I often have the habit of sending my childhood to each page of writing to convey and share the joys and sorrows, the gains and losses, or the successes in life. This afternoon, when taking my young child to fly a kite on the hill, I saw the image of an old man picking peanuts after the harvest, I suddenly missed the peanut candy of the past.
I cannot remember the afternoons I spent picking peanuts, but I remember very deeply and very clearly the faces of my friends who joined me in these sweet memories.
Early summer is always the time when farmers in my hometown have a bumper harvest of peanuts after four months of hard work pruning and cultivating. At this time, instead of the children in my neighborhood playing hide and seek under the old banyan tree, each of them prepares a cloth bag slung across their shoulders, waiting for the farmer to finish pulling up the peanut field, then rushes out to pick up the remaining beans.
I always prepare dry branches to dig for beans deep underground, holding the spade in one hand and the other hand to loosen the soil and collect the beans. My fingers are never clean, so when I get home I have to pick star fruit and rub it over and over again to clean the mound soil.
Usually, on a bumper afternoon, I collect about 5 cans of peanuts with shells, and I collect them gradually until the peanut picking season is over. My grandmother dries them, sifts them over and over to remove the bad seeds, then peels them, wraps them carefully, and stores them in jars.
Those precious cans of beans were carefully saved by my grandmother, and when she had time, she would make bean candy for us. The image of the smoke from the kitchen in the afternoon amidst the thunderstorm made me remember it forever.
Grandma bent down to light the firewood, put the cast iron pan on to roast the beans until they were fragrant and crispy. I waited for the beans to cool completely, then peeled them, put them in a bamboo tray and sifted them thoroughly. Grandma continued to crush the sugar bowl, pound the ginger until smooth, and cook the sugar water until it was very sweet. Finally, she spread out the crispy rice paper over the charcoal fire, sprinkled some fragrant beans, and bathed the rice paper with sugar water.
Waiting for the peanut candy to cool down, I quickly ran to Xiu’s house, Bom’s house… and invited everyone into grandma’s kitchen. Grandma took out each piece of candy and divided it for each of us to eat. The sweet aroma of sugar mixed with the fatty taste of peanuts, oh how delicious it was.
Everyone ate and talked about old and new things, and also prepared plans to collect beans for the next season. Just like that, peanut candy was a part of our childhood every summer, the delicious taste of firewood-roasted peanut candy in the past, until now I still remember it fondly...
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