Although the seventies are not hungry, but there are almost no snacks, children are hungry, they will try their best to find something to eat, as long as the poison does not die, we can all eat, in fact, do not think it is delicious, just to meet the psychological desire to eat snacks. Many of the things we ate back then, today's children have never seen or heard of. Today I listed some of them, and everyone saw if they had eaten?
First, the monkey, we call it the hemp bird here, it is estimated that everyone has eaten, which is also the only food that can still be eaten on the table when we were children. In the evening or after the rain, I knew that I began to climb out of the ground, after dinner, the children touched the tree next to the tree, and when it was dark, we could catch ten or eight, our way of eating was simple and direct, put it on the coal fire to bake for an hour or two, what spices were not put, even salt was not needed, roasted to remove the head and feet to eat, crispy. If you dare to go dark to the embankment a few miles away, you will catch more, then there is a reason for adults to waste a little oil, bake in the pot, put it on the plate, take the chopsticks and enjoy it decently.
cicada
2. Grasshoppers. There are still a small number of people who eat it, but it is limited to locusts, to be precise, the East Asian flying locust, which has large wings, which we call flying fluttering. When we were young, we not only ate East Asian flying locusts, but also grasshoppers that didn't fly very well, which we called old flattened dan, and they were also in our recipes. Grasshoppers do not know how to catch well, especially locusts, fly very fast, parents go to work in the field, occasionally bring one or two back, but also put on the coal fire to burn and eat. A few years ago, I heard about the locust plague in Shandong, and I was caught by the foodies who heard the news, but unfortunately I did not have this blessing, and I did not encounter a locust plague when I was a child, so I never ate a grasshopper in pain and happiness.
locust
Old flat shoulders
3. Scarab beetles. Probably many people have not eaten, scarab beetles have a variety of, not all of them can be eaten, including shell lang is also a golden turtle family. The kind we eat may be the Oriental Golden Turtle, brown, slightly larger than peanut rice, and the adults emerge in the spring. Because the color is a bit like the calyx of Yang Shu, people say that it is born from Yang Shu, so we call it Yang Gui Worm. It was unearthed in the evening, we took the bottle and caught it, and when we went home, we also roasted and ate, anyway, we didn't have to ask our parents for help, we did it ourselves, and we had enough food and clothing. There is also a kind of patina golden turtle, shiny in color, much larger, but can not eat, it is unearthed in the summer, we caught to feed the ducks, this golden turtle is particularly many, cornfields are everywhere, in a moment you can catch a large canned bottle, take it home and pour it into the basin, the sleeping duck is driven out of the circle, sizzle around the basin to eat a full meal, turn around and continue to sleep.
cockchafer
Fourth, oil worms. I still don't know which species it is, but it's certainly a small moth larva that grew up eating cottonseed. The oil worm was small, less than two centimeters long, golden in color, fat, and looked like it was delicious. Adults say it grew up eating cottonseed oil, so it's fragrant, but it's really fragrant. In the morning the children went to the production team's flower field to catch oil worms, and a layer of plastic sheet covering cotton was climbed, and we caught them in bottles and took them home. This can not be roasted on the side of the coal fire, because it is too small, baked can not be pinched, parents will use the hammer to bake yellow, we stand by the fire with our fingers dipped one by one to taste, because it is too small, put in the mouth accidentally can not find.
5. Crickets. Crickets are easier to catch than grasshoppers, but they are small, although they have the title of "called oil", they look fat, and they are not as delicious as grasshoppers, so they do not eat it when there are grasshoppers. But after the weather turned cold, there were no grasshoppers, no monkeys, only crickets. The Book of Poetry. In July, there is a sentence "August is in The Universe, September is in the house, October crickets enter my bed", and October crickets will also enter our house. At night, when I was roasting the fire, I heard the sound of crickets in one of the cracks in the coal fire, and some crickets accidentally ran out, which would become my meal, so I covered it and threw it to the stove, although it was smaller than nothing. In recent years, some people have come to collect crickets near our hometown, and a high-quality product can sell tens of thousands, but I don't know if there is such a high-quality cricket that I ate when I was a child, if there is, I can also be regarded as a person who has eaten tens of thousands of meals.
cricket
6. Spotted wax cicadas. Tell outsiders, they are all very strange: "This can also be eaten?" "We've really eaten it, but it's really not tasty, with a little bitterness, it sucks the juice of Ailanthus, and Ailanthus is bitter, from the root to the leaf. The patchy wax cicada is colorful, we call it "Flower Lady", because the belly is golden, like fat, we have the right to eat it when it is delicious, roasted and coaxed ourselves to eat it. Because it is easy to get, there are ailanthus trees in front of the house and behind the house, and you can catch a few when you go out, and you often eat them when you are a child.
Spotted wax cicada
7. Tang pear. Our hometown is called Tang Liu, until after middle school, I saw that Wang Yuwei in the "Selected Notes on Song Poems" had the sentence "Tang pear leaves fall carmine, buckwheat blossoms white snow fragrance", I did not know its correct name. This is not a fruit, the fruit is small and large, the taste is bitter, it is really a pastime, one by one thrown in the mouth to polish time. There is a big tang pear tree in the northeast corner of our village, when I follow my father to the ground to play, my father will ride to the wall, fold a branch down, we both sit on the ground, you and I eat one for a long time.
Tang pear
VIII. Jun Qianzi. We call it soft dates, and some places simply call them small persimmons and wild persimmons according to their appearance. Fortunately, it bears a lot, and there is a road in the east of the village that is planted with it, as long as you are willing to eat, you don't have to fight with other children, and you can manage enough. Jun Qianzi just picked can not eat, and persimmons, to "cover", each child has a method of each child, I buried it in the wheat pile, after a few days to plan out it will become soft, eat a little sweet.
Jun Qianzi
Nine, dragon sunflower. We call it black bitter egg because when ripe it is black and purple in color, sweet and slightly bitter. This is one of the few wild fruits that adults and children eat, when hoeing grass in the field, found a dragon flower, parents will share the ripe fruit with their children, but also to protect it, remember the location, and then go to the ground to see if there is any ripe. Dragon sunflower is easy to grow hairy ladybugs, eat the dragon sunflower leaves are full of holes, we will also be its guardian spirit, catch the hairy ladybug and trample to death.
Dragon Flower
Caterpillars
10. Lantern fruit. When the lantern fruit is not ripe, it is bitter, and the calyx of the long-ripe outer bread becomes dry, and the fruit inside changes from blue to purple, but there is no other taste except sour and bitter. If there is real fruit to eat, no one will ever eat it. Now there are artificially cultivated lantern fruits in the supermarket, I think the taste should be better, but I have never bought it, the taste of childhood is deeply burned in the mind, there is no interest in it.
Lantern fruit
11. Construct peaches. It is the fruit of the tree, this good is like a fruit, good-looking, but also delicious, that is, too little flesh. There is a problem that cannot be figured out, now the tree is a disaster, and the digging cannot be completed, but why when I was a child, there was only one tree in the dumb family in the village, and the children went to see which fruit was red every day, the child had more fruit and less fruit, and it was rare for a person to eat several times. Now the mountains are all over the place, and the fruit is red and rotten, and no one eats it.
Peach
XII. Amaranth seeds. There is a large piece of alfalfa at the east end of the village, and when the fruit is not yet ripe, we go to pick it and eat the white seeds in it, which are not fragrant, not sweet, but not bitter, for us, this is already very satisfied, after all, it is easy to get, there is no need to look for it everywhere. Children make small "scales" out of amaranth sticks, alfalfa leaves, and amaranth skins, play business games on the street, take waste paper as money, pretend to weigh a handful of amaranth, and tear half a piece of paper to find change, the fun of playing is greater than the pleasure of eating.
Amaranth
Xiii. Sedge roots. Probably there is really nothing to eat, and I can't figure out why I ate it when I was a child. It was very difficult to pull out, and it had to be roasted in the fire, and the furred skin was extremely difficult to clean, and only a little bit of peel was left. It takes a lot of effort, eating to the mouth mouth does not feel, eating to the stomach does not feel, but the child is not tired, do not know why?
sedges
Sedge roots
14. Ground yellow flowers. There are many wild ground yellows on the side of the road, after the flowers bloom, we pull out the flower tube, suck on the roots, a sweet silky taste will enter the mouth, a ground yellow can bloom a lot of flowers, when we go to school, a long way can suck for a long time. We figuratively call it "old man drinking." Adults often scare us that the old man drinks poisonous wine, people suck and die, we are also very afraid to listen, but for us in that era, the temptation of sweetness is really difficult to resist, because hard inhalation leads to drunken oxygen, dizziness, and thought that it was really poisoned.
In addition to these, in fact, there are many eaten, such as hairy buds, sweet roots (respectively, thatched inflorescences and rhizomes), sour dates, bottle grass, ground melons, etc. In that era of material scarcity, parents did not have extra money to spend on eating and dressing, the needs of children could not be met, only to find joy in the field.
July 15, 2021