In the past, households used firewood as fuel for cooking and burning, and when firewood was burned, it would produce smoke to come out.
However, nowadays, cooking in the countryside is no longer used in the city, and almost all of them use liquefied gas or electricity, and there are also a few honeycomb coals.
In the past, the scene of "warming the distant villages and relying on the smoke in the ruins" is difficult to find in the countryside at present.
Wu Guozhen | © Written
Watermelon | © Typography
01
A fire in memory
Reveal the wisdom of life
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In my hometown of Xuchang, Henan, there is a very famous mantra called "whose stove fire does not smoke", and this "stove fire" refers to the kitchen.
The implication is that some things are like this, it is a normal phenomenon, there is no need to blame, picky. And its original intention is that everyone must eat, and if you want to eat, everyone must make a fire to cook, and if you want to cook, the kitchen will smoke.
There is an idiom called "fireworks in the world" that refers to the cooking smoke of mortals, and its extension means rice. There is also an idiom called "cooking smoke", which refers to the smoke rising in the kitchen when cooking.
Ever since humans learned that cooking food with fire or cooking food tastes more delicious, cooking food fuel has become an indispensable part of people's daily lives.
Whether it is the past firewood, coal, or later gas, induction cooker; whether it is from the initial cooking for food, or the development to the current focus on energy conservation and environmental protection, all reflect the continuous progress and improvement of human society, so as to achieve people's infinite yearning for a better life.
When I was a child, in front of my family's two adobe houses facing east and west, there was a small room that was also built with adobe and mud, and the roof was a stove made of wheat grass, which is called the kitchen in modern times.
The kitchen is small so it can only be said to be a small one. In the kitchen, there was nothing but a pot counter, a small bricked board for cutting vegetables, and a broken table for chopsticks and salt pots.
The pot was made of adobe and grass mud against the wall, shaped like a large nest with its mouth facing upwards.
The middle and bottom of the pot are each left with a square or round mouth, the middle mouth is used to fill the wood, and the bottom mouth is used to produce carbon ash.
The pot table is divided into a main pot table and a secondary pot table. The main pot table and the sub-pot table are connected together, and their internal structure is connected, but the secondary pot table is slightly higher than the main pot table.
The so-called sub-pot table was originally used to exhaust smoke, and then it was formed into a circle and sat on an iron pot filled with water, and when cooking, the heat of the smoke extraction was used to boil the water in the sub-pot counter into a pot of boiling water.
This is really a great invention of the working people, and it also shows that the vast rural areas, especially the rural areas of Henan, have known how to use energy rationally and skillfully for a long time.
02
Life is often a billowing smoke
At that time, in rural Henan, the fuel for cooking was basically firewood and grass.
Almost all of these firewood and grass come from the harvested crop stalks, such as corn stalks, bean stalks, wheat straw, tobacco stalks, sesame stalks and cotton stalks, etc. Of course, there are also firewood, but firewood is usually reluctant to burn, only when steamed or fried in the New Year.
I remember that at that time, my father was a brigade cadre, and he was too busy to go home all day, coupled with the fact that feudal ideas and machismo were rampant at that time, men did not cook, so it was often the mother who burned the fire and cooked alone.
Therefore, a few of us who were children often took the initiative to help our mother burn fires, carry water, and do what we could.
But the fire is quite technical and experienced, so we who are not deeply involved in the world often make it either extinguish the fire, or dry smoke and do not see the flames, and the smoke of the small kitchen is far from the poet's description of "cooking smoke", but "rolling cooking smoke".
My mother taught us by hand that when burning a fire, we should not add too much firewood and grass at once, so that the fire will be extinguished, and we should add firewood to a small amount, and gradually.
In addition, the burned carbon ash in the pot should be cleaned out from the bottom mouth with a burning stick in time, so that it is smooth, ventilated, and the flame is also strong.
Just like people do things, they can't be anxious, they can't be dry, calm down to understand the ideal, straighten out, and no matter how difficult things are, they will be solved.
The favorites of the pot are sesame stalks and bean stalks, which are themselves oily and fiery. Bean stalks, in particular, make a "crackling" sound when burning, just like setting off firecrackers.
I remember that at that time, when I was helping my mother to burn the fire, I often looked at the flame in a daze, and the flame was red and yellow, which was beautiful, and I couldn't help but make people think of it.
The firewood and grass of the pot are most afraid of even the rain, and it is not easy to get damp when encountering even the rainy firewood, although the mother has prepared in advance, such as preparing some firewood before the rain and putting it in the kitchen, but still can't stop the influence of moisture.
Coupled with the fact that the kitchen has been leaking rain for a long time, the firewood and grass are inevitably wet by the rain.
In this case, the mother will burn the fire herself, but the fire will be extinguished for a while, and when the mother is extinguished, she will blow it with her mouth, and then extinguish it and blow it again.
In this way, the mother was often filled with tears, coughed incessantly, and the small kitchen was filled with billowing smoke, which further subverted the romantic poetry of the ancient literati about cooking tobacco.
03
Under the new fuel, the new burner,
Condensed times change
This was followed by new fuel coal. But the coal was not willing to burn often because it was not easy to come by, but it was only burned for a period of time in the winter.
Each family builds a big coal fire in the main house, also called a stove, and it is good to cook and heat in winter. The coal fire was rectangular in shape, with a bowl-sized fire in the middle of the top.
On the left and right sides of the fire, the grass paste is used to form two semicircles resembling long strips of bread to support the rice pot rings, and the middle part of the outside of the coal fire leaves a square or round small opening for cinder.
When cooking, the coal sealed on the coal fire mouth is poked open, and everyone waits for the bottom of the pot to burn up, and when the rice is cooked, the coal fire mouth is resealed with the reconciled coal.
Of course, the mouth of the cinder in the middle cannot be sealed, otherwise the fire will be suffocated.
At that time, due to the difficulties of life, coupled with the fact that burning coal had to be pulled back by his father with painstaking efforts to use the rack car to the coal mine hundreds of miles away, commonly known as pulling coal up the mountain, so even in winter, the mother was reluctant to burn it, unless it snowed heavily or the weather was particularly cold, it was basically still based on burning firewood.
I remember that at that time, my mother would use the charcoal fire of the fire or burn sweet potatoes for our children at the mouth of the coal fire, and the sweet potatoes burned by my mother were sweet and delicious, and I still can't help but be full of food when I think about it.
I remember that our family began to burn honeycomb coal in the early 1980s, and it is said that honeycomb coal is named because of its shape like honeycomb.
At that time, the honeycomb coal stove was made of white iron sheet, which was relatively simple, and the honeycomb briquettes were made by themselves.
Making honeycomb briquettes is a kind of hard work, which is basically operated by my father in our family, but sometimes my sister and brother will also reach out to help, but occasionally the briquettes that I try to play are soft and unformed due to the lack of strength.
Honeycomb coal stove is simple and convenient to use relative to the coal stove table, as long as the bottom air inlet is opened when cooking, after cooking, press the new briquette, close the air intake and don't have to care about it.
In the evening, after cooking, two briquettes were pressed at a time, and by the next morning, when the fire door was opened, the fire was still vigorous. But my always frugal mother always put out the fire at night and rekindled it the next day, saving a coal honeycomb ball.
I joined the army in 1985, retired from the army in 1991, and then got married and had children separately from my parents.
Although the cooking is still burning honeycomb coal at this time, but the briquettes are rarely made by themselves, and the village and the merchants in the countryside have special sellers of finished briquettes, although it is more expensive than their own fighting, but they are saved and labor-saving.
After a few years of time began to burn liquefied gas, that kind of canned plus gas stove, a dozen on, make a meal for half an hour can not be used, saving the many inconveniences and troubles of burning honeycomb coal, in modern terms is both convenient and practical, but also scientific and environmental protection.
Later, an induction cooker was added and used cross-used with gas.
Now eighty years old and living with my fourth brother, my mother was always nagging about modern cooking stoves from the initial incomprehension, and later gladly accepted.
Nowadays, the government has gradually banned the use of coal as fuel and switched to modern combustion appliances with environmental protection properties based on environmental protection considerations.
The author has reason to believe that the current gas appliances with higher technology content are by no means the ultimate, but the form of future gas appliances is not known to me.
But one thing is certain, that is, it will develop towards a more practical, energy-saving, environmentally friendly, beautiful and efficient concept, so that cooking will become one of the carriers for people to feel or enjoy a happy and beautiful life in the future.
(Image from the Internet)