My Father and Mother: (9) My stepmother made vinegar and soy sauce at that time

Here is an anecdote about my stepmother's homemade vinegar and soy sauce in the sixties and seventies of the last century.

At that time, people had just gotten rid of the great famine and the confusion of eating a big canteen, and they were all wasted and worked hard, but the economy was still relatively difficult, and various materials in the market were still relatively scarce.

You see, in the summer, my stepmother would use the family vinegar-making skills to make the vinegar for the family for a year.

Making vinegar at home is easy to say, but you should also pay attention to some things in the middle of the production process. First of all, prepare an urn suitable for your family to make vinegar, according to the needs of your family, large or small. Then, the prepared vinegar tank is cleaned inside and out, and the vinegar tank is exposed to the sun for a day or two, and then you can add water to put the raw materials for vinegar making. And the rice bald, also called the bald man, I remember that at that time, my stepmother told us that it was our Fenyang Guo Xianzhuang bald man who was the best.

Fill the jar where the vinegar is made with water, and the well water in our village is the best at that time, while the water in other villages is salt water and cannot be used. After adding water, first expose the water in the tank to the sun for two days, let the water kill and heat up, and then the sloppy, which we call locally "bald oil", is about three catties or soak in water, but can not soak the balm directly in the water, and also use the glutinous drop (Note 1) to hold the glutinous seed, hang the glutinous seed on the rolling pin, and put it on the vinegar tank, so that the porridge slowly melts in the middle of the water, and must not sink the porridge to the bottom, which is very important.

This process takes about a week. After a week of inspection, after the "bald oil" is completely melted, it is necessary to put the koji seed and seal the cylinder. Put the koji seeds of making vinegar into the vinegar jar according to the proportion of the water, and put some sorghum arrow shafts on it, and the top of the vinegar jar should be fully pasted with several layers of hemp paper, and then the vinegar jar can be put in the sun and exposed, about fifty or sixty days or so, that is, hot sun, so that good vinegar can be dried.

And in the middle of summer, when the sun is at its most poisonous, if you put your ear on the hemp in the vinegar jar, you can still hear the sound of the vinegar in the vinegar jar being sunburned and tumbling.

During the period of drying vinegar, we should pay special attention to one thing, that is, we must not let the vinegar tank rain, because the vinegar tank is closed with hemp paper, and when it rains, the hemp paper is rotten, and the rain goes in, and the vinegar will be broken, which will become what our local people say;

Therefore, every household will pay special attention to the vinegar people, as soon as the weather changes, quickly use stone pages (stone pages, a kind of red sand stone made of different sizes, round stone slabs, specially used to cover grain tanks, water tanks or something) or wooden boards to cover the vinegar tank to prevent water from entering the vinegar tank.

Writing this, I can't help but think of a somewhat heavy afterword that circulated in our Fenyang Xiaoyi area. People who are a little older in our Fenyang Xiaoyi area know such an allusion after the break; Dabao Ligai vinegar yellow (Note 2) - Liangxiedan (Liangxiedan, local vernacular, refers to Liangtan). If the outsiders listen to such an afterword, the big fort is covered with vinegar and yellow - the two associations. It must be inexplicable, what is this!

In fact, there are many post-break phrases in the mainland that have their own distinctive characteristics and specific expressions (for example, one of the post-breaks I talked about in the previous article; Mazhuang flail - not handy). is also something specific to our local area). Dabao is a village in the east of Xiaoyi City, about 20 miles away from our Yanwu Ancient Town, in the old days, there was a family in Dabao Village, the family was well-off, and they farmed and did business, and their son married a beautiful daughter-in-law, and after the honeymoon, they went out to do business again. The family left his old parents and his young and beautiful daughter-in-law, the old parents lived in the upper room, and the beautiful daughter-in-law lived in the west wing. At that time, they were also drying vinegar there.

In the summer of this year, his family also dried a vat of good vinegar according to the custom, and seeing that the twenty or thirty days of summer had passed, a vat of good vinegar was about to be dried. One day, when they were about to go to bed, the sky was still clear and full of stars. But there were unforeseen circumstances in the sky, and just when they were hazy and had just fallen asleep, a thunderstorm came unexpectedly, rumbling thunder, raindrops with copper coins, and bright lightning came at the same time.

In his sleep, he suddenly heard the rumbling thunder, and the old father was excited, and hurriedly got up. In the old days, people often slept naked at night in order to save money, and many people slept naked) turned over and got off the kang, opened the door and ran to the vinegar tank in the middle of the yard.

But at this moment, a bright and dazzling lightning came unexpectedly, and the courtyard was like daylight, and at this time the west wing room suddenly opened, only to see a young and beautiful daughter-in-law, wearing only a small pair of pants, naked upper body, two white raw chicken heads like nipples swaying, she also heard the thunder, and hurriedly ran out to cover the vinegar tank. However, under the bright lightning, I suddenly found that the old man who ran out of the upper room was about to run to the vinegar tank naked and wet.

At this time, the naked husband also found a young and beautiful daughter-in-law with her topless body and two nipples.

In a hurry, he protected his inconvenience with both hands, and hurriedly bent over and ran back to live in his own room.

And the young and beautiful daughter-in-law also saw her husband swaying naked under the lightning like daylight, embarrassed and shy, she also hurriedly used her hands to protect her pair of white nipples, and bent back to the west wing where she lived.

But just like that, a vat of good vinegar that was about to be dried was ruined by this unexpected thunderstorm.

This is a promiscuous phrase that circulates in our Fenxiao area, and the allusion of vinegar in Dabao is also a matter of vinegar in ancient and modern times.

After three volts of vinegar exposure in summer, after brewing, the stepmother put the vinegar into a vinegar vat dedicated to vinegar, that is, the vinegar yellow mentioned above, the good vinegar yellow put on the vinegar, it will not be bad for a year, and it is more and more fragrant, sweet and sour.

A good vinegar yellow with vinegar will not be bad for a year, and it will become more and more fragrant, sweet and sour.

And about vinegar yellow, there is a riddle about the stepmother; The mystery is vinegar yellow.

At that time, it was relatively simple to make soy sauce, which we called it locally.

The stepmother bought the rice and melted it in an iron pot, and it was also the time for the children to enjoy their mouths. At that time, the economy was not developed, materials were scarce, and the children did not have any snacks. After it just melted, the oil was boiling in the pot, thick and thick, exuding bursts of sweet fragrance.

The stepmother used chopsticks or a small piece of sorghum stalk to pick some from the pot, rolled it back and forth, and gave it to each of the children present, and that was a good delicacy for the children at that time. So, we jumped out and showed off to the kids.

After the oil is fully dissolved, add water to the love, and then put some star anise, cinnamon, peppercorns, and salt to boil out, and it is the red slave and fragrant soy sauce. It was delicious and colored, and the stepmother stored it in her black ceramic altar, and it couldn't be broken for a year.

At that time, the vinegar soy sauce, although the variety was single, but it was really made of real materials! It was definitely environmentally friendly and green, and there was absolutely no additives, so you could eat it with absolute confidence. Nowadays, vinegar and soy sauce are dazzling and varied. However, I don't know why, but I just can't taste the strong and evocative flavor that I used to have.

(Note 1) Itoluozi: Itoluozi is a local vernacular, which refers to a kind of net bag woven with fine hemp rope to send rice rice helmets to the field in the old days.

(Note 2) Vinegar yellow, a special urn used to store vinegar, less than one meter high, with a small mouth and a large belly