Appreciation of food from my hometown

I read "Letter from Banqiao Family": "At dusk when the weather is cold and freezing, poor relatives and friends come to the door. First, I make a large bowl of fried rice and give it to my hand, accompanied by a small dish of pickled ginger, which is the most warm and warm meal. "Poverty's tools", I feel very kind. Zheng Banqiao is from Xinghua, my hometown is Gaoyou, and the customs are similar. This kind of emotion is not easy for people from other places to understand.

Fried rice is available everywhere. But many places make fried rice candy. This is very cheap food. The child bought it and chewed it. Sichuan has "fried rice with sugar and boiled water", which is sold at stations and piers, and is eaten by soaking it in water. But Sichuan’s fried rice candy seems to be made in professional workshops, unlike ours. We also have fried rice candy there, cut into rectangular pieces just like elsewhere. There are also those rolled into balls, called "happy balls". That was also made in the workshop. But the so-called fried rice is not sticky with sugar and is "bulk"; and it is not made in a workshop, but fried at home.

They say they cook it at home, but in fact they hire someone to do it. Stir-fried rice also requires some skills, and not everyone can do it. In winter, probably after the winter solstice, some people carry a large sieve on their backs and hold a long-handled shovel, walking through the streets and alleys. This is who cooks fried rice. Sometimes he brings an assistant, probably a half-grown child, to help him light the fire. Please come to your home, take charge of a meal, pay a few bucks, and cook for a day. Or two buckets, or half a stone; as our family has a large population, we have to fry a stone of glutinous rice at a time. When it comes to stir-fried rice, you need to stir-fry all the rice you need for a year, not piecemeal. After this season, you can’t find anyone making fried rice. As soon as the fried rice is fried, it makes people feel that the Chinese New Year is almost here.

The jar for holding fried rice is fixed. This jar is called "fried rice jar" and is not used for any other purpose. The thing used to scoop fried rice is also fixed. Most people use a cigarette can. My grandmother used a "grapefruit shell". Pomelo - grapefruit is rare in our area - cut a hole in the top, take out the flesh inside, stuff it with rice bran, and let it dry to become a hard-shelled bowl-like thing. She has used this grapefruit shell all her life.

My father has a very strange friend named Zhang Zhongtao. He is very knowledgeable and once taught me to read "The Chronicles of Xiang Yu". He had little land and no business. He spent all day at home studying the Book of Changes and doing fortune-telling. He used yarrow for fortune-telling. He was the only one in the city who used yarrow to tell fortunes. It is said that he is very good at predicting some hexagrams. One family lost a gold ring and suspected that the maid had stolen it. The maid was wronged and came to ask Mr. Zhang for a fortune telling. Mr. Zhang forgot about it and said that the ring was not lost. He found it on the lid of your fried rice jar and found that it was true. I didn't believe it when I was little. How could fortune-telling be so accurate? How could it be calculated on the lid of the fried rice jar? But his hexagram shows one thing, that is, almost every household in our area has a fried rice jar.

Fried rice is really not that delicious. Home preparation is just a matter of convenience. Soak it in boiling water and eat it immediately. When there's nothing tasty to eat, brewing a bowl can be used as a substitute for morning and evening tea. When the usual guests come, they can make a bowl of it as a snack. Zheng Banqiao said, "When poor relatives and friends come to the door, they first make a big bowl of fried rice and give it to their hands."