Editor's Note Hometown has a taste. This taste may be the first memory of life, starting from childhood, slowly precipitating with the loss of years, and gradually becoming fuller. No matter where you are, you can rely on this warm breath to let a tired heart find that long-lost touch.
The New Year is coming, the mood of missing relatives is getting stronger and stronger, a group of articles describing hometown food, the hometown sound, nostalgia, the taste of the hometown, a bag to send to everyone, in order to relieve homesickness -
Country cauldron dish
■ Linqing Liu Xudong
Cauldron dishes, as the name suggests, are "boiled" in a cauldron and can be eaten by many people. Cauldron dishes are a home-cooked dish, especially when it comes to red and white in the countryside. It is a smorgasbord cooked with several ingredients, which is relatively simple to make and suitable for most people.
In the era of extreme scarcity of material life, ordinary people could not afford to do things at all, and the cauldron dishes could only be replaced with cauldron soup. For example, if I have an uncle who has five sons, building a house and marrying a daughter-in-law will force him to be "blue-eyed". In the embarrassment of high debt, spending money has long been stretched. So he often made plans early, raw a jar of mung bean sprouts, and used it to make soup and boil vegetables when he was over. The so-called soup dishes are all thin soups and watery, which is called "illuminated soup". Later, the days got better, the soup became thicker and thicker, and gradually became a big pot dish.
The ingredients for making cauldron dishes vary in different places, and can also be selected according to the season and personal preferences, with a variety of vegetables and meats. Vegetables can be pumpkins, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, winter melon, bean sprouts, etc., and most of the meat is pork. Side dishes can be made with tofu, vermicelli, vegetarian balls, cake strips, soybeans, peanuts, etc. Put the main ingredients in the oil of the large pot and fry it almost, then add raw soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, green onion slices, garlic slices, ginger, cooking wine and other accessories, pour water, stir well with a long handle spatula, cover the pot and boil. Under the cauldron was dry and solid firewood, sometimes with a blower, and the fire was raging and crackling, and the pot was bubbling with strong heat. Usually it takes more than half an hour to cook.
With the development of the times and the improvement of people's material living standards, the neighbors have gone through things, and many people have gone to the hotel to entertain guests. Seven plates and eight bowls, big fish and big meat, all kinds of colors and varieties. However, there are still a considerable number of people who insist on running banquets in their own yards, buying their own vegetables, hiring chefs, renting tables and chairs and benches, or entrusting the "mobile kitchen" that is emerging at present, leaving it to professionals to do it on their own. Entertaining guests in their own yards, one is because the hospitality is convenient and casual, the second is because of the popular gathering, and the third is because it is economically saving. As a result, the people in the village still have the opportunity to taste the cauldron dishes that are not high-end but are really delicious and delicious.
In the past, due to the tightness of life, the tightness of hands, the average family affair, unless the VIP seat can have the treatment of stir-frying a few plates, the general family, friends and fathers and villagers can only enjoy the big iron pot boiling dishes. However, that cauldron dish is really delicious, and I still love to drink it. Not only do I love to drink in winter, but I also love to drink on hot days. The reason for this, I think, is mainly because there are many varieties of cauldron dishes, all the condiments, a long boiling time, and a good cooking. Look at the chefs usually wearing flower aprons, a white towel on their shoulders, next to the burning stove, pots and pans, kitchen knives, jingling, mixed with nervous and cheerful noise, or jokes of one kind or another, and unconsciously a big pot of dishes is boiled. Steaming in a large basin, scoop up a spoonful of cooked meat slices that have already been prepared, half a spoonful of black and fragrant old cotton oil, sprinkle a small handful of tender coriander, and maybe a bowl of chili oil for people to help. In the cold winter, there is a bowl of steamed buns, which is really called warming the body and warming the heart and stomach. After eating a bowl, I often have to go to the stove to serve another bowl. The master responded with a loud and attentive voice like the old running hall, scooping a full bowl from the cauldron: "Drink it, enough!" ”
That year, I lived with my son, who was working in Yantai, for more than half a year. In this small seaside town, I tasted some food that I didn't eat at home. My son ate the crab, sea cucumber, scallop, sea oyster, etc. with relish, but I was indeed not a blessed person, and I did not feel that there was anything I was willing to eat from the bottom of my heart. On the contrary, at the dinner table and while chatting, I kept remembering the hot, fragrant, and often two bowls of rural cauldron dishes I ate in my hometown.
Polenta
■ Liaocheng Kong Fanguang
When I was a child, I studied at the Sanguanmiao Primary School in the neighboring village, and when I returned home from school in the early morning of self-study in the winter, my thin body had already been frozen, and my mother quickly lifted the lid of the pot to scoop up a bowl of corn porridge, took over the bowl, and immediately put my frozen carrot-shaped fingers tightly on the hot bowl, and my mouth couldn't wait to suck and suck along the edge of the bowl, and a few times a bowl of porridge was hot and warmed up.
Polenta is the main food for two meals in the morning and evening in the northern countryside, and is called "confused" in the hometown. Corn kernels are divided into powder and granules after being machine ground. Powdered noodles, commonly known as stick noodles, can be steamed or boiled porridge. Granular, commonly known as stick grits, can only be used to boil porridge. Corn grits porridge needs to be simmered slowly over low heat, and it is necessary to constantly stir to prevent the paste pot until the boiled porridge has a sticky and emits the aroma of corn. Cornmeal boiled porridge, thin soup clear people, thick is difficult to swallow, light and tasteless without chewing, and corn grits boiled porridge, golden color, fragrant pleasant, its granular shape makes the porridge viscous and smooth without thick choking, and there is a chewy head, the more chewy the more fragrant.
Mother is very good at boiling porridge, at that time every day of the year to drink, there is no feeling of boredom, especially in the winter cold and spring green and yellow, polenta is the main food to drive away the cold and warm and fill the stomach. In the morning, my mother always got up first, told my sister and I to get up and go to school, and then boiled water to cook, took care of livestock and poultry, and so on, and when my sister and I arrived home in the morning, the whole family gathered around the pot and pan that was still warm, and the lively drinking corn porridge and eating steamed bread began the day.
At the same time as boiling polenta, the mother sometimes pastes some "dead noodles" cakes on the side wall of the pot, "dead noodles" is directly with water and noodles, without adding yeast without waking up, rolling out the good noodles thinly, smearing oil and salt, rolling up the general size of the agent, pressing flat and sticking to the inner wall of the pot, steaming after the beef tongue, the taste is strong, salty and delicious, especially near the iron pot on the burnt yellow pot, it is more crispy and crispy, and the teeth and cheeks are fragrant. Although this kind of "dead noodle" sticker cake is delicious but not easy to digest, it is also a helpless move that is not enough to eat, can be fed and lasting, but the taste is still quite nostalgic, and later my mother came to Liaocheng to do it several times, but there is no firewood and earth pot of the right size of the fire, and the taste is far worse.
In that era, polenta was a vital food for the people's lives, and the food was not enough to support the harvest in the coming year, and corn porridge was the staple food for three meals a day, especially for the disabled who could not work or the displaced people who were suffering from disasters, and a bowl of porridge was the food they could beg for to survive. I remember that at that time, there were always homeless people begging at home all year round, dragging their families with their mouths, carrying a wooden stick in one hand, holding an old iron jar or scoop head in the other hand, followed by one or two dolls with dirty clothes, and as soon as they entered the courtyard, they chanted: "Kind people give some food" "Kind people give some food"... The mother took the jar in his hand, went back to the house full of corn porridge, came and handed it to the child, the child was anxious to take the bowl and poured it into his mouth, the mother looked at the wolf-devouring child, turned back to the house and took out her own small rations from the pot - a nest head or a piece of bread, the man's head was like garlic pounding, a thousand thanks, took it, put it into the cloth bag they carried, these dry foods they were reluctant to eat, and took them home for later use.
At that time, the blind people in the village would come every few hours to sell singing. These blind men are alone, leading the way with sticks, going from the countryside to the village, and selling songs for food. "Xieyang Ancient Willow Zhao Jiazhuang, negative drum blind man is making the scene", night falls, looking for a vacant land, a string and a board, singing sadness, depression, people who have worked for a day listen to it like a drunkard. These blind men huddled in a firewood stack or abandoned house in the village during the day, and at night there would always be a few bowls of polenta, and he would send all of this porridge into his stomach, and at that time I was surprised that a man could eat seven or eight bowls of polenta, and later learned that it was his food for the day...
Nowadays, social security work is fully implemented, the minimum guarantee and poverty alleviation work is more beneficial to poor families, there is little real begging in society, the survival of the disabled has been improved, at the same time, food is becoming more and more diversified and refined, corn porridge is also slowly diluted in life, replaced by a variety of nutritional health porridge, which does illustrate the progress of society.
White dumplings and black dumplings
■ Qingdao Zhou Yanhui
When I was a child, except for my eldest Chinese New Year's Eve, I rarely ate dumplings all year round. But on our brothers and sisters' birthdays, my mother would always find a way to wrap a dumpling. There are two kinds of dumplings, white and black, and the black dumplings are wrapped in flour mixed with sweet potato noodles, which are coarse and astringent.
One winter, I was hospitalized for half a month with pneumonia. A few days after I was discharged from the hospital, it was my birthday, and my mother had already said that she would make dumplings to eat on this day. Who knew that the mother fell ill and had a high fever, and the father found a barefoot doctor to get an injection, and it was better. In the evening, my mother still insisted on kang, noodles, mixed with stuffing, and began to make dumplings. The filling was cabbage and pork, and the mother poured a lot of peanut oil, which emitted a strong aroma. My mother obviously had more white-faced dumplings this time, but we all know that every time I ate dumplings, when my mother fished, there were very few black and white in her bowl, and the opposite was for my father and our brothers and sisters. Especially me, both a sick number and a birthday, I am sure that there will be more white.
That day, I was lying on the kang and watching my mother dragging the sick body busy making dumplings, and my heart was very unhappy. It was dark, and when my mother was burning the fire, I quietly called my sister and brother over, and the servants muttered for most of the day, and finally reached an agreement: this time, no matter what, let my mother eat a few more white-noodle dumplings.
Finally, the dumplings came out of the pot, and the stove room steamed. The family sat around the kang, and at my request, my father lit a candle and the house was lit. The younger brother and sister stretched their necks, smiled, and waited for the meal to begin. After a while, with a rush of hot air, the mother served dumplings, and put a bowl in front of each of them, and the aroma was overflowing. Finally, when my mother was carrying a plate of garlic paste to the kang, we had already picked up the chopsticks and just waited for my father to say" "Eat it", and we could eat it. At this time, the sister, who has always been clever, suddenly said: "Mom, I have heard people say that on birthdays, you must make a wish and then blow out candles, so that you can live a long life." Let's make a wish for my brother today and blow out the candles! ”
"Good!" When the mother heard her sister say this, her eyebrows were raised, her eyes flashed, and she said, "Let's do just that, blow out candles, eat dumplings, and wish your brother's body will always be awesome." "Mothers have always been a little superstitious, especially when the child is a little sick and has a little trouble, her heart is even more religious.
The younger brother had been waiting impatiently for a long time, and when he heard his mother say this, he immediately shouted, "Brother, hurry up and make a wish, I am hungry." ”
I folded my hands, closed my eyes, made a wish, and blew out the candle with a "poof", and the room immediately darkened. At this time, I reached out, touched my mother's bowl, quickly changed it to me, and then said loudly, "Okay, let's eat." Amid the cheers of his brother, his father polished matches, lit candles, and the family began to eat dumplings.
After eating, my mother scooped a bowl of dumpling soup for each person, and the taste was also very delicious. In my memory, it was the most delicious dumpling I had ever eaten, the most meaningful birthday.
One day many years later, on my mother's birthday, a large family got together and ate the beef dumplings wrapped by my mother. When the dumplings were brought to the table, I was stunned that there were several black-faced dumplings in each bowl. The mother said: "This is pure sweet potato noodles, I heard about health care, people in the city love to eat it, you try it." ”
Looking at this black and white mixed dumpling, I suddenly remembered the past of blowing candles to eat dumplings, and I said it as a joke. The younger brother said that he was not impressed at all.
But my mother looked at us and said, "Yes, I remember it clearly, and you secretly exchanged your bowl of dumplings for me." But..." My mother looked at me kindly and said, "Surely you came up with the idea?" Again it is a wish, and a candle is blown. That day, when you were changing my bowl, I heard it, and as soon as you put it down, I changed it again. Don't forget, when I was able to reach the soles of my shoes in the shadows, my ears were so good..." Mother smiled triumphantly.
I was stunned at that moment, looking at my mother's white hair on the sideburns, and the corners of my eyes were moist. I lowered my head and gulped down the black-faced dumplings, like I was back in my childhood, my heart was sour, warm...
High Donald's tofu
■ Rizhao Cheng Yan
"What do you want to eat tomorrow morning?" Every time I came home and my mother asked, I would always answer, "Go drink tofu." ”
Old tofu is the hometown of Gao Tang famous food, like snow like jade, smooth and tender and refreshing, when I was a child, my mother said that tofu is made of purified Yellow River water, the best drink is its brine, the aroma is unique and attractive, and the production of brine and oil has unique features. The brine is made with high-quality soy sauce and fine salt and water into the pot, and boiled in more than 10 kinds of condiments such as star anise and peppercorns. Drink tofu, eat burnt cake, is the standard for gaotang people's breakfast, gao tang baked cake is rolled with noodles, the bread on the oil crisp, baked in the oven, a turn on the oven, the aroma of the burnt cake comes to the nose, this baked cake is the best to eat while hot, the burnt cake tofu is simply a perfect match, every time you return to your hometown, the old tofu always drink enough.
When I was a child, every evening, there would be an old man selling old tofu walking the streets, knocking on a wooden pole, pushing a big golden deer bicycle, and the back seat of the car was loaded with a bucket of old tofu.
"梆, 梆, 梆..."
"Bean-rotten-brain------------------
Hearing this, I was sweating profusely, and I rushed home to get the basin. Bring the bowls and pans, wait in line for the grandfather to give sheng tofu brain, the momentum is more obedient than when there was a teacher at school. When I took the tofu brain home, I devoured it, and there was no soup left.
When I went to college, I couldn't drink old tofu in other places, and I always had to go to find old tofu to drink when I came home from vacation. After getting married, going home for the New Year, on the third day of the New Year, the old tofu shop in the town did not open the door, drive to the county town, look for it one by one, until you find the tofu shop that opened the door, drink a bowl of old tofu, and eat the unique GaoTang baked cake.
"Take a detour to Gao Tang, half a bowl of tofu to eat fragrant", many people deliberately come to Gao Tang to drink old tofu, which shows the unique charm of old tofu. In the poem "Hundred Songs of Ancient Capital Food", gao Tang Lao tofu was praised in this way - "The appearance of the cloud skin is uneven, and it is already when the book is thrown away and sleeps." It seems that the beauty is called half old, and it is like scratching her head to make a gesture. "Old tofu has a long history, and it is said that during the Song Dynasty, Chai Jin's uncle Chai Huangcheng was bullied and humiliated by the brother-in-law of the prefect Gao Lian in Gao Tang Prefecture, and fell ill with pity. Chai Jin heard the news and took Li Kui to Gao Tang Prefecture to visit. On the way, I saw a woman crying in the street, asking the reason, the woman replied: "The family is poor, to make tofu to make a living, yesterday play, lost the bean wrapper (a tool for making tofu), today only made into bean brain, my father was anxious, beat me." Chai entered the poor woman's family, so he took silver two or two to fund her, and added clear sauce (which is now soy sauce) to taste the bean brain, and after eating, he was delighted, thinking that it was a delicacy, so he named it "old tofu". In the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor went down to Jiangnan to pass through Dezhou to eat Gao Tang Lao Tofu once, and on the spot beckoned the Gao Tang who made old tofu to enter the palace to join the imperial kitchen "Tofu Gang", and since then, Gao Tang Old Tofu has had a place in the capital. After years of family and master-apprentice inheritance, Gao Tang Lao Tofu has slowly become a local snack.
Drink old tofu, sit on the street and drink the most emotional, while drinking old tofu, while watching the scenery. In the streets and alleys, whether it is the elderly returning from morning exercise, or the young people who go to work with school bags to school, most of them will gather at the old tofu stall to drink a bowl of fragrant old tofu, and their faces are full of satisfied smiles.
When my son arrived at his grandmother's house, he always said, "Mom, tomorrow we will go drink tofu." "Old tofu, favorite."
Taste of the year
■ Liaocheng Sun Longxiang
When I was a child, the New Year was very lively. This hilarity, now looks like it should be the taste of the year. Probably when you enter the Wax Moon Gate, you can smell the New Year.
In the early 1970s, it was basically an era of relying on the sky to eat, and some places even became a big problem in eating. Don't say it's good to eat well. Three meals a day, dried sweet potatoes, cornmeal, sorghum noodles are enough to manage enough is very good.
My village is still relatively rich. A very important sign is that since I can remember, I have never heard of people in the village who go out to beg for food, but I often see people from other villages coming to the village to ask for food. In this context, it is not easy to talk about eating well. I remember eating white noodles for a few days a year. One is the wheat harvest season, often can eat a few meals of steamed "python" (a kind of python-like dead noodle dry food); second, every year on the birthday, the mother will boil two eggs, paste a few cakes with white noodles, and sometimes drink one or two bowls of noodles, and then wait until the New Year.
The one I remember most is at the end of a certain year, the production team divided the wheat, our family of seven, probably divided into more than thirty pounds, my father used his pocket to carry home, the whole family was very happy. As for meat, it was not seen several times from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Only during the Spring Festival, the production team slaughtered a few pigs, and each family divided it into three pounds and two pounds. In this way, the mother is not willing to use it to stir-fry vegetables or cook it to eat, but cuts the fat meat and refines it into lard, lean meat for the Spring Festival offering, and the remaining meat residue from the refining oil is used as dumplings for the Spring Festival. Therefore, when I was a child, I had a particularly deep memory of the delicious food that I could eat during the Spring Festival.
Eating dumplings during the Spring Festival is only Chinese New Year's Eve, the first day of the Chinese New Year, the fifteenth night of the first month and the sixteenth day of the first month, and it is difficult to eat at other times. Chinese New Year's Eve and the fifteenth and sixteenth dumplings are made of miscellaneous noodles, that is, a mixture of wheat noodles and sorghum noodles. The filling of the dumplings is mainly white radish and vermicelli, which are divided from the production team. Every year, when the white radish comes down, my mother always pickles a large jar of pickles for the family to enjoy all year round. The remaining white radish dug a pit in his yard, buried it with thick soil, and waited for the Spring Festival to be pulled out to wrap dumplings and buns. Sometimes the cabbage came down, and the mother buried it in the same way for the Spring Festival. Although it is a white radish vermicelli dumpling with mixed noodles, it is called a fragrant meal, and my meal is much larger than usual. Other pasta of the Spring Festival, mainly flower rolls and buns, steamed buns are very few, mostly white noodles and corn flour made of flower rolls, less white noodles, more corn flour. Mother steamed one or two pots of steamed steamed buns, mainly for guests and personal use during the Spring Festival, naturally reluctant to eat at home. When the relatives are finished, these remaining steamed buns are beyond recognition, so we must also leave some of them until the fifteenth day of the first month, or even the second of February. I remembered that some of the steamed buns had already dried up and cracked badly, and some even had green hairs and black spots, and my mother wiped them with a wet cage cloth and continued to eat them.
We hungry children, the most looking forward to is the first day of the Chinese New Year. On the first day of the New Year, I got up early and set off firecrackers, and I saw my mother set up an offering table in the left front of the main house of the courtyard, which was full of snacks, lean meat heads, steamed buns, red dates, sugar cubes, fried balls, lotus and other delicacies, and the top of the offering table was posted with the post of "The Divine Seat of the Ten Spirits of Heaven and Earth", although I did not quite understand the meaning, but from my mother's pious demeanor, I probably knew that my mother was praying for the blessings of the heavens and the gods of all walks of life, praying for the wind and rain in the coming year and the peace of the whole family. Such a scene was very impressive to me when I was a child. Seeing the table full of delicacies, I was even a little jealous of these gods, but fortunately the gods did not take it to eat. For the gods who only blessed and did not take, there was a little more reverence in my young soul.
After eating dumplings on the morning of the first day of the first year, it is customary to go to the New Year. I always followed the adults to the homes of the elders of the same clan. Those uncles and aunts, when they see the children who come to visit the New Year, will always give some peanuts, a few sugar cubes, and some will give a three-and-a-half cents of the old money. Our village is a big village, and they are all of the same surname, and sometimes it takes an hour or two to visit the New Year, and they run through most of the village. In this way, I often have a lot of income, which is naturally the happiest and richest time of the year.
Have a frugal year
■ Chiping Yuan Baoxia
Time flies, and in the blink of an eye it's another year. The Spring Festival is coming, this weekend my son who is far away from home called and said: "Mom, this year's Chinese New Year's Eve meal I have booked online, you don't have to prepare anything, we must also keep pace with the times during the Spring Festival, hard work for a year, the New Year's day will rest!" I put down the phone and couldn't help but sigh, time flies so fast, the scene of eating Chinese New Year's Eve meal last year is still vividly remembered, as if it was just yesterday.
I remember that on the day of Chinese New Year's Eve last year, it was also a hotel that my son had pre-booked, and our family came to the hotel happily. The hotel was full of lights, and before I entered the door, I felt the festive atmosphere. The staff of the hotel are also full of spring breeze, a group of harmony, and feel more lively than the festival at home.
After the family came to the reserved room to take a seat, the son specially ordered our favorite dishes. There are braised fish, shredded meat with Kyo sauce, and sweet potatoes. I told my son that if you order less food, you will be wasted if you can't eat. The son said: "Life needs a sense of ceremony, the family has time to sit down for a meal in time for the festival, Dad, Mom, what do you like to eat, just order it." "Looking at this delicious meal, especially this filial piety of my son, I am so happy that I can't put down my chopsticks, and the family talks while eating, and it is happy and harmonious." But at this moment, I found that a hair was stained on the pulled sweet potato. My son watched me stop chopsticks and saw this hair. At this time, the waiter came to deliver the food, and the son said: "You see how there is hair in this plate, let's make a new one!" "I've also seen a few farces in restaurants where guests find bugs or hair in the dish and get angry at the waiter, and the boss bends over with a smile on his face and says sorry. Thinking of this, I said to the waiter: "Isn't it just a hair, it's too wasteful to pour it out, forget it, don't change it." The waiter quickly apologized and said that the boss could get a discount when the final account was settled.
Looking at this plate of fragrant sweet potatoes, I said to my son, "This is the food that my mother used to fill her hunger when she was a child." The popular slip of the tongue in that era was 'sweet potato soup, sweet potato bun.' Can't live without sweet potatoes. 'Seeing sweet potatoes has a special feeling. When you eat outside in the future, you must also pay attention to saving and not wasting. "Obey orders." Throughout the history of the former virtuous country and home, it has been broken by thrift and thrift. 'Diligence and thrift are our virtues. Son Wen crepe crepe said. At this time, the husband also interjected, "Quiet to cultivate the body, thrifty to cultivate morality." Remember! The son quipped, "Rest assured! I grew up reading 'who knows the plate of Chinese food, the grains are hard', otherwise I have not drunk the ink of these years in vain! ”
After eating, the son went to the service desk to ask for a few bags, and while picking up the leftovers, he smiled and said: "The teachings of my parents have an immediate effect, and we also responded to the party's call to implement the disc action." I'm on disc, I'm glorious, I can't eat and go around. The son said as he poured the leftovers into the bag. There is a kind of education called influence, at this time, I feel that my son has really grown up, and I feel extremely relieved.
Putting down my son's phone, I thought to myself: The current life is really like honey, and the New Year is every day. The supermarket has everything in it, and it is open even during the Chinese New Year, so you don't have to buy new year goods. In order to protect the environment, firecrackers are also free! Everything can be saved, as long as the festival is happy!