Sweet potato is also called sweet potato, and its scientific name should be sweet potato. Why are there so many names? There is indeed something worth studying. From the skin, it is appropriate to call sweet potatoes; Technically, it is appropriate to call it sweet potato. From the source, it was introduced from abroad in the Ming Dynasty, so it is more appropriate to call it sweet potato. From the late Ming Dynasty to the present, five or six hundred years have passed, and Tongzhou people have been dealing with this sweet potato for less than one hundred years. With the changes of the times, the position of sweet potato in the lives of ordinary people has changed greatly. Nowadays, in the streets and alleys of the city, you can occasionally see cars baking sweet potatoes, stoves modified with large gasoline cans, and around the charcoal fire, there are more than a dozen pieces of sweet potatoes the size of spindles. From the outside, this baked sweet potato is dark and looks like an ugly person. Uncover the black skin, or break a piece to see the pulp inside. It's really tempting. It's Huang Chengcheng, red and delicious, especially in the freezing winter. Occasionally, eating a steaming baked sweet potato is as delicious as delicacies.
Ma Weidou, a famous cultural relic collector in Beijing, ate a baked sweet potato on the street corner after work. When he was happy, he wrote a short article to the effect that a baked sweet potato can bring warmth to passers-by. In the city, there are several stalls for baking sweet potatoes, which are quite good. The seller has a livelihood, and the eater enjoys food. Why not? Street sweet potato stalls should be allowed. Mr. Ma spoke my mind. First, in today's cities, baked sweet potatoes have become a rarity. One piece is enough. The second is to persuade urban management not to be too harsh on vendors, and to relax the vendors who bake sweet potatoes. It is not easy for them to come out in cold weather and bring hot and delicious food to the city people. Why bother them and "fight guerrilla warfare" with them?
It is difficult to buy baked sweet potatoes now, and it is also difficult to buy sweet potatoes dug out of the ground. Even if you can occasionally see sweet potatoes in the farmer's market, I find that, first, the varieties are single, almost the same, the same color, the same taste, and even the size of the block is not much. Where is this the true face of sweet potato? As far as I know, in the past ten years, it has been difficult to see sweet potato fields in Tongzhou, a land of feng shui. This reminds me of the sweet potato fields in my hometown decades ago.
In fact, sweet potato is a fat doll born on the yellow land. In 1950s and 1960s, it was once the staple food of farmers, and almost every family was indispensable. Most people my age grew up eating sweet potatoes. At that time, sweet potato seemed to be the protagonist in my hometown field.
It is said that sweet potato was introduced from the Philippines in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The scientific name of sweet potato is sweet potato. In the 1940s, in my hometown, some bold and cautious wealthy families tried to grow them. However, at that time, sweet potato was thin and long, and it tasted very soft and sweet, but there was gold thread in the pulp, which was quite tough. I couldn't swallow it and had to spit it out. At that time, people called it "sweet potato wood". Sweet potatoes are delicious, but firewood is hard to swallow, which is the outstanding feature of early sweet potatoes. In addition, the output is very small and the price is very expensive. Therefore, at that time, sweet potatoes were only considered as "snacks" of festivals, and it was difficult to enter the table of the people.
It was not until the national liberation that the government sent agricultural experts to my hometown. I saw with my own eyes the experts who guided the seedling raising. Before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, the experts took home half a bag of sand, spread it on the kang, and then worshipped the sweet potato pieces they brought from other places and buried them in the sand. After half a month, sweet potatoes will give birth to many buds. Experts told us to plant these sweet potato buds on the raised ridges. After the summer solstice, sweet potato was a success. In autumn, the crops ate their own sweet potatoes for the first time, and I was so happy.
The villagers are happy, but the experts are not satisfied. They probably think that the common sweet potato has a single variety and low yield. A year later, a new variety was introduced to our village. At that time, the villagers thought it was a foreign sweet potato, so it was called "foreign sweet potato". This sweet potato is big and round. The skin is not red, but all milky white, which may be the reason why sweet potato was later called "sweet potato". The flesh color of sweet potato varies widely. There are white, red, yellow and pink ones. Eating sweet potatoes is associated with solve riddles on the lanterns. I don't know what color the flesh of sweet potato is. It's really interesting.
Although the pulp of potato has suspense, its taste. Indeed, it tastes different from ordinary sweet potatoes. After steaming, take a bite, hard and dry, silky, not very sweet, especially full, high yield, and soon won the recognition of the people. At that time, it was the fashion of farmers to grow sweet potatoes in every household. Some people summed up the three advantages of "foreign sweet potato": first, the yield is high, and the whole family can't be hungry when planting an acre of potatoes; Second, you don't have to be busy cooking, and the sweet potato is fresh in a pot; Third, it tastes just as good without grinding. At that time, eating was a top priority, and sweet potatoes could be eaten as meals, which saved a lot of housework and made time without burning firewood. This was a great good thing. In my childhood memory, I should have made a great contribution to sweet potato.
The growth process of sweet potato is also amazing. In spring, seedlings are raised on a heated kang, and when the seedlings grow to three inches high, they can be transplanted to neat ridges in the fields. Dig a small hole and pour a ladle of water, and the seedlings will live. In summer, seedlings will climb the vines, and within half a month, green potato seedlings will cover the whole land like carpets. At this time, colorful flowers are still blooming on the lush vines, full of joy and reality, really cute! After the autumn wind blows, the vines turn purple and can be cut off for feed. Although the ridge is bare at this time, there are many huge sweet potato blocks that have cracked several holes in the ridge. Pick with a big pick, and a big sweet potato will all come out. Just dig a few dragons and you can fill a big car. This is the happiest time for farmers' families, and it is also the time when I am most grateful to Mother Earth.
Sweet potatoes are not only planted for one season in spring, but "stubble potatoes" planted in summer may be more attractive. After the wheat is harvested, the whole land will be leveled into ridges and then it can be planted. There is no need to raise seedlings, just cut a section from the sweet potato seedlings in spring and plant them. This may be the earliest "cloning" technology implemented in China. Sweet potatoes in summer are slender, much like big carrots, with red skin and special sweetness. The harvested sweet potatoes have to be dug and stored in winter. The villagers said, "This makes the sweet potatoes sweat." It tastes sweet in spring. Sweet potatoes that don't need to be stored in the cellar can be cut into pieces and dried. You can also steam the sweet potato first, dry the cooked sweet potato and dry the raw sweet potato. Can be rolled into noodles, steamed corn, steamed sweet potatoes at any time, very delicious. It's just that there are fewer sweet potatoes now, and these delicious foods are rare.
In recent years, the most grounded sweet potato has almost disappeared in the fields of my hometown. This naturally marks the improvement of people's living standards, but I still miss sweet potatoes. This is not only because I appreciate the scenery in the sweet potato field in summer, but also because it used to be a staple food to provide nutrients for my hometown when food was scarce. What I miss most is the bearing and style reflected from it. It's that simple, kind and unobtrusive. It bears sweet fruit, but it is deeply hidden in the arms of Mother Earth. From him, I can clearly see the simple, generous, frank and unobtrusive character of my hometown people and farmers all over the world.