In the lap of the moon, the first festival is the LapPa Festival.
In the countryside of southwest Lu, we call the december of the lunar calendar "Lap Moon", and the eighth day of the first lunar month is called "Lap Ba". On this day, every household has to boil a pot of fragrant and sweet "Laba Porridge". Whenever the years step into the threshold of the waxing moon, the long-lost sweetness lingers between the lips and teeth. A different kind of emotion will also involuntarily surge into the heart, so the heart is also a wet.
When I was young, my family was not very well-off, and my life was overstretched. Despite this, my mother never let me suffer the slightest grievance, and she would still live a tight life.
I remember the winter when I was 7 years old, and the weather was surprisingly cold. Therefore, in the waxing moon, the county construction team where my father worked took an early holiday. It was freezing cold and the family was huddled up in a dilapidated house. Although the house is ventilated on all sides, it is a great pleasure of life to sit around the red brazier and listen to my father talk about the strange things outside.
In the blink of an eye, it was the Lapa Festival.
The first night, I sat in front of the brazier, and my mother, while doing needlework, told me about the origin of Laba porridge: "Listen to the elders, when Zhu Yuanzhang was a child, his family was very poor, and in order to survive, he herded cattle for the rich man's family. Even so, I still don't have enough to eat and wear warmly. One winter, Zhu Yuanzhang was so hungry that he looked around for something to fill his stomach. Suddenly, a rat hole was found at a high post, and Zhu Yuanzhang opened the rat hole, not to mention, this time Zhu Yuanzhang really found food. It turned out to be the granary of rats. Inside there are millet, red beans, dates and so on. Zhu Yuanzhang was overjoyed, and when he took it home, he cooked a pot of porridge, and devoured it full, and at that time he decided that this was the most delicious porridge he had ever eaten. In this way, he survived the cold winter by relying on a full porridge. Later, Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, and the mountain treasures and seafood tasted a lot, and suddenly remembered the porridge he had eaten when he was a child, so he asked the cook of the harem to make a pot of porridge according to his method, but it happened to be the eighth day of the first lunar month, so he gave the name 'Lapa Porridge'... "Slowly, I don't know when I fell asleep." As for how to get into bed, I don't know anything.
When a bellows sound sounded, I lazily opened half of my eyes to find that the morning light had already reflected the window paper.
"Click, click, click", the heavy bellows is pulled by the mother to be very rhythmic. It sounds so melodious, so long, so warm.
After a while, a strong aroma of rice porridge filled the small space.
At this moment, the mother stood up, patted the grass clippings and dust on her body, lifted the thick wooden pot lid, and the milky white steam instantly enveloped the whole room.
I couldn't wait to get dressed and get out of bed, hastily washed my hands and face, and stood in front of the pot to watch my mother pour out of the steaming pot with porridge. Yellow is millet, red is red adzuki beans, white is lotus seeds, and chubby dates! These ingredients, boiled by the mother's skillful hands, are not thin, thick, not sticky or paste. Before anyone could get closer, a thick smell of porridge rushed into the nostrils, making people have a big appetite.
Gu couldn't get hot enough to burn his teeth, so he picked up the large porcelain bowl and drank it "sucking, sucking". The porridge made by my mother is soft and mellow, and it melts in the mouth. As a result, the taste of various ingredients flocked to it, the aroma of millet and red beans, and the sweetness of jujubes, which were clearly transmitted to the taste nerves, and the appetite was suddenly opened. "Sighing" A rush of busyness, a bowl of porridge to the bottom.
And my mother, holding a small bowl of porridge in her hand, stared at me out of her mind, her eyes full of love.
At this moment, the outside of the house was icy and snowy, and the cold wind was whistling. I was bathed in the warm eyes of my mother, and this scene was forever engraved in the depths of my heart, nourishing my life and soul at all times.
Later, I learned that for this porridge, my mother, who had just entered the winter, got up early and greedily searched for a rat hole in the valley, and this yellow millet was the result of my mother pulling out of the rat hole, carefully picking out debris such as rubble and grass leaves, and peeling and washing.
Nowadays, time has passed, and Laba porridge is no longer a delicacy that children covet. When a variety of exquisite ingredients fill the shelves of supermarkets, it is undeniable that it is delicious and nutritious. However, what haunted my heart was the taste of laba porridge made by my mother.
When I came home with a tired and tired body, how I longed to once again bathe in my mother's warm eyes and drink a bowl of Laba porridge that she personally boiled to nourish her body and soul!
Zhang Chengming was born in the late 1960s in Zoucheng, the hometown of Mencius. Cpc members of the Communist Party of China and college culture have published more than 400 small novels and essays in newspapers and periodicals such as "Shandong Literature", "Selected Essays", "Prose Hundred Families", "Spiritual Civilization Newspaper", "Spark", and published four personal works such as "A Touch of Nostalgia". The essay collection "A Touch of Nostalgia" won the second Qilu Prose Award; the essay "Father is a Wheat Plant" won the second prize of the first Qingwei Prose Award; the essay "The Figure of the Father, the Fragrance of Camphor" won the third prize of the 2016 Hebei Provincial Journalism Award; the essay "The Distant Earthen Wall" won the second prize of the 2018 China Prose Annual Conference; and the essay was repeatedly selected for the Chinese Language Examination. He is a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association, a member of the Shandong Writers Association, a vice president of the Jining Essay Literature Association, a vice chairman of the Zoucheng Writers Association, and a member of the Qilu Evening News. Qilu Yidian Qingwei signed a supplement writer.
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