My hometown is in Heilongjiang, and my hometown has vast fertile black soil, famous rice, soybeans, wheat, and golden corn planting belt. Corn is simple to grow, easy to process, easy to eat, suitable for all ages, tireless, affordable, nutritious and healthy. Corn is one of the most common food crops, and it is a food for life that is closely integrated with the lives of the people in the hometown.
At the table of the hometown people all year round, there must be one kind of corn related to corn every day: cornmeal flatbread, cornmeal nest head, corn paste, corn ballast porridge. In ordinary people's homes, the meal at night is basically drinking large ballast porridge, the reason is also very practical, childhood life, it was a difficult and difficult era. There is not enough food to eat, and each person can only divide 300 kilograms of coarse grain rations per year, of which 30 kilograms of wheat and 50 kilograms of sorghum, the rest are corn, and the rations for children are even smaller. Clever hometown people invented many ways to eat corn. Tender corn boiled to eat, old corn stewed to eat, dried corn fried crisp corn beans, popcorn in an iron pot, prefer to thresh the dried corn after threshing into a large ballast, with a large ballast boiled porridge, everyone calls it a large ballast porridge. It is the most popular staple food. This large ballast porridge was sealed by the Kangxi Emperor and written into the recipe of the imperial dining room.
Corn ballast porridge is the most suitable is to use a large iron pot to burn wood fire slow boiling, the first time the fire will be boiled in the pot of large ballast, the ballast basically just cracked the mouth, about half an hour after the opening of the pot, after the embers under the pot is extinguished, to burn once twice, this time heated, and then baked for a while, basically reach the degree of cooked thoroughness, if it feels light, burn the pot again three times, so that the boiled porridge is sticky, the meat is soft, soft and sweet, drink it while hot. The situation of the five sisters gathering around the Kang table to drink large ballast porridge is like yesterday, first blowing a few breaths along the edge of the bowl, and then sucking into the mouth along the edge of the bowl. "Hmmm... Whoops...", "Purr... Purring...", the sounds of drinking porridge are intertwined into a symphony of childhood meals. The porridge was sticky and chewy, and a special fragrance filled the entire mouth with a little sweetness. Filled the whole room.
If you add red kidney beans to cook, so that the color is more complete, the appetite is greatly increased. While boiling the porridge, boil salted duck eggs in a pot or peel potatoes. After the meal is good, drinking rice porridge, potatoes mixed with sauce, eating salted duck eggs, it is really beautiful. In those days, that was the best meal. In those bitter years, the sweetness of this large ballast porridge was endlessly evocative.
The most anticipated thing is to eat a large rice bowl in the hot summer. The boiled porridge is boiled several times with well-plucked cold water, and then put in cold water to make it a very refreshing rice, occasionally accompanied by a few black noodle steamed buns, and then served with a bowl of uncut salted cucumbers and salted radish. Take a bite of the big ballast porridge, take a bite of the salty and crisp pickled cucumber, and eat one by one. Then go to the small garden to plant a few green onions, pick two top flowers with thorny cucumbers, sit in the cool place at the top of the mountain to eat, not to mention how comfortable the stomach, soothe the bones, soothe the mood, comfortable sleep a nap, this is the happiness I pursued in that era. The porridge satisfies itself and also takes in the nutrients it needs. Strengthened my childhood body, but also let me experience the true meaning of "who knows the plate of Chinese food, the grains are hard".
The big ballast porridge has a strong sense of fullness but is not hungry, two bowls of stomach will feel full, after two hours it will be hungry again, coupled with the long winter nights and short days in the northeast region, the four of our brothers are half-grown children hungry fast, as the saying goes: "Half a size eats Lao Tzu." "In order to save grain, the farmers have three meals when they are busy, and two meals when the farmers are idle. It was a long night of hard work. To survive the long night of hunger, burn a few potato chips on the stove or fill your hunger with a few popcorn in a brazier. It was a rare happy time.
I remember that after I just moved to the building, I couldn't use a large iron pot to cook porridge, and I felt empty. Later, a small iron cart was pushed on the street to pull a large insulated can, and the sale of large porridge came into being. As he turned around, he shouted, "Big ballast porridge!" Hot porridge! "Whenever I hear a kind cry with a rural voice, I always have to buy a large porridge of one yuan and one water scoop and take it home to relieve my hunger."

When I drank rice porridge in my childhood, I hoped to eat steamed buns, dumplings, and noodles with fine grains. Now I want to drink a bowl of porridge every week. Away from home, every day exquisite life, various flavors take turns to eat. In a diet based on fine grains, the appetite has been very tired, and I always want to adjust the taste. You can't buy porridge here. There is no big iron pot, and there is no way to cook big ballast porridge. So through the express mail to buy the big ballast and kidney beans in the hometown, the use of rice cookers, pressure cookers, the big ballast porridge was successfully called back to the table. A bowl of unpretentious, sticky and delicious hometown "rice porridge", as a coarse grain to spice up the taste of the delicacy. My family must eat every week, especially with salted duck eggs, and with a little pickles, a piece of Kedong curd milk returned to a distant hometown, back to that distant childhood. Large ballast porridge is good for the spleen and stomach, moisturizing the intestines and anti-aging, preventing arteriosclerosis. That is, it is conducive to good health, the taste buds are improved, and the taste of hometown, the taste of childhood, but also taste a taste of homesickness.