Rare mountain produce from Northeast China was once reserved exclusively for honored guests, but now it sells for 20 yuan per jin and everyone can afford it

It is now the season when all kinds of nuts ripen, and street vendors selling sugar-roasted chestnuts can be found everywhere in the streets and alleys. Speaking of chestnuts, probably everyone loves them! Sweet, fragrant and soft, paired with a layer of sugar on the outside, they taste sweet in your mouth. On such a cold day, who wouldn't want a handful of steaming hot sugar-roasted chestnuts? Besides chestnuts, another kind of nut also ripens in this season, and that is the famous specialty of Northeast China, the Manchurian hazelnut. Everyone in Northeast China knows this name, but few people elsewhere know it, because in the past it was a relatively scarce and precious mountain product. Simple farmers were usually reluctant to eat it themselves and used it to entertain honored guests.

It is now almost the season for hazelnuts to ripen. When I was a child in the countryside, every year when the hazelnut season came, I would follow my grandparents to pick hazelnuts. At that time there were many hazelnuts on the mountain, and some were not picked by anyone. The hazelnuts that were not picked would fall off by themselves in winter, and you could pick them up directly under the trees. When picking hazelnuts, you had to be diligent, otherwise you were just doing a favor for the little squirrels in the mountains. When I was a child, I certainly followed my grandparents many times to pick hazelnuts. At that time, when we went out, we would take a cloth bag, and the hazelnuts we picked were put into the cloth bag. Sometimes in half a day we could pick a whole cloth bag of hazelnuts. The surface of the Manchurian hazelnut has a layer of fine fuzz, which is what distinguishes it from the ordinary flat hazelnut. Usually the Manchurian hazelnut tastes better.

After the hazelnuts are brought home, they can be eaten raw directly or stir-fried until cooked. No matter how they are prepared, hazelnuts have a unique flavor and are extremely delicious. When I was a child, our hazelnuts were all stir-fried. Grandma said that was the only way the hazelnuts could absorb the flavor. I ate quite a lot of hazelnuts when I was little. Grandma would stir-fry a whole pot of hazelnuts each time, and when we watched TV at night, we would crack and eat hazelnuts while watching TV, and before long we could finish the whole pot. Grandma herself ate very few and left them for us children, and then she would also save some hazelnuts to entertain honored guests during the Chinese New Year. This was a snack more presentable than peanuts and sunflower seeds, and almost every household kept some on hand.

Now there are many fewer wild hazelnut trees on the mountain than when I was a child, so going back to the countryside now no longer has the fun of picking hazelnuts as in childhood. The ready-made processed hazelnuts sold in the city always seem to be missing something. Now the reputation of the Manchurian hazelnut has spread across the country, and many people have begun to plant hazelnut trees. The price of hazelnuts is quite good. Processed roasted hazelnuts can sell for 60 yuan per jin, and raw unprocessed hazelnuts can also sell for 20 yuan, so everyone can afford them.