In the blink of an eye, Little New Year was about to arrive. In the north, there was a custom of eating dumplings during the Little New Year. The meaning behind this custom was to see off the Kitchen G.o.d. In ancient times, there was a saying, 'eat dumplings when parting, and eat noodles when meeting'.
In the early morning of Little New Year, Old Yu led everyone in the family to offer sacrifices to the Kitchen G.o.d. Madam Liu skillfully boiled stove candy, which was sweets made from malt and millet. The large milky white lumps of candy were placed on a square plate in front of the statue of the Kitchen G.o.d. Other items on the table included fresh water, beans, fodder… She still needed to put up festive couplets for the Kitchen G.o.d.
When eaten, the freshly made stove candy was crispy and fragrant. It was the children's favorite snack. Every year, the wealthier families would make more stove candy for the children to consume.
Yu Xiaocao wasn't very good at making traditional stove candy. After she boiled the white sugar into syrup, she would either add in fried sesame or peanuts to make it into sesame and peanut candy. This way, they would have some extra snacks for the New Year. When Madam Liu found out, she laughed and scolded her as a 'wasteful girl'! In this era, it was already considered quite good if an ordinary family had enough to eat, where would they have the extra money to buy white sugar to make sesame and peanut candy?
In the evening, the Yu Family made two types of dumplings, meat and vegetable. The meat dumplings were stuffed with wild pork and scallions. The streaky wild boar meat, which had a good ratio of fatty and lean meat, was diced up, and then mixed with chopped onion to make ground meat. There was more meat than vegetables, and it was delicious to eat.
The vegetarian dumplings are stuffed with garlic chives, gla.s.s noodles, and eggs. The gla.s.s noodles would be soaked in hot water to be softened, then it would be chopped into fine pieces and air-dried in the sun. After that, it would be fried in oil and combined with scrambled eggs and chopped garlic chives. If she were to add the refined oil residue, the dumpling would taste even more delicious. Yu Xiaocao liked to secretly eat a few mouthfuls of stuffing while she made the dumplings. The flavor was extremely tasty.
The whole family sat in a circle around the kang table, eating their favorite meat or vegetarian dumplings happily. The cheerful atmosphere made Yu Xiaocao sigh at the beauty of a family reunion.
In her previous life, her parents had left the world early, leaving behind three half-grown children. Their first few New Year without their parents were bleak and miserable. Fortunately, her younger siblings already had their own small families before she left, so she was a little less concerned and attached to her previous life.
Yu Xiaocao's expression became a little absent-minded. It seemed like her previous life was becoming more distant, as if it was nothing but a very long dream that was full of hards.h.i.+p…
"Cao'er, what are you thinking about? The vegetarian dumpling you like to eat will be all s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the little guys if you don't eat it quickly!" Yu Hai saw his daughter staring blankly at the corner of the kang table with a lonely expression on her face, which seemed out of place in the lively atmosphere. So, he quickly put a few pieces of dumplings on her plate, softly interrupting her train of thought.
In the north, people usually celebrated the Little New Year with meat dumplings. However, since Xiaocao liked to eat vegetable dumplings, they also made a plate of dumplings stuffed with chives and eggs. Maybe it was because this type of dumpling was new and fresh to them, but Liu Yaner, Yu Xiaolian, and Little s.h.i.+tou all tried a piece of the vegetarian dumpling, and soon half the plate of dumplings was gone. Little New Year was about having a lively reunion, so the two families decided to celebrate it together.
The chives and eggs dumplings were stir-fried with lard, and there were a lot of eggs stuffed in the dumplings. Xiaocao also added the fragrant refining oil, so it was no mystery as to why the children liked it.
When he saw his father picking up the delicious and fragrant vegetable dumplings one by one with his chopsticks and putting them into his second sister's bowl, Little s.h.i.+tou protested, "Father, you're being partial to Second Sister! If you give all the vegetarian dumplings to Second Sister, what should we eat?"
