The Great Cold Wave of January 31, 1977 sent us straight back to the Stone Age. The lowest temperature in Shanghai at that time was -11 °C, the lowest since the liberation of Shanghai in 1949. On that day, the lowest temperature in southern Anhui was minus sixteen degrees.
At that time, nearly 100,000 employees in Shanghai were trapped in the "small third line" of Anhui. When the first deep mountain snow came down, we were all stupid: Snow, can it fall so much?! Quietly, all the water pipes froze and exploded, the wires were all crushed, the moso bamboo was all crushed, and the poems and the distant places instantly returned to zero.
Sudden, catastrophic weather cut off traffic.
At that time, there was no satellite communication, and once the connection with Shanghai was severed, the great panic immediately spread in the factory. The factory inspected the cold storage, there was not much meat, the grain was barely stored, and the vegetables were seriously lacking, the fuel was in short supply, tobacco and alcohol were urgent, but fortunately, the nearby 366 power plant continued to supply power because of the abundant coal storage, so that we would not be completely in a desperate situation.
But if you think you can sit and eat instant noodles, you may look up to us, where is the instant noodles in that era? The best dish in the cafeteria is shredded meat, but the only thing that waits in line is kelp. Because of the panic, first the liquor and straw paper in the commissary were snapped up, then a wide-ranging search for alcohol, the laboratory was the focus, and finally the fat meat of the small street meat shop also became a sought-after commodity.
We arrived at a small local grocery store, and all that was left was a bag of aged yellowed glutinous rice flour and a basket of crispy candy in the Year of the Monkey.
Glutinous rice flour may be used as food when it is awkward, and hemp crisp candy is just eaten and played, what can it be used for? And buy it.
Soon, the supply of the canteen even "rotten meat shreds" is gone, every day to eat white rice + kelp days, I stared at glutinous rice flour and hemp crisp candy to make ideas, that day suddenly wondered, is the hemp crisp sugar is not made of sesame powder? yes. Glutinous rice flour + crisp sugar + fatty meat, is it equal to "lard black foreign crispy soup ball"?
Make your own black puff pastry dumplings! However, the glutinous rice flour kneaded into a dough is not difficult, the difficulty is how to turn the candy into "black puff pastry filling", tried it, failed, the hemp crisp sugar mashed or kneaded into the filling, before the adults do the black puff pastry filling, I glanced at it, there must be diced lard mixed in, and then kneaded hard, in order to knead into a small black ball, then put one in each soup ball, pinch it can be. The question is, where to find lard?
Before breaking through this puzzle, we used the reverse thinking method to deduce: Who does not touch lard?
schoolgirl! Girls' dormitory! Only they, when eating meat, habitually remove the fat oil. Thinking of this, he immediately rushed in that direction, and a little later, who said that there were no boys rushing ahead of us.
Knocked on many doors and were rejected. Fortunately, one of the innermost broken rooms actually had a large fat fat waiting, they cut off the fine meat and fried meat shreds, and the fat was discarded under the basin rack, ready to boil the oil in free time.
Good to say, finally with two bottles of "Pingwang hot sauce" in exchange for this piece of fat fat, according to the old grandmother's gesture, first cut the fat into small cubes, kneaded into the crisp sugar, repeatedly squeezed, hundreds of times kneaded, until the fat and "black puff pastry" completely kneaded into one, white sugar is not enough, mixed with some saccharin, tossed all afternoon, to the evening to achieve, the same four people only the one named L always stood by, he claimed to eat glutinous rice on the stomach pain, but the hemp crisp sugar is very fond of, looking at you busy, often cold to steal a piece to eat, In the afternoon, without doing a single thing, the crispy candy stole four or five pieces. The big guy was extremely angry, but he couldn't pull the dough off, and it was inconvenient to have a seizure. Because at night, I ate a "lard black foreign crisp" soup dumplings in a lively way, the mood was very good, and the same house went to sleep, the next day, my brother K on the upper bunk quietly said to me, in the middle of the night I heard the basket ringing, a look, it was L again, actually touched the dark to steal hemp crisp candy!
I opened it to see that the candy was noticeably less, and it was obvious that he had eaten and taken it and hoarded it. K thought about it and said, I have a way. I was told to tie the basket to death with a rope. He only took out one packet, and I don't know what he was going to do with it.
In the middle of the night, L came to the bottom of my bed to touch the basket, naturally could not open for a while, anxiously suddenly glimpsed something next to it, vaguely a bag of crispy candy, thinking that we were leftovers, quickly took it, hid in their own account, still counted multiple eyes, opened the flashlight to take a photo, verified that there was no doubt about the body, and then happily roared according to its habit and threw the whole package of "hemp crisp candy" into the big mouth - the ground, a thunderclap in the flat ground, L jumped up like a fire, whimpered and screamed out of the tent, spitting and choking barefoot out of the door, In the bitter cold of -16 ° C, it was vomiting and coughing, and the clicking sound in the throat and hissing were continuous, and we counted and sneezed a total of 16 sneezes. The next day, L moved away. K calmly explained that he had just put black pepper on and didn't expect the consequences to be so severe.
Many years later, I still love to eat crispy candy or lard black puff pastry dumplings. (Hu Zhanfen)