Grandma uses broomcorn millet flour to make traditional cakes.
Tips
usage
The méi reading lives almost entirely in one word: 糜子, broomcorn (proso) millet, a hardy dryland grain of north and northwest China. Its hulled grain is the yellow 黄米. Outside this farming term, the character is read mí.
Bottom rice radical, six strokes picturing grains scattered around a central axis. It indexes 糜 in the grain-and-food family with 粥 congee, 粉 powder, 粒 kernel. The radical does the precise work here: this is what rice becomes when boiled to a thin paste.
Top-left 麻 supplies the sound má, drifting to mí through a regular vowel shift. 麻 itself pictures hemp fibres stripped under a shelter. The same phonetic powers 摩 rub, 磨 grind, 魔 demon. The 'grind to pulp' image of 磨 echoes porridge cooked until soft.
