When I left work, it was dark, and the street lights were all in full swing to watch the constant flow of traffic. The floor heating in the entrance door of the upper floor has long been opened, and the warmth is melting. The lover is busy in the kitchen, holding the stir-fry spoon handle in her left hand, the wrist is lifted and shaken a few times, and the fried tofu in the fried spoon is obediently flipping, and she looks like a chef. The lover's fried tofu is crispy and tender on the inside, the entrance is fresh and crisp, the family eats the lips and teeth of the mouth, and after eating the stomach, I can't help but think of the past in my grandmother's house, grinding soy milk with my grandfather and uncle, making tofu, selling tofu piece by piece, tearing my endless tofu love affair...
My uncle was only four years older than me, graduated from junior high school, and is now more than half a hundred years old. He worked as a small worker in the construction team, rode a bicycle to buy scrap items everywhere, and drove a donkey cart to sell rice, watermelon and other small businesses. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the daily life of people in their hometown was not rich, and they came and went in the fields, in addition to the cost of planting land, they could not save a few dollars a year, but the simple and generous fathers and villagers always had to be generous once before the new year, to improve their lives, cut meat and buy fish, kill chickens and geese, fry vegetables in oil, tofu is used for many purposes, it is the first choice of must-buy, and the family prepares New Year goods to entertain relatives and friends to spend the Spring Festival. The industrious villagers are busy with their own affairs in winter, humble and contented. Grandpa is a retired cadre from the rural credit cooperative, perhaps for many years of professional influence some economic minds, he realized that the demand for tofu before the Spring Festival is large, is to make tofu to sell tofu a golden business period, coupled with the older generation of people in my village have a tradition of making tofu, they rushed to buy a brand new rob, a large iron pot, iron basket, dustpan, handmade wooden scales, carefully selected to buy large and full of high-quality soybeans with bright colors as raw materials, and prepared to make tofu with my uncle who had just walked out of school. Grandma carefully sewed the tofu bun at home with a needle, and my father made two wooden square containers of tofu and tofu sticks for my uncle. Everything was ready, and the uncle started making tofu. At that time, the rural conditions were limited, making tofu was a tiring way to live, pouring water, cold in winter, very test people's patience and perseverance. After the school winter vacation, my parents asked me to go to my uncle's house to help make tofu, although we are uncles and nephews, but there are many topics to say between us, which is considered to be the same age.
Grandpa pushed a small iron cart to pour soybeans on a dustpan and led me to the village mill to grind soy milk. Grinding soybeans into raw pulp is only the first step in making tofu, and when we get home, we put the dustpan containing the original tofu pulp on the ground and the small pressure well next to it. I held the pressure rod in my hand, and my arm rose and fell to the iron basket to deliver water, and Grandma began to fill the large iron pot in front of the stove in the south house with water, and then pulled up the heavy and simple bellows, and the flames erupted from the stove mouth, reflecting Grandma's wrinkled face, and the rising smoke and hot air obscured the old man's white hair. Uncle uses an iron basket to pour boiling water into a dustpan containing tofu pulp, commonly known as "point pulp" in his hometown, this process is very important, you can remove the harmful substances and impurities in the tofu pulp, and then put the tofu pulp into a tofu bag made of fine robin, and tie it with a rope. The most tiring and the most critical part of tofu making began: only to see the uncle naked upper body, wash his hands and arms with water, put two wooden boards on the edge of the large iron pot, put the tofu package on it, and then rub and squeeze the soft and bulging tofu bag with both hands, so that the purer soy milk will flow into the pot one drop at a time, and only some tofu residue will be left in the tofu bag, so repeated many times until the original pulp in the dustpan is kneaded hard, and the uncle can breathe and rest for a while. Grandma pulled the bellows again, and the smell of smoke, heat, and beans filled the entire stove. Grandma stood up straight in front of the dining room for a while, rubbed the dust on her hair with her hands, scooped a bowl of pure bean juice with a scoop, let me drink a bite to taste, the slightly sour bean flavor, compared to the so-called "pure, nutritious" soy milk concocted on the street stalls now is much stronger, I don't know if it is now difficult to serve, or miss the monotonous and simple rural life of the hour? Next, it was Grandpa's turn to appear, he lifted the lid of the pot, scooped some "sour soup" from a small urn and called "old soup" (when starting to grind soy milk, deliberately left a small part in the closed urn, the tank, so that it fermented into acid, playing the role of brine point tofu) poured into a large iron pot, the protein in the original pulp began to solidify and precipitate, and the pointing of the sour soup made the soy milk begin to become tofu brain-shaped. The old soup should be put into how much is appropriate, put more tofu to do old, the taste is worse, the pulp water is less, the output can not produce enough weight, the profit is naturally less; the old soup put less tofu contains more pulp water, the appearance is not smooth pits and pits, the selling appearance is not good, only to sell cheaply. Grandpa is a retired cadre, hukou is outside, has been living with his uncle. He has done everything in the family in the field, a life of incorruptibility and diligence, not idle in his later years, sometimes to make tofu and uncle also have to lift a few bars, they all want to take their own tofu standards and experience to ask and measure each other, no matter how to argue about the tofu brain finally put into a square mold, wrapped in sand cloth and put on a large bluestone pressed and formed, the busy figure of the family can be regarded as a resting space.
Zouping generation of groundwater belongs to the southern mountainous areas of the best water quality, the taste is clear and pure, rich in a variety of minerals and trace elements needed by the human body, the tofu made of it is tender and smooth, the taste is good, the color is white, the hair is good, the amount is large, men and women and children like to eat. Although the groundwater in my village is not as good as the water in the southern mountainous areas, the tofu made by the old people after years of exploration, practice, and accumulation of experience is still very popular in some villages in neighboring townships such as Sun Town and Jiuhu. Some villages in the north of Handian with Sun Town, Jiuhu the same groundwater is very salty, high fluoride content, impurities, drink such water all year round easy to make people's teeth yellow, with such water to make the tofu color is light yellow, small size, poor taste, under the oil pot can not afford to start, so the southern mountains and my village tofu car to Sun Town, Jiuhu and other places will be very popular, did not wait for the crisp tofu sticks to ring a few more sounds, shipped tofu soon sold out.
In the winter, my uncle and I got up at dawn, rode a large-wheeled bicycle, sealed a tofu mold in the back seat, and took a stick, a portable wooden pole scale, and a plastic nylon bag, and headed north to the north in the cold moon or in the darkest hour before dawn. Walking out of the village road to the provincial highway Qingzi Road, only to see that there are more colleagues who got up earlier than us from Chengnan, Xidong and other places on the road, they are also riding bicycles, wearing cotton hats and cotton coats in a hurry to their respective hometowns. When we arrived at the village, my uncle parked the tofu cart and knocked on the sticks a few times, and the villagers began to come out of the doorways of each hutong, and the cold street became lively. Everyone greeted their uncles, chatted and bargained, began to weigh tofu, or on-site settlement, or credit, and in a short while a tofu was sold out, and the nylon bag was filled with soybeans, corn, wheat and other grains. When we rushed home, Grandma had already prepared a meal on the stove and was waiting for us to come back. I drank a mouthful of cornmeal sweet potato porridge, ate a large steamed bun, came to a piece of vegetable pancake roll scallions, and served a bowl of tofu, vermicelli, and sporadic pork stew cabbage soup, and I felt a lot more comfortable and warm in my heart.
There was an old man in the village who was stingy and frugal. Whenever he heard the sound of the zizi sound, he hurried out of the house, first with a tofu knife to cut a small piece into his mouth, taste it, and then said that people's tofu was not sour, and even waved his hand to say that tofu could not be bought, or played a little trick, first let the family give good tofu, at that time, not settled, but used the tray to hold it home, poured out the pulp water in the tray, and then came to find the amount of tofu that was not enough, and had to be white to catch up on the point to be finished. Are from the peasant background, the tofu owner of the outer village understands the mood of the elderly and the difficulties in life, in line with the principle of harmony and wealth, let him taste it for free, it does not matter if he dips a little cheap, to do tofu trading is not to try to have everyone eat and drink, peace and security are blessed, all (pocket) come to live a happy life. At that time, many people in the village who made tofu were not sold in the village, and they felt that when the zhuang dangyuan bargained in person, the face could not be erased, and people's awareness of goods was not as strong as it is now. Making tofu is just a continuation of another way of working in the winter agricultural leisure season, one can earn some money to prepare new year goods, and the other is that the tofu residue can be raised to raise a few pigs to fatten out of the barn, earn a whole money, make more farm manure, and make plans for the next spring.
Tofu is rich in nutrients, and there are various ways to eat it, such as cold mixing, hot stir-frying, frying, and slow simmering. As the saying goes, fish make fire, meat produce phlegm, and green vegetables and tofu keep safe. In the cold winter moon, the dripping water turns into ice. The colder the time, the better the tofu is to sell, close to the End of the Year to buy tofu need to be booked in advance, usually frugal farmers are generous at this time, most families have to buy a whole tofu, in the Spring Festival to entertain relatives and friends to come in handy, my uncle and I are busier than usual. The uncle parked the bicycle, did not have to knock on the stick, directly moved the tofu mold to the farm yard, skillfully used the tofu knife to cut the whole tofu into a dozen small pieces, and then used a pencil to write down the name of the owner and the name of the next buyer and the time to deliver the tofu in the ledger. For a long time, I am familiar with the villagers, I trust each other very much, I am never afraid of credit, we are busy and have no time to settle the account, the grain for tofu is not collected for the time being, just to save time and run home, take the tofu to go back again, the simple and generous villagers pulled the uncle and I repeatedly asked to eat and go back, the uncle smiled and refused everyone's kindness, insisted on returning home, and the steaming tofu needed us to ship out, and there were more grandparents' concerns and love beckoning us. In those years of making tofu and selling tofu, my uncle gained credibility and friendship, and I witnessed the simple folk customs and customs of the countryside and the bittersweet, bittersweet, joyful and sad in the daily life of ordinary people.
When the year came, my uncle began to settle the tofu accounts in various villages, and I also wanted to return to my parents. My uncle gave me a tofu for my parents to use to fry vegetables, and my grandmother said with some sadness: "Little things, one winter in front of me to run around, but I don't accompany my old wife in the New Year." Although my grandmother "accused" me of this, she always took a few ten yuan bills from the handkerchief and stuffed them into my brother and me on the morning of the first day of the New Year, and when my father led me and my brother to kowtow to her and her grandfather, I felt that I was so old, and I still had to press the old money to make people laugh and resign. Grandma said: "You are the eldest grandson, there are many uses, help your uncle sell tofu and do not have to pay for it, these few dollars are a reward for you, you must study well in the future, find a good job, don't be like your uncle can only sweat hard to do some small business and mixed rice." ”
Now I have been away from the land for more than a decade and have been doing financial work in the company for many years. The office has air conditioning in summer and heating in winter, without the pain of field crops and the hard work of running in winter. Every morning before 6 o'clock in the morning to send the young daughter to school, with the lover hurried breakfast, away from home to their respective units to start a busy and ordinary life. Driving on the wide highway, you can only see the speeding cars, and you will never see the army of bicycles riding hot tofu on the narrow asphalt road more than thirty years ago. Nowadays, I am accustomed to seeing the tofu in the market mall, and I eat it now, such as a few pounds of fat sausages and a handful of green leafy vegetables, which is a good meal. The crisp and pleasant sound of zizi has been replaced by an electronic scale that displays the price of the real-time quotation, cash, WeChat payment, convenient and fast. Young Liso is very good at attracting business handsome teenagers, tofu sells fast, sells well, a dime, two hairs of the fraction never want, leisure time do not forget to play mobile phone brush screen browsing circle of friends, send, grab red packets, business fashion is not wrong, dashing free. A few old people in the village who used to make tofu said bluntly, now the young people are amazing, we are outdated, old and useless, only to eat enough to take care of the grandchildren, hang out in the mall and walk the road.
The white and delicate, smooth entrance, nourishing spirit, warm heart of the farmhouse tofu, gave me a period of time to understand and be close to it when I was young. The soybeans that grow tenaciously from the barren land that never greedily and luxurily ask for too much nutrition, from the full body to the "crushed bones", completed the affectionate gift of an ordinary crop to the earth to mankind, and then accompanied and enriched our three meals a day, nourishing our body, it is pure and white, and the appearance is consistent. Although I have not eaten too many mountain treasures and seafood, I can't help but chicken, duck and fish meat in my daily life. Reasonable diet, balanced nutrition, and attention to health care have become the topics that middle-aged and elderly friends are more concerned about. I am glad that I know and experienced some things about tofu, and I have a different kind of feeling for it, I can't get tired of eating, kind and awe, just like the work and responsibility I am now engaged in, and I can't help but think of what my grandfather said to me before he died: "Be honest and innocent, and do your best to do things in a down-to-earth manner." ”
The innocent farmhouse tofu and the farmhouse rice that can never be eaten enough are my lifelong nostalgia. Although I have been away from the land for many years, my heart is still rooted here, and I have this love affair with tofu, and I feel that life is happy.
Born after the One Point Dragon Boat Festival