My daughter returned to Shanghai and left at five o'clock in the morning. She got up early and didn't have time to eat early, so I distilled two buns for her and sandwiched them with the pickles left over from last night. When she left, she took only one with her. The next night, she called and said, "Mom, I regret not bringing both buns with me." After eating one, I still want to eat it! Pickles are so delicious! On the third night, she came home from work to look at the refrigerator, there was nothing to eat, and suddenly remembered the pot helmet and pickles mailed to her last winter, so she called and said: "Mom, can you let Dad make some pot helmets and pickles for me to mail?" ”
After her daughter returned to Shanghai for work during the Spring Festival, she did not have the opportunity to come back until the National Day holiday. When I got home, I was not idle, and I went back to My hometown in Lintong to see my grandmother, grandfather, aunt and uncle, because there were many people, and I ate in the restaurant. Even in Yangling, most of the time she goes to a familiar restaurant and eats her favorite meal, which is rare to make at home once. On the night of leaving, she suddenly said that she wanted to eat pickles. I remembered that the refrigerator had a piece of pickles that I had bought a long time ago. Every time I clean up the fridge, I can see it. However, the two of us work hours, rarely cook, coupled with the two years of eating pickles, the throat is always dry, the stomach is also irritating, so eating pickles is not as frequent as ever. Last time I bought a piece, cut it half a dish, and ate it until I ended up dumping it. It was dark, my daughter wanted to eat, and there was no place to go out to buy it, so I took out the pickle in the refrigerator, cut it into thin strips, soaked it in cold boiling water, squeezed the water, put a pinch of chopped red rice pepper, and covered it with a layer of white sesame seeds. Boil the oil, scoop a small spoonful of large safflower peppercorns into it, fry out the pepper flavor, filter out the pepper beans and throw them away, pour the boiling oil along the sesame millet peppers, and then put some chicken essence and stir. The pickles were brought to the table, and the daughter sandwiched a thick layer, mixed with vermicelli with green tomatoes fried with green peppers, and actually ate two steamed buns.
My daughter has worked for many years, often travels, north and south cuisine, all kinds of delicious, eating all kinds, it is difficult to count. Why is she so worried about pickles? I remembered that when my nephew was almost two years old, I was at home to take care of him. During the meal, four dishes were cooked, one of which was pickles. I went back to the kitchen to get chopsticks, and when I came back, I found his mouth bulging, his cheeks moving around, and a few shredded pickles left at the corners of his mouth. His right hand was reaching into the pickle dish, grasping the pickle with five little fingers, and when he saw me coming, he quickly grasped the pickle, raised his hand, quickly stuffed it into his mouth, and did not forget to rub it twice, afraid that I would find out. At that moment, I laughed so much that tears almost came out. Putting down the chopsticks, I picked up a tissue, wiped his mouth full of pickles, and hugged him tightly into my arms.
How can you blame a child? Didn't my brother and I both grow up that way?
When I was a child, I lacked food and clothing, and every winter and summer vacation, my brother and I would be sent to my uncle's house by my father. Entering my uncle's gate, our favorite place to go was the pickle urn of my uncle's house. The pickle urn is on the left side of the kitchen door, the sun comes out, the urn lid is open, and the salty aroma of radish mustard can be smelled in the distance. The urn contains chili peppers, green shoots, cowpeas, kohlrabi, artichoke, red and white radish... A wooden stick is inserted in the dish. The concubine sometimes uses it to flip up and down, and sometimes uses it to catch vegetables. At first I couldn't reach it, and when I saw that the concubines were always fishing for pickles in the urn, I stood up on a stool, looked back to see that there was no one, quickly fished out a piece of green shoots, and ate it in the corner of no one's wall. Either fish out two cowpeas, one for my brother and one for me, and compete with who eats fast. After growing taller, the uncle's pickle urn was still not changed, or placed on the left side of the kitchen. I took advantage of the concubine to go out, pulled my brother around, turned out the carrots I wanted to eat, one for each person, and ran to my grandfather's room to eat quietly.
My uncle's house was far away, and it took several hours to ride a bicycle. At that time, there was no watch, no specific time, only that my father took us out early in the morning, and I could not arrive until the sun was in the sky. We went out hungry, and halfway through, hunger was like a tiger's hand, digging in the stomach, digging people wanted to cry. The father comforted him and said that he would have food at his uncle's house. However, as soon as we entered my uncle's house, the concubine went to cook, and my brother and I were so hungry that we looked for food in the yard. Father let us go back. He lied to his uncle that there was still work in the field and that he had to go back early. We really thought my father was busy, and we didn't expect him to be as hungry as we were, and he had to ride his bicycle half a day home.
We gathered a knot of mustard root around a pickle urn and chewed it bite by bite. Yu zi was cooking in the kitchen, "Feng Xiang... Fengxiang..." I shouted, and I pretended not to hear it. Standing at the edge of the pickle urn, my brother and I clicked and ate the pickles against the bright and dangling sun. First bite a large piece, lick it with your tongue, suck the outer layer of salt into salty saliva, swallow it fragrantly, and then bite into pieces and touch it until the salt inside and out of the pickle is sucked clean, and then swallow the whole piece. That kind of incense is soothing to the stomach, it is infiltrated into the lungs, it is penetrating the bone marrow, it travels along every pore of the body, it makes my soul quiet, and it is also the most beautiful taste of the world at that time.
After the death of the old grandmother and grandfather, the uncle's pickle urn is still crouched on the left side of the kitchen door. The two people who loved us the most are gone, our lives are gradually getting better, and seeing pickles is no longer the hunger they used to feel. But my habit of going to my uncle's house remained the same, and I ran to the pickle urn first. The lid was open, there weren't as many pickles in the urn as before, the surface of the radishes were wrinkled, and a few leaves were floating on it. I picked up the aged wooden stick, stirred it, picked up a piece of ginger, took a bite, full of crisp mouth, took another bite, and the tears came down.
On weekdays, my mother would make us pickles at every meal. She also pickles in various ways. Pickled radish is almost never broken. When the grain was cut off in the spring, the mother would sometimes sit in the backyard, leaning against the back wall, picking up a piece of turnip and chewing it so much that she could not hear a sound. My father, on the other hand, walked the streets every day, came out early and returned late, and used his craft of repairing cage drawers to exchange food for us back to school. Except for the New Year's Festival, it is difficult to have half a bit of oil star in pickles.
When I go to the middle school to live in Tongpu, students will bring pickles when they return to school. One morning I read and got up, I couldn't remember what was the reason, and everyone was so noisy that they didn't want to go to the classroom. 20 girls took down the bun bag hanging on the bedside wall and opened it, and the pickle bottles were arranged in a row, which was thinner than the pot helmet incense burned by the mother of the family, and the shredded pickles cut by the mother. Bread bags are various. Plum Blossom's mother was skillful, she cut the rag pieces into triangles, embellished into a cloth bag with a "plum blossom" pattern, and a layer of white cloth was pasted inside. The flared oil pot helmet stained the white cloth yellow. She took out a piece and ate it while dropping the steamed bun flowers, and the oily bun flowers were slapped to the ground by her hands. I almost wanted to go over and follow it with both hands. Lingling's pickle bottle is glass, the red spicy oil precipitates to the bottom layer, and the shredded pickles seem to float on it. She turned the bottle upside down and shook it, then poured it back to open the lid, used chopsticks to clip it out, stuffed it into the open white steamed bun, squeezed it with both hands, and the red oil dripped on the spread book, she did not catch it, and after eating, she kneaded the whole book and skimmed it to the garbage basket.
I didn't cut pickles. There are no pickles in oil at home. I pulled out the pickle pieces and chewed on the steamed bun mixed with grain noodles, and my eyes swelled and hurt. Usually, when I eat, I try to avoid being with my classmates, afraid that others will see the coldness of my family's situation. When they ate, I went to the school's vegetable garden to read a book. When they were finished eating and went to the classroom, I went to eat a quick piece of steamed bun and drink half a jar of boiling water to flush. As long as the stomach is not hungry, where dare you think of eating the food of the oily spicy oil and the noodles?
After work, I rarely eat pickles. Pickles are mainly pickled at home. However, the better the day, the stronger the desire for pickles. If you don't eat pickles for a week, you always feel that life is tasteless. If I'm going to climb a mountain, I'll bring a few packets of squeezed vegetables. When you are tired, take out a few bites of pickles, and your body will grow stronger, and the soles of your feet will feel powerful. Friends know that I love pickles and every winter they get me a big bag of pickled radishes, which I put in the fridge and eat three times a day. One night, unable to sleep in the middle of the night, I got up and opened the refrigerator, took out two tablets to eat, felt at ease, and lay down and fell asleep quickly. The sound of pickled radish chewing always gives me a sense of belonging. The delicate salty taste will make me return to my uncle's pickle urn and look at the sun hanging high...
There is a small supermarket in the village selling all kinds of pickles. I don't like pickles with a sweet taste, and I don't like to eat greasy pickles. But inside there is a kind of loose cauliflower root, peeled and pickled, which is particularly crispy. Every time I come home, I buy it. Once bought a big bag, came back to store it in the refrigerator, and ate it when there was no taste in the mouth. I couldn't make a sound in my throat when I ate it, and I was reluctant to throw it away. During the Spring Festival, the family reunion, my brother bought a variety of raw materials, cooked a large table of colorful and fragrant dishes, but I would still go to buy pickles. As long as it is not cut, I like to buy it back and cut it myself. My brother loves to eat, my nephew loves to eat; I love to eat, and my daughter loves to eat. My mother also loves pickles. When my father saw pickles, he would also clip a few chopsticks. If the fathers are in the habit of staying because of the hardships of life, what about nephews and daughters? Their current diet is to eat whatever they want, why do they still love pickles so much?
This summer, my wife's test field planted two cucumbers. They couldn't eat it, the cucumbers soon grew old, and I thought of pickled cucumbers again. Peel the old cucumber, remove the urn, cut it into finger-shaped strips, marinate it in salt and sugar for half an hour, empty the water and put it in a glass jar. Pour a bottle of extremely fresh, two bottles of white vinegar, put in a handful of rock sugar, boil in a pot, put it out and let it cool. A small handful of peppercorns are fried in a little oil to make the aroma and sprinkled cold in cucumber strips. Then cut half a bowl of millet pepper and stir into the cucumber strips to add the spicy flavor. I poured the vinegar juice into a glass jar and sealed it, and opened it two days later to eat it, so crisp and fragrant that I couldn't stop eating. After that, no matter what kind of rice I ate, especially the greasy rice, I fished out a small half bowl of pickled cucumber strips and ate them, and my stomach became refreshing and energetic. From summer to autumn, I'm afraid I've eaten four or five cans of pickled cucumbers.
Putting down the phone, her dad went to the supermarket to buy four knots of mustard, and I cut it carefully for my daughter. The board jumped with the busy figure of her mother. She wore an apron, grew vegetables in the backyard, washed and chopped vegetables on the board, pickled vegetables in black clay pots, and we came home less often, the pickled vegetables spoiled year after year, and the vegetables in the field rotted season after season. The clay pot was discarded, her mother's back was deeply hunched, and her eyes were getting more and more sluggish. When her uncle came to see her, she also lost her joyful expression. After the death of his mother, the old things in the family were disposed of by his brother, along with the clay pot that had been pickled with the hope of his mother...
2021.10.10.13:50