After a simple rebirth

As all things are ready before the New Year, New Year's Eve has arrived. There is nothing special about the day of New Year's Eve. The highlights are dinner and staying up late, but it does not mean that there is nothing to do at noon.

At noon, we usually eat something casually, and after that, we have to prepare food for the first and second days of the Chinese New Year. Here, we are not allowed to use knives or cook on the first and second days of the Chinese New Year. We can only cook noodles or eat leftovers.

The first meal on the morning of the first day of the new year must be glutinous rice balls. The saying that dumplings are eaten in the north and glutinous rice balls are eaten in the south has always been widely circulated. The Fu family is a native southerner and they do not eat dumplings during the Chinese New Year.

But the glutinous rice balls eaten on the first day of the New Year are not necessarily round, at least the glutinous rice balls in their place are not round. The glutinous rice balls they eat are triangular, called triangle glutinous rice balls, while the glutinous rice balls in other places are really round.

At noon on New Year's Eve, the main thing to prepare is the flour and fillings for the dumplings, which will then be wrapped and cooked on Monday morning.

There are only two kinds of fillings for glutinous rice balls, one is sesame filling and the other is peanut filling. Sesame filling is called Su Ma locally, while peanut filling is called Fu You locally, which may have a better meaning, meaning that you will be rich in the coming year?

The filling is rich in fat, a bit like the filling of ham mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and more like five-nut filling. It also has a little diced meat and sugar, and more peanuts. It's okay to eat one, but it will be greasy if you eat too much. So every year, Dad Fu would ask in advance how many each person can eat.

In the past, our family conditions were relatively poor, but we had to eat dumplings, so we would ask for a few more oil-rich ones with sesame fillings, and we would probably make one or two dumplings per person.

Fu Ying doesn't like peanuts, whether fresh or stuffed. When she was young, she would eat a piece of oily peanuts and ask for more sesame ones. Fu's parents would give her one or two more. Later, I found out that they were giving her their own portion.

Conditions are better now, and Dad Fu knows that people don’t like to eat oily foods, so this year we are mainly making sesame fillings.

The main ingredient of the crispy sesame filling is sesame, and just add a little white sugar. The black sesame seeds used are locally grown, and they are most delicious when cooked, and are sweet but not greasy.

Fu Ying's family used to grow sesame seeds, but because growing sesame seeds is troublesome, and there are processes such as shelling and peeling the seeds after harvesting, plus they mainly focused on eating and did not have the conditions to spare the land to grow sesame seeds, so they stopped growing it.

The sesame seeds that I planted with great effort not only took up a piece of land, but were not enough to eat, and might be pulled up by passing children or unscrupulous people, which would be a waste of effort. It was not too expensive and convenient to buy sesame seeds grown by others. Even the hardworking Fu Ergu stopped planting them in the past two years.

Fu Ying doesn’t know how to make the stuffing, so she always waits for Fu’s father to come. She helps grind the sesame seeds into sesame powder, and then Fu’s father adds the side ingredients.

After preparing the two fillings, Dad Fu placed them on the cabinet for fear that they would be accidentally spilled.

Next comes the preparations for New Year’s Eve dinner.

In previous years, Dad Fu usually did it alone, or Fu Ying and Fu Yu would help, but this year Fu Ying decided to make a change.

Although Fu's father has experience in preparing New Year's Eve dinner, he cannot be the only one to prepare it. Since the New Year is a time for reunion, we cannot all wait in our rooms to eat. Before smartphones took over our lives, Fu Ying wanted to make everyone's memories more warm, and she also didn't want Fu Zhe to follow the path of Fu Wei, who just sat back and enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

Fu Ying asked Fu Zhe to come over.

"New Year's Eve dinner is for the whole family to eat. It is for honoring our ancestors, for ourselves to have a reunion dinner, and more importantly, for promoting traditional Chinese culture.

I asked you to come here now so that you can learn these customs and help dad with things.

Dad has never stopped working since he came back, and has been busy all the time. Although everyone is helping, we can't take his work for granted.

There are only so many things to do, if you don't do it on purpose, you can only leave it to others. So I can tell you for sure that I don't want you to become like Fu Wei, who enjoys the efforts of others, deliberately plays dumb and has no sense of responsibility.

If you don't know how to cook, you can choose to help your dad cut vegetables, wash vegetables, and cook rice. This is a good time for you to learn how to do things, and it is also a good time for you to think after personal experience, so that you can apply it to composition materials and grow.

If you keep ignoring the efforts of your family members, then your family members will also not care about you.

Fu Zhe nodded, "I know, I helped Dad."

Fu Ying said these things on purpose, for Fu Zhe to hear and for Fu's father to hear.

If a person keeps giving, it will only go to extremes. The person who gives will feel tired and not recognized, while the person who enjoys will ignore the achievements of others, which will only lead to a more selfish direction.

Fu Zhe needs to change, and so does Fu's father.

Whether Fu Wei will change or make progress is also influenced by Fu's parents. But Fu Ying doesn't care much about whether Fu Wei will change or not.

After Fu Zhe finished washing the vegetables, he sat down to peel potatoes. Fu Ying asked her father how to cut the vegetables.

Dad Fu carefully explained to Fu Ying the shapes to be cut and the knife techniques, and also shared some stories about the Chinese New Year when he was a child. The atmosphere was very harmonious.

Fu's mother also came to help.

What would take one person an entire afternoon to do, can be done quickly with the whole family together. Dad Fu doesn't have to shout their names when he needs help. Fu Ying sees what he's doing with his hands, roughly guesses what he's going to do, and helps him directly.

After more than an hour, the food was ready, and Dad Fu let them rest. Dinner is usually not until six or seven o'clock, so it is not so early to cook.

Fu Ying went back to her room to study. Fu Zhe didn't know what to do. It was not a good idea to visit other people's homes on New Year's Eve, so he just followed Fu Ying to study.

Fu Ying was very satisfied. He knew that taking the initiative to learn was a good change.

Fu Ying asked him to continue to memorize the political templates and try to do the third-year junior high school questions. For a subject that requires comprehension like politics, advanced learning will not have much impact.

Hearing a sizzling sound in the evening, Fu Ying knew that her father had started cooking, so she took Fu Zhe with her to help.

At this moment, the most Fu Ying and the others could do was to get the plates and take the cooked dishes aside.

"Fu Zhe, it doesn't look like we need your help right now, this can be done by one person.

But what is important at this time is the meaning. Think about it, reunion, companionship and help during the Chinese New Year. These are the specific feelings of the Chinese New Year. Helping and understanding each other are the embodiment of family harmony.

Suppose you were a father, and every Chinese New Year you cook and prepare food by yourself. If you want someone to help you, you don’t know who to call. There are so many people at home, and everyone is sitting and waiting to eat. While eating, they don’t show gratitude for the hard work of others to prepare the meal. No one would be happy.

So no matter how much we can help, even Wang Ruizhong knows to accompany the adults, so we should do the same.

The deeper meaning is that you will feel more deeply about the New Year's Eve dinner you prepared yourself, and you will understand the charm of the traditional Spring Festival that has been passed down to this day."

Fu Ying is not the kind of person who would lecture Fu Zhe whenever she gets the chance, but at this moment she really needs to tell Fu Zhe some things that he usually doesn't pay attention to or doesn't know much about, so as to help him think in a way that takes advantage of the situation.

At the same time, it is also a way to give some eye drops to the young master who doesn't come out to help every year.