In the bottom of my heart, there is always a bright moon hanging, which is the Mid-Autumn Moon in my childhood hometown. Mid-Autumn Festival Full Moon Night Photographed by Wu Lizhang My hometown is an inconspicuous small village on the plains of northern Jiangsu. Because the vil

In the bottom of my heart, there is always a bright moon hanging, which is the Mid-Autumn Moon in my childhood hometown.

Mid-Autumn Festival Full Moon Night Photo by Wu Lizhang

My hometown is an inconspicuous small village on the plains of northern Jiangsu. Because the village is small, all the adults and children in the village know each other well. Wherever there is something new, I like to go to that house to join in the fun, especially a group of children. I still remember that when only one or two families in the village had TV sets, I would take my three younger sisters to the house in the west of the village to watch TV almost every night. Everyone was very absorbed in watching TV. The small courtyard was crowded with people and quite quiet. At this time, I was a little distracted. I would raise my head consciously or unconsciously and look at the moon hanging in the sky. It was so bright that it came right into my eyes.

Every time the TV series ends, my sisters and I will run in the moonlight, the only brick alley in the village. The sound of clattering footsteps echoed in the alley, bringing with it the joy of childhood. The moon in the sky shone brightly, becoming a lamp that illuminated our way back.

When this lamp is at its brightest and roundest, the Mid-Autumn Festival has arrived.

Ordinary people will naturally not care that the word "Mid-Autumn Festival" first appeared in "Zhou Li", nor will they care that "Mid-Autumn Festival" began in the Tang Dynasty, nor will they care that "Tangshu Taizong Ji" mentions "Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th" Festival" records.

However, in the eyes of ordinary people, this Mid-Autumn Festival is the reunion festival of thousands of families after the Spring Festival. An important role appears at this time: mooncake.

In my childhood memory, when we were celebrating the moonlight at home, we could not see the mooncakes now in the cupboards of shopping malls. To honor the moonlight, we use a substitute for mooncakes: sticky fried cakes.

Making sticky fried pancakes is actually a technical job, and the key lies in mastering the proportion of glutinous rice flour and water. To put it more mysteriously, those who work with glutinous rice flour must master the properties of glutinous rice flour and know its roots.

The master of sticky fried pancakes in our family is definitely my mother. Glutinous rice flour is carefully prepared by my mother on weekdays for use during the New Year and festivals. No one knows more about glutinous rice flour than my mother. However, on ordinary days, it is almost impossible to use glutinous rice flour. At that time, life was a little tighter.

Stir the glutinous rice flour and water until it becomes a "mud" shape and is suitably hard and soft. Hard, glutinous rice flour is not sticky and easy to spread; soft, it should be more accurately called "rotten", which is too sticky and difficult to form into a cake shape.

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, my mother is naturally the busiest in our family, and the highlight of her busy schedule is making sticky pancakes. The mother first asked the eldest sister to heat up the pot, and then she poured a circle of vegetable oil into the pot. After a while, hot oil smoke enveloped the stove, and wisps of oil fragrance spread out. But I saw that my mother had made round cakes as big as a child's hand, one by one, and placed them in the pot, covered the pot, and asked the eldest sister to continue adding firewood to the fire.

After a while, the aroma of pancakes came out of the pan. My mother knew that the pancakes were battered, so she opened the pan, turned the pancakes over one by one, and then put them on again, and let the eldest sister continue to heat the pan.

After both sides of the pancake are battered, the mother will add an appropriate amount of vegetable oil and sugar to the pancake. Sugar, mostly brown sugar. Spray a little more water and fry in the pan with a spatula until the cake is cooked, soft and sticky, and then taken out of the pan.

The soft and sticky fried pancakes are also soft and sticky when you eat them in your mouth, with an extra layer of fragrant and sweet taste, which is very tempting.

We little greedy cats are looking at the sticky fried pancakes under the moonlight. They are oily and fragrant, and our saliva has long been drooling. How can we care about the ceremony of worshiping the moon god? ! Seeing that the adults were not paying attention, he pinched the pancake with two fingers and threw it into his mouth.

At this time, looking up at the bright and cool moon in the sky, chewing the sticky, sweet and fragrant sticky fried cakes, I felt grateful to Fairy Chang'e in the Moon Palace.

That night, the moon was like day.

Whether I left my hometown to study in another city, or later returned to my hometown county to work, or even later left my hometown county, after working abroad for decades, I still stubbornly believe that the Mid-Autumn Festival moon over my childhood hometown , is the roundest and brightest in the world.(Liu Xianghe)