The ritual of eating cake

I was born in a relatively poor era. There were no hand-cranked drinks, only mung bean soup cooked by my mother. There were no supermarkets, only a secret ganzi shop. After class, I didn’t use my mobile phone or Tik Tok, but I played with kanzashi signs and rubber bands. .

When I was a child, what I looked forward to the most was a few kumquat candies from my parents as a gift from my parents, or a few kumquat candies from a kumquat shop or a few egg cakes from a stall. The term "restaurant" or "restaurant" is not in my family's vocabulary. The only time I eat the delicious leftovers my parents bring back from the dining table is only for weddings and funerals.

Even though we were lacking in material resources, when we entered school and started studying, our parents would buy cakes to celebrate every birthday.

There is an unwritten rule in my family: Mom and Dad eat cake on their birthdays; my younger brother eats cake on Christmas birthday; my younger sister eats cake on Youth Day birthday; my second sister was born in May, eat cake. What about my eldest sister and me? ! My dad and I were both born in August, so we celebrated and had cake together.

After we started working and became financially capable, we would also buy cakes and eat cakes on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Sometimes we would also eat cakes to celebrate our parents' wedding anniversaries.

Over the course of a year, we ate seven or eight cakes because of the sense of ritual. If you open the photo album of my family, five or six times out of ten, they are singing happy birthday around the cake, blowing out candles, or cutting and eating the cake.

There is a cake shop near my home. Its cakes are always covered with thick white cream, with pink roses and light green leaves squeezed on top, as well as shiny candied cherries and black dates or a few slices of canned peaches. Or pear, the cake body is mostly sandwiched with orange or strawberry jam, and then "Happy Birthday" is written in chocolate sauce.

We buy cakes there every time and never get tired of eating them, they are so delicious.

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On my 20th birthday, my mother said, invite my classmates to our house for cake!

The classmates in our class are all very close to each other. My family is not big and I cannot accommodate so many classmates at once. Mom said domineeringly, "It doesn't matter. Then divide it into two levels, buy two cakes, and invite all the classmates!"

Mom said, 7 people in our family can eat 10-inch cakes. Since there are so many classmates, let’s order two 20-inch cakes!

The cake shop owner said that his oven can make 20-inch cakes, but he doesn’t have such a big box, so he has to pay extra to order it. Therefore, he suggested that after eating the cake in the first week, return the box and fill it with a second one, thereby saving the cost of one box.

However, we forget that 10 inches versus 20 inches is not 1:2, but 1:4. So the students who came in the first week couldn't eat 3/4 of the cake, and the remaining 1/4 cake had to be put in the refrigerator. It took a few days to finally get it all into our stomachs.

When we sent the box back to the cake shop, we told the boss that the 20-inch cake was too big to finish. Could it be changed to 12-inch? He graciously agreed, and after the cake was ready, he put it in a 20-inch box for us to take away.

So, the second group of students saw the big box containing the small cake; everyone laughed when they knew the whole story. This 12-inch cake was completely eaten that day.

My mother allocated a considerable sum of food money to buy a cake for her eldest daughter. This coming-of-age ceremony will never be forgotten.

As Taiwan's economy takes off, life becomes more and more affluent, the diet becomes more and more diversified, and people become more and more particular about what they eat.

We still eat seven or eight cakes a year, from candles with the same number as our age, to number candles, and finally to question marks. The cake shrunk from 10 inches to 8 inches and then to 6 inches. The son-in-law came, the daughter-in-law came, the grandchildren came, and then it slowly became 10 inches again.

We eat cake at home less and less often, and more often we go out to restaurants to have cake together. I buy less and less cream cakes from the cake shop near my home, and more and more often I go to Hongye to buy black forest cake or Maxim's to buy coffee walnut cake.

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After we all got married and left home, eating cake became more and more important.

Every time it’s my parents’ birthday, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, we always agree on who will buy the cake, because it’s a rare opportunity for the whole family to get together and eat cake. Accompanying parents to sing happy birthday, blow out candles, cut cakes and eat cakes, such rituals make people feel like they are back in their childhood, when they were poor in material things but rich in spirit.

Therefore, eating cake is not just about eating cake, but also represents family affection, reunion, and close family relationship. Now that both my husband and I have passed away, my husband and I don’t have birthdays, so we have very few opportunities to eat cakes. The scene of the whole family eating cakes is no longer something we can only reminisce about in photos and in our minds!