Eating New Rice (Prose)
Author: Yan Yingxue (Jilin Songyuan)
In the Northeast, after the Mid-Autumn Festival, there is some obvious coolness. However, it is often at this time, when the crops are at their best. Corn, sorghum, soybeans, rice, etc., all like the bride and groom, smiling and happy to welcome the exciting harvest season.
The annual harvest is over, and the farmers have the joy and happiness of eating new rice.
Living in the city, although I don't feel the joy and happiness of eating new rice now, the feeling of living in the countryside and eating new rice as a child still lingers in my mind from time to time.
The hometown is in the countryside, and there is a big earthen hill in the backyard of the old house, and when you stand on the earthen hill, you can see the small river behind the village. The land in his hometown is not fertile, but it has also nurtured hard-working villagers for generations. The hometown is mainly rich in corn, sorghum, soybeans and other crops, small grains are also countless, the fields can be seen everywhere, when the summer rain is diligent, they grow gratifyingly, more than one person high crops, blocking people's vision.
The old house has a large vegetable garden, in addition to planting vegetables for the whole family to eat for a summer, as well as winter vegetables, and a large field of corn is planted in the rest of the place. In the summer, when the green corn in the vegetable garden was ripe, my father would break open the corn husks one by one to look at them, and when he found that they were ready to eat, he would break them off, and my mother would boil them in a large pot for half an hour, and the kitchen would smell the fresh smell of new corn.
When I got home from school, when I smelled the smell of new corn, I quickly put down my schoolbag, sat on the table, and ate the new corn, feeling that it was much better than the old grain, and the taste was different, no matter what the other dishes on the table were, I could eat two or three fresh corns in one go. The mother smiled on the side and said, "Don't worry, eat slowly, there is still something in the yard, eat new corn, we will eat new grain." ”
After listening to my mother's words, I pondered slowly, yes, this is not the "old grain" left over from last year, eating new corn is "new grain", no wonder it is so delicious.
In the cornfield in the vegetable garden of the old house, I can often see my father breaking corn. Every few days, my father would go into the cornfield, look at the corn, look at the corn, break this, pinch that, and in less than a month, the cornfield would be completely "settled", leaving only the bare corn stalks, dangling in the wind.
After the green corn stalks were cut down, my father would level the land, cut off the corn roots, and plant cabbage, radish, mustard greens, and carrots for the winter storage.
By the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the crops in the land are ripening one after another.
The corn spits out its golden beard and sways in the wind, the ears of sorghum blushed like a married girl, the ears of rice bend down to salute the earth that feeds them, and the soybeans shake their pods in the breeze, and from time to time make a sound in the pods, heralding another good harvest in the earth.
In the years when I lived in the countryside, I didn't live in the city, I always ate old grain, and everything I ate was the freshest when I lived in the countryside.
Every autumn, in order to eat fresh cornmeal, the corn particles harvested in the field are threshed, and they are hurriedly sent to the grain and rice processing factory, processed into cornmeal that still exudes the fragrance of corn, the mother stirs with warm water, and sticks a circle in the cauldron, the sweet taste is not much different from eating dumplings, the taste, the fragrant new cornmeal taste, permeated the house and outside for a long time.
There is a sorghum field in the west of the village, but it does not grow ordinary tall sorghum, the sorghum is short and short, it belongs to the fresh sorghum variety after hybridization, the particles are round, the ears are very large and large, the processed sorghum rice is white and clean, and the taste of eating is very special. The old family generally likes to eat "sorghum rice rice" in summer, and the new sorghum rice is even more delicious.
After the ears of the new sorghum are cut, they are simply threshed in their own yard and dried for a few days, and then they can be processed and peeled and eaten at the grain and rice processing factory. After the new sorghum is peeled, the particles are full, and the new sorghum rice cooked in a large pot exudes a unique aroma of sorghum rice.
My hometown is not far from the sea, it is more convenient to eat seafood, and when I was a child, people had an unwritten rule, which was a good meal: fried barracuda with sorghum rice!
Many years later, I still think about the special way I lived in the countryside as a child. One autumn, when the new rice was just on the market, I went back to my hometown to visit my comrades-in-arms.
When comrades-in-arms meet, they are naturally inseparable from drinking. But my comrades-in-arms in my hometown knew that I had been away from my hometown for many years and would definitely "miss" my childhood meals, so they said, "How about arranging for you to fry barracuda with sorghum rice?" I guess it was your childhood favorite. ”
Properly, those who know my heart are really comrades-in-arms.
The fish aroma of fried barracuda, the rice aroma of new sorghum rice, the two are combined, that is the great "fate", although the comrades-in-arms got together and drank a lot of wine, but it did not affect the big gulp of fried barracuda, bowl after bowl of sorghum rice, full of wine and rice, finally a matter of heart.
One year, the place in my hometown experimented with planting some rice, which was irrigated with underground well water. The harvest was in autumn, and although the yield was far less than that of rice irrigated by rivers or rivers, the ears of rice were still quite large. When it was time to harvest some rice and dry it, my mother asked me to ride a bicycle and take half a bag of rice to the village grain and rice processing factory to process rice.
On that day, I don't know if the moisture of the rice did not completely drop, or because there was a problem with the machinery of the grain and rice processing factory, the processed rice was not clean, some of the rice grains were peeled, and some were still with skin, there was a feeling of "bells and whistles", so I went home with doubts.
When my mother saw me coming home and was upset, she asked me what was the matter. I told my mother about it. Mother didn't blame her when she heard this. The mother simply picked the processed "not clean" rice grains, but it was really difficult to pick them clean, and at lunchtime, the mother "washed the rice" and put it in the pot.
The rice is ready, everyone picks the rice grains that have not taken off the skin, and at the same time pulls the rice that has taken off the skin to eat, although a meal of rice is eaten and swallowed dates, but also eats the fresh taste of new rice, in any case, fresh rice is much better than old rice.
In the countryside, it is a great joy to eat new rice every year. Even if it is a neighbor on the left and right, they have to inquire about each other and pass on the information.
"Aunt Zhang, do you have new rice at home?"
"Uncle Li, haven't you eaten new rice at home?"
Some families are too busy with farm work to eat new rice, and if they have a good relationship with their neighbors, they will send some through the wall or fence, or let the children use small pots to send some over, so that adults and children can "taste the taste of new rice".
New rice was eaten year after year, and new rice was eaten year after year. After the summer, the new rice becomes old rice, and in the blink of an eye, in the autumn, when there is new rice, the old rice is put down again.
In the years of eating new rice, we gradually grew up from ignorance, and our bodies were great, and we began to break into a new life when we traveled all over the world.
The vicissitudes of time, the calendar is turned over, the annual rings are rolling, and now it is time to eat new rice......
New rice, new rice! At this time, when it is time to eat new rice, can I still see my father peeling the green corn cob in the vegetable garden of the old house, and my mother making us a meal of new rice porridge that has not been completely threshed and cleaned?
▲About the author: Yan Yingxue, a native of Songyuan, Jilin. In recent years, he began to create prose, and his works have been scattered in "China Market Supervision News", "Chinese Veterans", "China Village", "Shanghai Prose", "Middle-aged and Elderly Times", "Jilin Daily", "Jilin Rural Daily", "Elderly Recreation Daily", "Happy", "Dadu River", "Peony Literature", "Camel Bell", "Northeast Writers", "Songyuan Daily", "Tongliao Daily", "Chifeng Daily", "Yanbian Daily", etc., and published military prose collections "Forever Jindalai", "Years Like a Song", "Far Away", etc.
Reprinted from "Literary Monthly"