At this time, you are ready to enjoy a fairy tale with great interest. I want to tell you at an inappropriate time that grandma mouse is a kind of food. Appetite will make your imagination fly, and your thoughts will give you wings of imagination. In the fragrant cake shop, vivid animal models are listed in the transparent window, among which there must be many cartoon protagonists that children are familiar with and love, such as Tom Cat and Jack Mouse. Some people have seen the sugar blower in the old hutong of Beijing. In a blink of an eye, lifelike figures, animals and plants, the Chinese Zodiac, Liangshan 108 will be vividly presented to people. In the wonderful chocolate kingdom, we can see incredible works. Those chocolate magicians can move a cartoon to your eyes with smooth and sticky chocolate.
However, I'm sorry to tell you that grandma mouse is just a unique meal in our hometown. It is neither gorgeous nor exquisite, even a little rough, so it can't go to restaurants or snack bars.
Its raw material is sweet potato powder. Speaking of sweetpotato, everyone is familiar with it, formerly known as sweet potato, English name: sweetpotato, also known as sweet potato. There are many names, but the essence is the same. Its shape is round and spindle-shaped, long and short, and its colors are red, white, yellow and purple. As soon as Baidu searched, the status of sweet potato rose, but in that era of food shortage, sweet potato was only people's life-saving food. Sweet potato soup, boiled sweet potato, baked sweet potato, whole sweet potato feast. In order to spend the long winter, people still find a dry and leeward place on the hillside, dig caves, store sweet potatoes and cover them with grass. However, this method is not very safe. After a while, the sweet potato in the wind and rain has rotted like a plague. Therefore, people came up with another storage method, that is, grinding sweet potatoes into powder, which greatly improved the storage quality. We won't go hungry all winter.
The process of making sweet potato powder is not simple. First, choose a big and smooth sweet potato, wash it, peel it, and plane it into strips with equal thickness with big iron wire. Take bamboo mats and put them in a ventilated place to dry. When the weather is fine, it will be almost dry in two days. The bad weather is not only bad in quality, but also annoying. This process usually needs someone to take care of it, such as turning them over every once in a while to dry them evenly. When I was a child, I was often arranged to accept this task. However, the blue sky and white clouds are long, the wind and grass are around, and my thoughts are wandering. You can think about your growing up, your ideals, happiness, troubles, the desire for mountain springs, and the desire for raw sweet potato shreds. Isn't it beautiful?
After the shredded sweet potatoes are dried, they must be sent to the flour mill. It used to be a mill, and then it was a machine. It was all ground into powder. Beautiful scenery, sweet potatoes grow well, and sweet potato powder is delicate and white. At that time, people couldn't afford flour, so they used flour instead. After the sweet potato is ground into powder, it can be made into various delicious foods. It is nothing new to make snacks with sweet potato flour now. People have plenty of leisure and time to study how to make this little jasper go to the palace. However, people at that time were well-fed, teamwork, earning points, racing against time, and paying attention to speed and convenience. Go home, mix sweet potato powder with water, knead it into balls, knead it into cakes, steam it in a drawer, and it will be out in a few minutes. Coupled with the natural sweetness of sweet potato, it can be eaten directly as a meal and a dish, which is time-saving and convenient, so it has won the favor of our locals. Among the tricks made, the simplest one belongs to "grandma mouse" Boil the water, knead the sweet potato powder directly into strips, divide them into sections, and drop them into boiling water. After a while, they will float to the surface and be ready to eat. Sweet potato powder is white when it is dry, and it will turn yellow slightly when mixed with water. When it is mature, it is dark green, close to black. At first glance, it really looks like a little mouse. At first, it was "mouse pinching", and the inarticulate child heard "grandma mouse". Later everyone called it that. The legendary "grandma mouse" is said to be the origin.
Speaking of this "grandma mouse", I also had a lot to do with it when I was a child. It's no longer the time to take off your pants when you are born, but it's not as comfortable as it is now. At that time, snacks were a luxury on holidays. After school, I peeled a sweet potato and ate it raw. In winter, sweet potatoes are especially sweet and crisp, and bite like apples. In addition to finishing homework, there is another task, which is to make a fire and cook. The stoves used by farmers at that time were specially built by masons. A stove made by a high-level master saves firewood and is prosperous. Blower is made of bellows, which contains a pile of chicken feathers. Pull and pull, it takes a lot of effort. My father usually likes to use his head. He assembled a blower made up of several gears by himself, but it was shaken by hand instead of electricity, which was much more labor-saving than the heavy bellows pulled by hand. My first task when I come back every night is to cook. Boil water to wash rice, take sweet potato powder and water, knead it into a ball, then knead it into "grandma mouse" and put it on the drawer to cook with rice. When I have plenty of time, I will have a whim. I will take sweet potato powder balls and knead them into various shapes, including dolls, mice, lions and pandas, and use sweet potato powder as plasticine. I will be intoxicated with this creation and have no idea about the passage of time. Since then, cooking has been given more interesting meaning, and I often enjoy it. The elaborate model is just a prelude. When they are steamed, they are called mature "works of art". Like an artist who has just finished a group of works of art, I will carefully spread them on the steamer with sweet potato cakes and "grandma mouse" and cook them with rice. My heart is beating fast, the fire in the stove is burning brightly, and the flame is licking the bottom of the pot happily with an expectation. This is the hope that my life gives me. I waited, listening to the rice in the pot start banging, as if it were the horn before Napoleon's victory. It is deep, deep and cheerful, and seems to be desperately suppressing a joy that is about to exult. I keep adding firewood to the stove to make the fire burn more brightly, so that I can get closer to success and get closer. ...
The singing in the pot gradually subsided and finally stopped. Instead, it was more and more thick smoke, with strong rice fragrance, which stimulated the sense of hunger. And I, like a war horse, smell the breath of victory, excited and excited. The moment when the lid is lifted is a bit like the moment when a ceramic artist opens a kiln. They are excited, expecting and uneasy. In the haze, my eyes tried to cross and see the result I expected. My "artwork" is half-baked, and I am embarrassed to stand or lie down. It was not good at first! For this, I was severely criticized by my mother. In this way, the bud of art was cut off, and the road to the art palace was full of thorns. In the end, I failed to hold a sword like a brave prince, cut through thorns to awaken the sleeping princess and awaken the sleeping artistic feelings in my heart.
Many people describe time like this, saying that time is like running water, you can never hold it. Then, will its purified soil and its moistened soul germinate and grow seedlings in the beautiful spring?
Yes, I told myself in the dead of night. Memory is the seed of Saussurea involucrata. After sleeping for many years, it will one day reveal its fragrance in the sun.
The era of "grandma mouse" has passed for a long time. In the same city group, the group friends posted a picture of their own "grandma mouse". Now it's past the age of using it to satisfy hunger, and eating it is only to satisfy the desire, try it early and miss the past. Even if it is so simple, without PS, it is easy to touch the dusty heartstrings. The tool for planing silk has decayed, and the bamboo mat for drying has disappeared. However, that memory seems to have grown in my heart and flourished in a corner.
What I miss is not grandma mouse, but a period of history, a period of time, the setbacks I experienced and my cherished dreams. ...