Show my family’s happy photos丨Mooncakes are fragrant Mid-Autumn Festival
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In September, the weather turns cool as if it’s overnight. Yesterday, the red sun was still hot and cicadas kept ringing, and today there was a hint of coolness. I looked up at the window, and the moonlight flowed into the barracks like water. Then I realized that this was the tenth Mid-Autumn Festival I had spent in the army.
"The dew is white from tonight". I seem to have traveled through time and space, and resonated with the great poet , Du Fu, a thousand years ago. What hit my heart is the sentence "The moon is bright in my hometown." I don’t know the appearance of the moon in my hometown at this moment. After many years of joining the army, many memories of my hometown have begun to gradually blur. I just clearly realized that it is Mid-Autumn Festival again, and it is the season when the mooncakes are fragrant.
In the deep memory, one of my favorite scenes when I was a child was watching the process of making mooncakes - adults carried self-squeezed peanut oil, flour and white sugar and brown sugar, took the eggs laid by their own hens, and bought a few kilograms of dried fruit raisins and Peanuts and melon seeds, I went to someone in the village who specializes in making mooncakes, crushed the dried fruits on the machine, mixed them with other ingredients to make a filling, put a spoonful of fillings, and then wrapped them in dough. That's it. The mooncakes are formed under the crushing of a pair of skilled hands and molds. Finally, a layer of egg yolk liquid is brushed and put into the oven. It can be seen through the observation hole of the oven, and the skin becomes brown little by little. The whole yard was filled with busy laughter and a sweet and mellow smell lingered over the entire village. This is called "making mooncakes" in our hometown.
The freshly baked mooncakes are the best, with crispy skin, but they won't fall out of scraps everywhere. After taking a bite, the dried fruit and melon seeds poked their heads out, and the lips and teeth were filled with a sweet but not greasy sugar smell, and even breathing was filled with the aroma of mooncakes.
At that time, mooncakes were not just a food in the countryside. They were also used to worship all kinds of gods on the Mid-Autumn Festival. Every household would find a good place in the yard, light three incense sticks, and place the best mooncakes in the yard. On the tribute platform, pray for blessings and wishes.
It is worth mentioning that mooncakes are also like a special dry food in the eighth month of the lunar calendar. Autumn harvest is considered a major event in the busy farming year in the eyes of the villagers in my hometown. In that era when harvester was not popular, all men, women, young and old in the village would participate in the "national movement" of corn-breaking. "Autumn Tiger" also specially selected the "Autumn Tiger" to jump out in the past few days. Everyone gets an intermission break under the woods on the edge of the field every once in a while. At this time, they usually take out mooncakes and apples, and eat and discuss: Whose corn harvest is produced by the family. Yes, I will change my varieties next year...
As people's living standards improve, the quality of mooncakes is getting better and better, and there are more and more varieties. From cities to villages, from shopping malls to stalls, there are a wide variety of mooncakes, including Beijing-style, Cantonese, Soviet-style, Yunnan-style, Hong Kong-style; bean paste, jujube-filled, and osmanthus-style. , 5-nut , sesame ... only what you can't imagine, nothing you can't find. However, mooncakes from other places do not have the taste of their hometown. In contrast, I still have a special liking for traditional mooncakes in my hometown.
It seems to form a conditioned reflex. When it comes to autumn, I will remember when I was cooking mooncakes before, following my mother's butt, waiting to eat the first mooncake that had just been released. This conditioned reflex never weakened when I grew up and left home until I joined the army. As early autumn comes, the fragrance of mooncakes in my memory always teases my heart and makes the wanderer return home like an arrow.
In the afternoon, while I was running in the outer ring of the camp, a familiar fragrance rushed into my nose and spread to my chest and lungs, and a feeling of "close to the hometown feeling" also filled my heart. Looking for the fragrance, I found that the kitchen team was making moon cakes. I picked up one and put it in my mouth. The eyes were filled with warmth, like breaking corn and lying in the woods on the edge of the field while resting, the sunlight accidentally passed through me. The leaves are sprinkled on the body...
compilation: Qin Li
Author: Li Honggang
