the kitchen with a light bulb, my mother seriously scooped the noodles from the dough spoon one by one, and then poured them into the large basin, still reading the numbers in her mouth. Then he picked up a small rod scale, carefully weighed the alum, and turned on the light to confirm the amount of money in the alum. Li Huatong knows this common sense, the proper ratio of flour and alum is the premise of frying fritters. When the match is ready, it's time for the man to go into battle. Roll up his sleeves high, gesture twice to the basin, and give an order to "pour water", and the noodles begin. During this period, women are needed to cooperate, test and even direct by their side. The noodles are reconciled, covered with a cloth and put on the hot kang to wake up, and the matter of making noodles is over. Generally speaking, fried fritters should be fried on a special stove. Ready to stop, the next day, everything was in order, someone lit a fire, someone pinched a child, and someone put down a fritters. Children rush to make fires, but they are often quickly driven away and replaced by experienced people. Because the heat of fried fritters is very important, and burning is also a technical job, if you don't master it well, it will be pinched or scorched, which will affect the taste of fried dough sticks. Of course, children will never be driven away easily, and often gather around the frying pan, waiting for the first pot of fritters to come out of the pan. The mother was so anxious by the children's quarrel that she would yell loudly: "If you go up, your saliva will fall into the oil pot." The children swallowed and moved a little more to the side. Finally waited for the first pot of fritters to come out of the pot, yellow and cancan, oily, and charred, it was really beautiful and delicious. One person got one first, and he was busy sending it to his mouth in a hurry, and he jumped up again with a hot fire. is often like Zhu Bajie eating ginseng fruit, and he doesn't know the taste, so he has to wait for the next pot to come out.

Seeing that it is already the twenty-sixth and seventh day of the lunar month, it is the day of my mother's cooking meat. It was a child's favorite day. Although the countryside was already a lot richer at that time, I could eat enough and wear warm clothes. However, there are a number of days to eat meat, especially if you want to eat enough, you have to wait until the day of cooking meat for the New Year. At that time, almost every family raised pigs, and all year round, they either sold them for money, and then went to the pig-killing people to buy meat. Or let it go, kill their own pigs, give some to the neighbors, and the rest of the pig heads, pig bones, pig offal, etc., will be eaten by the family, which is the envy of the rich families in the village can be so luxurious. Ordinary people often have to calculate the money in their hands, but after all, it is the New Year, so you can squander it appropriately and buy as much meat as possible to come back to satisfy the children who have been hungry for a long time. The women carefully washed the meat they bought, cut it into pieces of meat, added enough water to the big iron pot, and put the large pieces of meat into it. When the pot boiled, I put in star anise, peppercorns, etc., and the yard was filled with a strong smell of meat in an instant. The children's noses were the sharpest, and within a quarter of an hour, they all ran home around the stove and waited for the meat to be eaten. The mother will be very careful to pick pieces of meat of similar size and distribute them to the children. A piece of lean meat is about the size of a child's palm, with a little white fat, soft, fragrant, don't chew hard with your teeth, just bite lightly, and the smell of meat will permeate the mouth, nasal cavity and even the organs of the whole body. That meat, it's really delicious.

On the day of cooking meat, my mother would also fry some bits and pieces. For example, dried tofu, sweet potato chips, and fried meat for relatives. At that time, meat was expensive, and the broth from which the meat had been boiled was used to make stews. Scoop out the white radish and carrot from the ground in the backyard, wash it, cut it into strips, drain it separately, pour it into the broth, stir well, put it in a large porcelain basin, and let it cool and cover it for later use. This is the most basic base for casserole stew, the most important hot dish for a family during the Chinese New Year, and the main dish that relatives must have when they come. Under normal circumstances, when the guests who are visiting relatives arrive, the hostess will take some stewed vegetables with soup from the porcelain basin, add cabbage, white tofu cubes, dried tofu, vermicelli and a few pieces of cooked meat, put salt, shredded ginger, seasonings, soy sauce, chopped peanuts and chopped green onions, cover them with a lid, and put them on the stove and simmer. Add water to the cauldron and prepare to boil dumplings, and you can mix a few plates of delicious cold dishes with a few ingredients at hand in the kitchen. At most, two quarters of an hour, a main dish casserole stew, four cold dishes, a plate of black fungus mixed with coriander, a plate of lotus vegetable slices, a plate of pig ears, a plate of shredded green onion and dried tofu, a few bowls of sour soup dumplings, a table full of people. The host warmly invited the guests to sit down, and everyone had a happy meal. looks like the same meal, but Li Huatong knows that it is inevitable to watch people cook. The daughter and son-in-law came with their grandson, and the meat in the casserole always had a few extra slices, and almost all of them were lean. After the meal, there must be dessert, and my grandmother will take out the fried sweet potato chips that are secretly hidden and eaten by her most beloved children.

The day before Chinese New Year's Eve is the day of making dumplings. Wake up early and noodles, here the knife rises and falls quickly chopping the filling, the meat has white radish meat, leek meat, thin white radish tofu, leek tofu, leek eggs, etc. After adjusting the filling and preparing it, the kitchen begins to roll out the dumpling skin, which is the kind that is rolled into large sheets of dough and then folded and cut into cubes, which is especially suitable for large-scale dumpling making. The Peel stuffing was ready, and it was brought out in one go, and the women all went into battle to make dumplings around the dinner table. Everyone talked and laughed with good interest, and commented on the fastest bag and the best bag. After a while, four or five grates were arranged in a neat row like soldiers' dumplings in the hall. Mother knows that Li Huatong likes to eat leek egg dumplings the most, and often makes more. She also knew that when Li Huatong ate dumplings, he especially liked to poke the dumplings with chopsticks and eat them. Indeed, there were few opportunities to eat dumplings at that time, and Li Huatong felt that after the dumplings were poked, there were soups, vegetables and eggs in the bowl, and the taste was particularly good.

Chinese New Year's Eve has arrived, and this day is slightly less than the previous mission. The younger brother is responsible for pasting the Spring Festival couplets, and Li Huatong wants to paste the window flowers. The window grilles have to be pasted every year, and the patterns and sizes of the window grilles bought every year are different, and Li Huatong has to determine the overall planning according to the number of lattices of each window. Remove the window, wipe it clean with a rag, and let it dry. Then post them one by one according to the pre-plan, and strive to make the drawing in the center, not to be reversed. Looking left and right, although Li Huatong feels that this is a time-consuming and laborious job, he has always done it very seriously.

When it was finally time to burn the pine branches, the father drove the children farther away, solemnly lit the fire, a fire burst out, and there was a crackling sound in the yard, and the firelight was reflected on the windows, and the window flowers of different colors looked particularly beautiful.

Li Huatong looked at the blazing fire and thought to himself, this long year has finally passed. I don't know what Xu Ruobin is busy with at this time, and whether he can enjoy such a happy time like her.

After the New Year, Li Huatong returned to Luochuan with full blood.