Appetite is a wolf everywhere. What can fill the hunger of life is always food, warmth and love.
Cousin Tiantian, see Xin'an.
Unexpectedly, in Germany, you have completed a "feat" this spring - buying half a pig from the supermarket! Then, exhausting his lifelong cooking skills, he made a variety of recipes: not only made ham, Cantonese char siu, Shaanxi-style meat, but also boiled barrel bone broth, marinated pork feet, boiled lard, ate fresh meat ravioli and meat buns every morning, even bought sausage filling utensils, made two flavors of sausages, and finally succeeded in stuffing this half pig into the limited refrigerator at home!
I know that the Russo-Ukrainian war and the epidemic in Europe have led to shortages of materials, soaring prices, and that oil, flour, and toilet paper in German supermarkets need to be snapped up, and you are afraid of shortages. But please, in the future, do what you can, and don't test your poor refrigerator at home anymore.
The world is hot and cold with this. At present, the refrigerator in our Shanghai family has also received great attention this spring. Looking at my colleagues and friends around me hoarding vegetables and hoarding food, crying and laughing, I remembered a book we had all read- "How to Cook Wolves".
The "wolf" is derived from Shakespeare's metaphor: "Appetite is a wolf everywhere." "The food writer Fisher wrote this book in 1942 not only to guide housewives in an era of material poverty, but also to teach people in chaos how to rediscover their precious daily lives." The same goes for meat, as well as eggs, and all the spices in the world that have been bought from afar, which were once so rare, are now overshadowed with a new meaning of importance. The last time you and I discussed the practice of red date bread, Fisher was particularly proud of in this book as "Eddie's Fast-Baking Bucket Bread." The special feature of this bread is that it uses a coffee pot, which can bake a four-fold strip of bread with a bit of creamy aroma, and children love to make it round and rolling. And the time it takes is too short for most bakers to imagine. It's a blood-boiling read, and you can be bold enough to try it.
Eighty years later, Fisher's little book, written during World War II, is still profound and moving, and maintains a sense of decency. She's not just talking about food, she's talking about literature, history, philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, and so on. "Wolf" is not only an appetite, but also a variety of unsatisfied desires in the world. When the habitual life changes drastically, the vicious face of the "wolf" takes shape. What "How to Cook The Wolf" conveys to us is a definite sense of security, so that people can live ordinary days in extraordinary times with determination and long streams. No matter how insecure the day is, you must also support your life with a meal that is not excessive.
Now, a photograph from two years ago in Shanghai is red again: cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and across the fence, several pairs of hands holding out the fence hold up their mobile phones, competing to capture the spring light. Unexpectedly, after two years, this scene in the photo reappeared around us again. Rushing to the first place in the Weibo hot search is "Shanghai I want to buy coffee": the community temporarily unsealed to buy vegetables for residents, and a woman in the busy chaos shouted while running: "I want to buy coffee!" "That's too real.
Trapped by the situation, trapped by the epidemic. At this moment, the ordinary life is the life of longing. Like the daily breakfast you used to pass on to me, bread, eggs, fruit, and coffee.
In the past few days, Shanghai has experienced a cold spring, the weather is cold and gray, and it seems that the breath of spring's warm arrival has suddenly been wiped out. However, after doing the nucleic acid, I still saw the cherry blossoms in full bloom at the Hongkou football field on the weekend without blue sky, ate the spring shoots, broad beans, artemisia and green shell snails, and remembered Fisher's words: "Because I know, I just know that the aroma of these dishes will make the beast weep with some shame beyond feeling and morality." ”
The epidemic and the war will eventually pass, and we will surely embrace it again through the vast world. There is not only heaviness and pain in life, but also joy and comfort, all kinds of insignificant but precious little blessings. (Finger Sand)
(This article will be exhibited in the "Beautiful Book" public art exhibition)