When I went to the countryside to become a young man, there were only six big and small men in the collective household where I was located, and not a single woman. When we are at home, we are all eating and opening our mouths, and no one can cook. But the problem is in front of us, if you don't cook, you have to starve, what to do? I had to work shifts, and each person was a "guy" for a week.
When he first went to the countryside, Zhiqing had three pounds of fine grain per person a month, and the rest were all brown rice noodles. Three pounds of fine grains will be eaten in a few days after letting go of the stomach, so you can only eat the brown rice noodle cake with a hard scalp. This kind of pot paste cake, we also learned from the landlord's wife, according to the gourd painting scoop. Watching the landlord's wife pull out a piece of reconciled noodles from the basin, her hands are lumped together, kneaded into an oval shape, and then like a child playing with the mud, "snapping" on the pot gang, it is very interesting.
Finally, it was my turn to be on duty, and I usually simulated it many times in my mind, so I was not in a hurry when I took office. First brush the pot stove, light the fire, pour oil, add water, and pour the cut cabbage into the pot. Then I put the reconciled bud rice noodles into a ball by hand, "snapped" twice, and dropped two. When I was about to knead the third one, the two large cakes that had been attached to the pot earlier did not heed the call, and slipped straight out of the pot. When I saw it badly, I shouted instead of moving: "Big lady, it's not good!" "The landlord's wife was drying firewood outside the gate, when she heard a shout and thought that there was an accident with the fire in the house, and the little broken step quickly ran into the house. And I pouted my ass, leaned over the cauldron, and with one hand covered a large cake pasted on the pot gang and did not dare to let go.
The landlord looked at me and smiled back and forth and asked me what I was doing. I told the eldest lady that the big cake slipped out and I couldn't let go of my hand. The hostess asked me to take the flatbread down first. Then he said to me, "You wild boys, you usually don't have the right tone, and you don't study well." The flatbread must be heated before it can be pasted. The pot is not hot, the gods can't stick it, can you not slip into the pot? A dozen big loaves, how many hands do you have to cover them? I blushed and embarrassed myself.
Later, I slowly learned that this kind of brown rice noodle cake is also very difficult to make. The brown rice noodles should be scalded with boiling water, if it is hot, it will stain the teeth when it is eaten, and if it is less hot, the big cake will diverge and not tendon. And there is also a special use of fire, the fire is small and can not be baked out of gá. The fire is big, and the pie will still be mushy, so you must master the heat.
More than three months after going to the countryside, I was cooking on duty that day. Just as I was about to go to work in the fields in the morning, the head of the household suddenly made a decision that surprised me. Because the grain received by the collective household is not enough, a few of us can eat it, there is no way, the production captain helped us solve the point of brown rice the day before yesterday. After grinding the bracts into brown rice noodles, the production captain asked me to sift out the bran inside the brown rice noodles so that they were delicious. But I never expected that when the head of the household walked out of the door, he came back to tell me that I would mix the chaff that had been sifted out and back into the brown rice noodles.
I was stunned, could it be that I heard it wrong? It's impossible, that's what the head of the household said. "How much do you put in?" I asked him. "Full exchange ukquku race back!" Mix well. Otherwise, there is still not enough food to eat this month. The head of household said helplessly. I finally understood why, and my heart understood. After everyone went to work, I cleaned up the house, brushed the dishes and chopsticks, spread a large piece of plastic sheet on the kang, and then poured half a bag of brown rice noodles on the plastic sheet, and then poured a sifted pot of chaff on the brown rice noodles and stirred it with a rolling pin.
Just as I was getting up, the door to the outhouse opened and a familiar voice came in. It sounded like it was my mom. I was in a trance, hurriedly opened the door, and sure enough, it was my mother. Behind her was my neighbor Aunt Li. "Remembering you, let's take a look." You Aunt Li said to accompany me, by the way, also to see what the collective household is like. "Aunt Li's children are also about to reach the age of going to the countryside, and they must be uneasy about being a mother, so they come in advance to familiarize themselves with the environment."
My mother suddenly arrived, and I was both happy and worried. Because there are still brown rice noodles on the kang in the house, if she sees that we are eating brown rice noodles and mixing chaff, she will definitely be sad. I thought about it for a while, so I stepped into the house one step at a time, pushed the large plastic sheet on the kang by the hand, pulled it hard, and covered the brown rice noodles. My mother and Aunt Li entered the house on their back feet, sat on the edge of the kang, and looked at the shed, the wall, the kang, and the ground three times. When chatting, they inquired closely about the life and production of the collective household, and even if I dared to tell the truth, I tried to avoid some topics, and when it came to the key, I inquired about some situations at home and diverted the topic.
My mother said she was in a hurry and was thirsty, so she asked me to get her some water to drink. I said there was no hot water in the house. My mother said, just go to the water tank and scoop some cold water. When I entered the house from the outhouse kitchen with two bowls of cold water in my hands, I saw that my mother and Aunt Li had already lifted the plastic sheet covering the bud rice noodles on the kang. Finished! This time it was all dew filling.
"Is this what you eat?" My mom and Aunt Lee asked.
I want to lie in good faith and say feed the pigs and feed the chickens or something. However, there are no chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs in the collective household, which is obviously impossible to bluff. No way, I had to tell the truth. The mother gritted her teeth and did not speak for half a day, and then saw that Aunt Li's tears could not stop flowing. They sat for a while and then left, saying they wouldn't let me send anything. I watched their distant backs, and my heart felt uncomfortable.
There is one more thing that I remember vividly. Because I was young, the captain arranged a good job for me - rake. Although this kind of work is buried, it is relatively light. After the snow and ice melt, the rice fields are turned over with a plough and then soaked in water for more than ten days. I led a cattle cow, and after the cow, holding a large long plank of wood on a rope, I walked from one to another in the soaked rice field, crushing the big rice field, dragging the soil from the high place to the low place, and ironing the rice field like an iron ironing suit.
I led the cattle and circled them in circles. This cow is very docile, that is, the tail is not honest, from time to time it swings from side to side, throwing the mud soup at me. The more I looked at it, the more angry I became, so I hit it twice, and the cow's tail didn't fling. But after a while, its tail moved again, and I was thrown out of the mud again.
The sunset set, there was the sound of the captain summoning the end of the work, I was also very tired, I saw that the clothes and pants were full of mud, anyway, they were dirty, simply rode the bull back. The yellow cow drove me step by step in the dusk towards the smoky tunzi. After dinner, I washed my mud-stained clothes during the day. As I washed, I suddenly remembered something and found a clump of hemp rope in the house.
The next day, when I was in the rice paddies, I put the planks on the cattle and took out the hemp rope from my pocket. The cow's tail was first tied with hemp rope, and then the ox's tail was dragged obliquely to the back of the cow, and after tightening, the other end was tied to the wooden board at the cow's neck. The cow began to want to wag its tail, but it couldn't shake it hard, and it was too anxious to play. I used wicker to smoke cattle. It stared at the eyeballs and groaned, and I was secretly happy in my heart, and my heart said: Let you make it bad, and have the ability to resist you to flick your tail again!
At some point, the captain came, and after seeing it, he asked who tied this bull's tail. I said it was me tethered because it wasn't honest and always threw mud. The captain said sternly, "Not honest? Do you know what this cow tail is for? That's to drive away mosquitoes and blind midges. The big blind midge bites the cow and drinks the blood of the cow, can the cow be honest? "It wasn't until this time that I learned that the ox tail had such a special function, and I realized that my ignorance had done a stupid thing, and while admitting my mistake to the captain, I hurriedly untied the hemp rope tied to the ox tail.
(Li Zhengang, Shuangliao)