Hometown and Fragrance

//Away from home, for all the tastes related to home, in addition to missing, I still miss. //

The Dragon Boat Festival is approaching, and it's the season of glutinous rice. For me, this is the closest time of year to my hometown.

When it comes to the types of rice dumplings, most people will probably think of bacon rice dumplings, water rice dumplings, wrapped steamed rice dumplings, and red bean rice dumplings. The trendier ones may include plain rice dumplings and five-grain rice dumplings, but most of them are pentagons, and there is only one person per person. The weight of a meal; but I eat rice dumplings by myself, it must be a family event, because the rice we eat is as thick as an adult's forearm - yes, it is Zhongshan's Ludouzi, which belongs to my hometown. rice cakes.

Every year at the end of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, my grandmother would start preparing the materials for wrapping rice cakes: reed leaves, aquatic plants, glutinous rice, mung bean, salted egg yolk, and fatty pork, and then started one of the major projects of the year. The big pot is good, and when the finished product comes out, it is already a day's scene. My grandmother looked at the dozens of big rice dumplings in front of her. Knowing that the Dragon Boat Festival in the whole family was where they were, she would notify us to go back to Zhongshan to pick up the rice dumplings. Year by year, the taste memories of my hometown, and the imagination of the Dragon Boat Festival and rice cakes have also accumulated unconsciously.

Compared with the glutinous rice dumplings in the market, my grandmother's reed bean curd rice is indeed less fancy, but it is better than enough. In an arm-length rice dumpling, there are at least four salted egg yolks, two large pieces of fatty pork, and a A little mung bean is wonderful enough, but when I was young, my brother and I didn’t have much feeling for these authentic Ludou glutinous rice cakes. Anyway, once a year, it’s good to taste it, but when we grow up, we eat too much. Just because of the name, but the truth is just a combination of broken glutinous rice, egg yolk and meat, I know that the original snacks are all top grades. People, always know how to cherish after going through it.

Sometimes I think, if one day my grandmother decides to "wash hands with a golden plate", then the taste of this Taoist tradition will probably disappear. Should I ask my grandmother to teach her the spiritual method when she still has the strength? But when I think of my shameful cooking skills, I'd better give up the idea and continue to eat rice dumplings.

Written in June 2018

I can't ask, I can't keep it, it's beautiful, it's a blessing to meet.