My father told me many times with a smile: When you were one year old, when you saw the rice on the dinner table, you stretched out your little hand from the wooden barrel you were sitting on to reach it, but you didn't grasp it, and the bowl was swept over, fell to the ground, and shattered. You are so frightened that you cry out again, Zhou Yiyuan, Zhou Yiyuan!
Zhou Yiyuan is my dad. That was 63 years ago.
Based on such an unforgettable experience, every time I eat, my bowl is clean, and there is not a single grain left.
Until I was in junior high school, my stomach was never full. At that time, the farmland, grain, rakes and hoes, etc., were collectively owned by the production team, and the daily farm work of the members was assigned by the production team leader, and most of the harvested grain was paid to the public grain, and the rest was distributed in a limited amount according to the population and labor. After the peanut oil is squeezed, a by-product is produced: a round peanut cake about an inch thick, heavy in weight, and dark in color. Peanut cake is different from soybean cake and rapeseed cake, it is fragrant, this fragrance is like fried peanuts, which can be eaten. Vegetable cakes and soybean cakes are not edible. However, peanut cakes are not eaten casually, and the team does not distribute them to each household, but leaves them for the pigs, cattle, sheep and rabbits raised by the production team as feed. In the autumn, new peanuts appeared, and Cao Rugang, my junior high school tablemate and another production team, carried a few angular peanut cakes the size of copper coins in his pocket, and took out one or two for me like a baby. These black peanut cakes filled the area around us with the aroma of ripe peanuts. I opened my mouth and chewed hard, making a muffled sound, and the more I chewed, the more fragrant it became. As a homemade snack between classes, the peanut cake is many times more fragrant than the current bread. After eating it, the mouth and stomach are happy, the blood circulation is accelerated, and the person also grows energetic, and the eyes are not dazzled and the head is no longer dizzy. However, after all, the ingredients of the peanut cake belong to the residue, and the oil is squeezed to the point that it is not easy to digest, and it is easy to eat, but it is not easy to pull it out. Every time I go to the pit, I have to use all my strength to feed, the green tendons next to my temples are swollen, and even my eyes are red.
Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group Administration Building
Liu Huailin, a classmate who lives in Zhongmadian, whose father works in a fruit company in the county seat, returns home once a week, and brings some apples and oranges that have been partially festered and are not suitable for sale to their brothers. Liu Huailin didn't forget to bring two to me the next day. That's the fragrant Guoguang apple, the unique taste of the Guoguang apple! Although a piece of meat has been peeled here, a hole has been gouged out there, and the flesh always has a little bit of a bad taste, it is a Kuniguang-flavored apple that I have never tasted again. Could it be that the quality of Guoguang has deteriorated, and fruit farmers have stopped planting?
Every year in October, it is the time to harvest peanuts. Peanuts, vines, wheat straws, and straw are stacked on the drying field, becoming a simple scene in the countryside. Wheat straw can be distributed to each household as fuel, but peanut vine is not distributed, and it is a valuable fodder for cattle, sheep and livestock in winter. During the winter holidays, we have nothing to do, so we use the sunbathing ground as a playground, basking in the sun, kicking shuttlecocks, picking up bean sprouts, or lying in the haystack to sleep. This one is particularly fragrant, and the air is permeated with the fragrance of herbs. When he was hungry, he picked up the blossoms and vines, and looked for the shriveled peanuts. The sharp horns of the small peanut are black and shriveled, shrunken into twisted flowers, and the fruit is not full. Peeling back the hard shell, the pink peanut grains smile at us. Don't look at it as much the size of a grain of rice, but it has a sweet taste and hides a trace amount of oil in it, which nourishes the stomach.
In the spring of one year, for some reason, the rabbits raised in the team died one after another, one today and one tomorrow, and they were all white rabbits. Dead rabbit, the breeder is reluctant to throw it away, to my grandmother. My grandmother took it to be scalded with boiling water, dehaired, and then washed in the small river in front of the door, and then boiled with green onions, ginger and garlic, accompanied by homemade soybean paste, which tasted very good. I grabbed the rabbit leg and gulped it down. Nowadays, whenever there is rabbit meat at the banquet, I don't look at it and don't move my chopsticks.
One summer, several strong laborers found a large snake in the building of the commune's asbestos factory and immediately roared and rounded it up. The captain of the production team, nicknamed Monkey, was bold, buckled the head of the snake on the beam, tore it hard from top to bottom, and the peeled skin was intact, and it is said that he sold it to the supply and marketing cooperatives and made erhu for the musical instrument factory. A large iron pot was erected on the square in front of the factory, and a pot full of river water was placed and simmered over a fierce fire. Five or six hours later, adults and children from all households were notified to come and eat snake meat and drink snake soup. I went late, divided a small piece, and drank half a bowl of soup. From then on, there will be no prickly heat on the body.
The county excavated a large river in Madian commune, and the name of the river is impossible to remember. The members of Jiaodang Commune live in my house en masse. Their canteen borrows the production team's barn next door. Every day, rice is boiled with radish greens and soy sauce soup, and meat is eaten once a week. There was a young man named Xiao Wuzi, who took aim at two pieces of half-refined and half-fat pork in the canteen cabinet during the day, took advantage of the night to step into the canteen, grabbed a square piece of meat, and cooked it with yams overnight. The moment the fire was lit, everyone stretched their heads and craned their necks and giggled. Under the blessing of the blazing fire, the meat slices crackled and danced in the iron pot, and the aroma of meat wafted wantonly with the smoke in front of the village.
Yangtze River Longfeng Hall of Traditional Chinese Medicine
My family used to live in two half-tiled and half-grass houses, one of which had a gable wall that was still leaking through wind and rain, and my mother decided to build three tiled houses. What to eat for carpenters, bricklayers and small workers is very nerve-wracking. It takes a month to build a house, and you can't afford to eat meat every day. My mother went to the commune food station to find her junior high school classmate Sun Yaying, and bought a few salted pig's heads back, and I was responsible for plucking, cleaning, and squatting for most of the day before I cleaned the salted pig's head inside and out. Then boil in a pot, simmer and then remove the bones. At noon the next day, the carpenter and the small worker were served with salted pig's head meat, and everyone was smiling as they ate.
I remember it was already very cold, and I went barefoot to step on river mussels in the creek behind the house. River mussels are mostly by the river. The mussel's lips are dull and tingling at the soles of the feet, but not as sharp as broken glass. The back of the mussel is in the shape of an irregular ball, and when you step on it, the protruding sphere will arch the soles of your feet. The lines of the river mussels lying horizontally on the bottom of the water feel from flat to round, or from round to flat. None of these three forms can escape my sensitive feet. In half a day's work, half a basket of large and small mussels was loaded. In addition to the salted pig's head meat, a dish of roasted river mussels with cabbage was added. At three or four o'clock in the afternoon, the host family will cook an evening tea for the craftsman, and the staple food is the unstuffed wine-fermented steamed buns steamed by the mother.
Lu Peiren, a junior high school classmate, was a good friend of mine, and they walked around each other during school. His father is the accountant of the production team, and his mother is a thrifty housekeeper. That year, his family killed New Year's pigs, and I saw a pair of bright red pork livers hanging on the wall in his kitchen, so I looked at it fixedly, and I couldn't take my eyes off it. While watching, I swallowed my saliva, then turned my head and looked at Lu Peiren, and the moment the eyes of the two people met, my face turned red.
There were seven or eight boys my age, and they usually played together. Sometimes we will go to Madian Street to see people making steamed buns, sticking baked cakes and fried fritters, smelling the aroma, quenching cravings, and having a good time. A companion quietly used the needle shaft on the spinning wheel at home to poke the meat buns in the cracks of the people in the queue, one by one, and then everyone went to the river to share food. When my mother found out, she was furious and beat me up.
From 1978 to 1980, I was a junior college student at Gaoyou Normal School, and the teaching and auxiliary materials distributed in the class were all engraved on steel plates and printed with ink. The head teacher gave me this errand and was paid a dime for carving a piece of wax paper the size of eight kai. With money in my pocket, every day, I took my books to the Grand Canal to read in the morning, and on the way back to school, I followed the fragrance and went to the People's Restaurant, where I bought a vegetable bun for nine cents, sometimes two. Gaoyou's vegetable buns are so delicious! Take a bite, the green vegetable filling is oily and bright green, sweet and delicious in the mouth, shining and vibrant.
Now, I ride 20 kilometers of mountain biking and play table tennis for two hours a day. Not long ago, golfers gathered, everyone toasted frequently, and the dishes were tasted. Only I don't have a cold dish or a hot stir-fried soup dish. The waiter asked what the main food was, and I said two pots of leek-filled dumplings. When the dumplings were served, most people ate one or two, some people didn't eat one, and I ate six in a row. The leader sitting on the chairman looked sideways and said: You have a lot of food! I nodded yes. Actually, I don't just eat a lot! Every feast, if you ask me to order food, I must order pork head meat and peanuts, which are classic appetizers. Otherwise, I always feel that something is missing, my heart is uncomfortable, and I feel imperfect. Even when I went to the Jiangnan Stove at the Shangri-La Hotel and the Meiyuan Restaurant at the Jinling Hotel, I was on the right track.
About author:Zhou Xu, a homesick and homesick old man who retired from a provincial agency.