Chapter 22 Chapter 22 My Beloved Sweet Potato

People in Zhangmuxi keep sweet potato seeds, which are tied together with vines and hung on the roof beams of the kitchen. They are all fresh sweet potatoes with good quality and color, spindle-shaped, stained with new soil, and with tails. Dragging the long roots, it is gradually smoked, stained with smoke and dust, and loses some water, sleeping in the human fireworks in the long winter.In spring, new shoots sprout from the neck of the sweet potato, which are some purple-red shoots with a star green in their tip. Take the sweet potato seeds and plant them in a fertile field, apply grass and wood ash, and moisten them with a few spring rains. , grow clusters of seedlings, the tips of the seedlings are upturned, and the two leaves are folded and forked, like sharp small scissors, cutting like silky spring rain.When the weather cleared after the rain, dug the sweet potato field, cut the two or three feet long sweet potato seedlings to five inches long, placed them obliquely in the pit of the sweet potato field, applied fertilizer, covered the soil, and soon the sweet potato seedlings grew. New shoots are born again, and a long growing season begins.

Sweet potatoes are easy to grow, and they need to be watered and fertilized, and the vines and soil need to be turned once or twice in the middle.Turning vines has two meanings. The vines in the compartment and the compartment grow independently without entanglement; under the petioles of the sweet potato vines, new roots also grow, and small stems form under the new roots, which intercept the photosynthetic nutrients of the vine leaves and send them to the main root. vines to prevent side root growth.Loosening the soil means that when the sweet potatoes grow stems, loosening the soil makes the sweet potatoes grow comfortably.When turning over the vines, I occasionally turn over small sweet potatoes the size of my little finger. I am willing to do this job. The thin sweet potatoes with new skins are washed in the clear water of the river, they are sweet and crunchy.

There are three kinds of sweet potatoes in Zhangmuxi. The long sweet potato has high sugar content and is sweet. There are two kinds of long sweet potatoes, red heart and white heart. The red heart sweet potato is especially sweet.Round sweet potatoes are high in starch, powdery and low in sweetness.The third type of yellow-skinned sweet potato, called Tieguai potato, is small, hard and hard to bite, tasteless, but resistant to drought and poor ridges, so it is planted on the side of the road in the distant mountains, where it is not afraid of tourists and wild boars harassing the sweet potato.Three kinds of sweet potatoes are planted on different lands, and each harvested is eaten.Sweet potatoes have less flowering, just like red sweet potatoes. The leaves of red sweet potatoes are fat, heart-shaped, and the veins are light purple.Its flowering is like morning glory, the flower room is water red, the petals are white, it bears capsules, seeds are propagated, or it can be used as medicine.

The season for digging sweet potatoes, or Sanqiu, is to dig sweet potatoes, cut late valleys and pick corn at the same time. There are few corns in Zhangmuxi, and the main thing is to pick tea seeds.When digging sweet potatoes, the vines are cut first. In my impression, the interplanting plants of sweet potatoes, sorghum, corn and sunflower are also harvested together.The field where sweet potato vines are cut off, some dried and fresh sweet potato leaves are scattered, there are grasses, malan grass, purslane, dogtail grass, wormwood, a kind of grass that bears lanterns and small white cockscombs flower or red celosia.There will be grasshoppers that have lost their homes, jumping around, and big black ants with huge hips.The soil under the sweet potato vines is still damp, and the cut sweet potato vines emit white pulp. This juice is difficult to wash off on hands and will turn black.The soil around the main root of the sweet potato was cracked by the sweet potato, and a huge sweet potato can be seen through the cracks, the yellowish red potato.Use a long and narrow mountain hoe to dig around the perimeter, pry loose the soil, pick up the sweet potato vine to pick up a hanging sweet potato, and some sweet potatoes also grow to the side.Thousands of catties of sweet potatoes were picked home and placed in the corner of the hall first. The sweet potato vines were hung on the beams of the eaves. It is the winter food for pigs.

There is a special sweet potato basket for washing sweet potatoes. It is a basket made of thick strips with a large hexagonal hole. The sweet potatoes are taken to the small river, and even the basket is immersed in the water. Pounding with a wooden pestle, washing the sweet potatoes, will wipe off a lot of skin, red skin and white flesh, and turn into flower sweet potatoes.The sweet potatoes in Zhangmuxi are considered half of the staple food, and they are used to make shredded sweet potato rice. The shredded sweet potato rice is sweet, and I don’t like it.The planing of sweet potato shreds is carried out under the moonlit night. The hall of my house is a hall that can accommodate 50 seats. A small tank for my loach.On the front wall of the upper hall, there is the spirit seat of the Grand Duke, called Baisui Gong. In the lower hall, firewood and some farm tools are placed. The upper hall is a place for work and banquets.The planer is a wooden plank five inches wide and two feet long, with a five-tooth planer in the middle, made of tinplate, and the planer teeth are like a half-sided copper tapered brush holder. Push back and forth on the planer teeth, and the sweet potato shreds will fall from under the planer teeth.Start to plan well. Be careful when planing sweet potatoes finely, as it is easy to hurt your hands.

Plan the shredded sweet potatoes at night and dry them in the morning.In the drying yard at the entrance, the sweet potato shreds are dried on bamboo mats.Bamboo mats are spread out in the morning and rolled up at night, so when drying the shredded sweet potatoes, both ends should be pressed down with pebbles from the river.Autumn in Zhangmuxi is very foggy. When the fog is thick, the fog should be dispersed at noon. The high mountain tops are covered with a vast expanse of whiteness.When planing sweet potato shreds, you must look at the weather, first look at the clouds, and say: In the morning, the red clouds will wear hats (bamboo hats), and at night, the red clouds will burn the brains (brains).That is, if there are red clouds in the sky in the morning, it will rain, and if there are red clouds in the sky in the evening, it will be sunny.In addition, look at the stars, the stars are clear, the moon has no halo, and the sky is sunny.On rainy days, if the shredded sweet potatoes are shaved out, they will be spoiled.Sun-dried shredded sweet potatoes, put them in wooden barrels or vats.Before drying the shredded sweet potatoes, wash the shredded sweet potatoes in a large wooden bucket. The washed water is white slurry water, which settles and scoops out the clean water. The bottom layer is sweet potato powder, that is, starch.Put the sweet potato powder in a round dustpan, dry it and mash it to make sweet potato vermicelli or stir-fried meat with sweet potato vermicelli.My uncle grated sweet potato shreds, and when he met red sweet potato, he grated off the four sides and both ends to form a French fries.

There are two or three iron pots on the stove. In my house, there are two iron pots. The iron pot near the stove mouth is large, and the iron pot near the chimney is small. The big pot is used for cooking and cooking, and the small pot is used for boiling water. When it is lit, it is heated at the same time.When cooking, put the rice and water into the big pot, when the rice blooms, put the dried shredded sweet potato into it, stir well, pick it up with a skimmer, put it into a wooden rice cooker, scoop up the rice soup, add water to the pot, put Put the rice cooker on and start steaming the rice.The skimmer is made of thin bamboo strips, shallowly curved, about two feet in diameter, and has a bamboo handle as a handle. I like to use it to fish shrimps in small ditches.Use a wooden steamer to steam rice, and several dishes can be steamed on the rice, such as tamales, bacon, cured duck, and sometimes eggs.On my birthday, I steamed an egg, and Zhangmuxi read a "spring".Most of the time, I eat rice with shredded sweet potatoes, and white rice on festivals, visitors, birthdays and illnesses.You can use the steamer to steam white rice on one side and shredded sweet potato rice on the other.The rice spoon is made of hardwood and has a handle.

Sweet potato chips are also important. The plane for slicing sweet potato chips has only one flat-shaped mouth. When you dig out sweet potato chips, put them in a pot and cook them in the sun before drying. Cook several loads of sweet potato chips. Boil it straight until it turns into sugar custard, sometimes add some sucrose, and sometimes directly use sweet potato molasses to make rice cakes and sesame cakes.There are three ways to eat sweet potato chips.Eat it directly, it is very tough and chewy, and can be used as dry food to take up the mountain.Stir-fried sweet potato chips are mostly fried, stir-fried with Jiehe sand, dry, crispy and hard, put them in pockets for snacks, go to school, watch a movie, watch movies or play, my pockets are constantly filled with sweet potato chips, because they need to be packed Crispy sweet potato chips (called sweet potato shells in Zhangmuxi), I always feel that the tailor made the pocket too small, hoping to have an infinite pocket.There are relatively few fried sweet potato chips, so they are eaten during the Chinese New Year or as refreshments.The fried sweet potato chips are oily and cannot be carried in the pocket.There is also a method of sweet potato chips, steamed sweet potatoes, smashed, sprinkled with sesame seeds and rolled thin with a rolling stick (people in Zhangmuxi do not roll noodles, roll rice noodles), cut into prismatic slices with a kitchen knife, or cut into slices Matchstick-style short strips, sun-dried, fried or deep-fried, fragrant.

Sweet potatoes can also be raw and cut into pieces, or whole potatoes can be steamed in rice and stewed in a pot.When stewing sweet potatoes, the water should be simmered to dryness, and the sweet potatoes will have no water vapor. The sweet potatoes that stick to the bottom of the pot will have a mushy shell and sugar will come out around them, which is top-grade.For stewed sweet potatoes, choose small ones, long sweet potatoes are better.I like to eat roasted sweet potatoes. I bury the sweet potatoes in the red-hot ashes of the stove, and wait for them to be cooked naturally. After the sweet potatoes are well-baked, the ash is removed. The skin of the sweet potatoes is a layer of burnt shell. The golden sweet potato flesh, the burnt shell is fragrant, and the potato flesh is sweet. Holding it and eating it in the sun will attract the foraging chickens and snoozing dogs, and look enviously.The winter sun is warm, wild bees are buzzing among the pea flowers and tree pea flowers (broad beans), and the golden sweet potatoes are steaming white hot.

Scrape out fresh shredded sweet potatoes and stir-fry, serve with purple-skinned green garlic, or green peppers. If you add some shredded lean meat, it will be sweet, fresh, salty, spicy, and green, and you can even drink rice wine with it.Dried sweet potato shreds can also be boiled into sweet potato shreds paste, which is a bit sweet and greasy, put some green vegetables in it, and drink three bowls after hiking, it is also very refreshing.If you want to explore the fragrance of sweet potatoes, the most memorable thing is boiled pork.Cut the dried sweet potato vines into inch lengths with a guillotine, put them in the pot, add some fresh rice bran, and cook slowly. When you are hungry, the compound taste of dried vines, tuna and rice bran will make you lose your mind. Go into the kitchen and uncover the pot, the steam is boiling, the fragrance is overwhelming, but you can't eat it.Green sweet potato seedlings and leaves are a good dish.I like to eat leaf stems, peeled, folded into inch lengths, stir-fried with shredded green peppers and red peppers, with some garlic and salt.When peeling the stems of sweet potato leaves, there is a game. Peel off half of the leaf stems, fold them every half an inch, and remove one section every other. The fresh leaf stems are connected with the skins one by one, making two The earrings are hung on the ears, made into two bracelets and worn on the wrists, and the rings are ding-dong like chiefs.

In the second grade of elementary school, I took a class.In my memory, Teacher Peng told a story before class. In the past—usually in the past, there was an old man who, before his death, told his five idle sons that there was gold in a piece of wasteland at home.After the old man passed away, the five brothers went to dig gold in the field. They dug the ground three feet, but found nothing. They simply planted sweet potatoes, which grew to the size of a teapot, and they had a great harvest. Teacher Peng concluded: Hard work is gold.When I came home from school, I swore to my grandma that when I grow up, I will grow sweet potatoes bigger than a teapot.