Ma Shi Wen / Wang Xiaozhou

Bathed in the spring light and smelling the earth, I returned to my hometown in the countryside. Walking into the village, it was already lunchtime. The third uncle carried a bowl of hemp food and squatted under the large locust tree at the mouth of the village, eating it with relish. In the "Walkman" on the side, the generous and tragic "WuYuan Killing House" of Ding Liangsheng, a popular Qin Cavity, was being played. Seeing me, the third uncle warmly greeted me to eat hemp food.

Hemp food, also known as hemp food, can also be written as hemp shi or ma shi zi, is a kind of noodle food that is very common in the countryside of Guanzhong. One side feeds one person with water and soil, and the other side makes one side eat. Guanzhong has been the country of Tianfu since ancient times, the fertile Weihe Plain is rich in wheat, and noodles are the main food of Guanzhong people. Saying that hemp food is ordinary, it is that everyone can do it, everyone can afford to eat it, and it can be eaten anytime and anywhere. It is said that hemp food is also said to have a history of 700 to 800 years, according to legend, it was originally invented by the ancestors of the Hui people in Guanzhong, and later accepted and loved by the Three Qin Han people, widely circulated, and is now one of the most favorite noodles eaten by northwestern people in Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and so on.

Hemp food is divided into rubbing hemp food and rolling hemp food, the townspeople call the rubbing hemp food diligent hemp food, and the rolled hemp food is called lazy hemp food. Rubbing hemp food requires rubbing one by one with your hands, which is troublesome and laborious to do. Lazy hemp food is much simpler, roll out into a small angled noodle with a little thickness, and rub it repeatedly. In the countryside, the villagers like to eat hemp food, idle rubbing hemp food, busy rolling hemp food, eating at least one or two meals a week, and thinking about panicking if they don't eat it for a week.

I don't like to eat lazy hemp food, only hand-rubbed hemp food. The first meal I learned to cook was rubbing hemp food. At that time, as long as the family ate hemp food, I begged my mother to rub hemp food, and in exchange for helping my mother rub hemp food. In the past, in the countryside of Guanzhong, cooking was a woman's business; girls helped their mothers wash dishes and cook from an early age, women had to do housework, they were guarding the house, this was a matter of natural righteousness for generations, and only women had a home; boys did not learn to cook, men did big things, they had to go south and north, and there were pillars in men's homes. Mother couldn't stand my hard grinding and agreed. Mother and noodles, I help wash the dishes. The dough was kneaded bare under the mother's hands. Only to see her pull down a ball of dough, rub it into a thick stick noodle, and then pinch the size of a fingernail, put it on the brim of a straw hat, rub it hard with the thumb of her right hand, and the other four fingers flicked it gently, and a small noodle roll with flowers, hemp food, was placed on the board. I followed my mother's example and clumsily rubbed the first grain of hemp food. Once raw, two times cooked, a stick noodles are finished, and my technique of rubbing hemp food is much more skilled.

My mother rubbed the hemp food while pulling the home cooking. Saying that it is a family routine, in fact, most of them are saying that I am just a loyal listener, and occasionally I will respond to a few voices. In less than half an hour, the board was full of raw hemp food. I admire my masterpiece triumphantly. The corners of my mother's mouth smiled and praised my hemp food for rubbing well. My mother's praise made me fall in love with cooking, no longer like my father, who had no food to eat without a woman.

The best thing to say is to fry leftovers. In the past, in the countryside, when making hemp food at home, it was often done a little more, and the rest was fried the next day. Usually the food has less oil and water, and the fried hemp cooking oil will be poured a little more, and the leftover hemp food fried will be more delicious than the newly made.

Eating hemp food has become a big hobby of mine. In the old days of teaching in the countryside, when I participated in the study of the University of Electricity on the weekend, my favorite food was the hemp food of the Weiqu Old Street Snack Shop. Two weeks without eating is hungry, the third week is two large bowls, only in this way can you enjoy. Even when you invite your girlfriend to dinner, you eat hemp food. I remember that the hemp food shop, the façade is not large, only two small, less than ten square meters, four or five tables, clean and comfortable, a young couple running. This hemp food tendon road, with tomatoes, carrots, soybeans, yellow cauliflower, green leafy vegetables, fungus, mushrooms, seaweed, etc., red, yellow, green, black, purple and white, colorful, braised, fried, dry mixed, spicy, three fresh, seafood, ordinary, full of taste, full of aroma. Diners are often full and sometimes have to wait in line, and some diners prefer to stand in the shop and eat.

In our family, I like to eat rubbing hemp food, my son likes to eat lazy hemp food, radish greens have their own love, and my wife has a lot of trouble making hemp food. Fortunately, she is quite tired of making hemp food, which is often "one country, two systems", of course, this hemp food is more flavorful and more fragrant.

Nowadays, in the barbecue stalls and skewer stalls of urban and rural night markets, in addition to grilled meat and skewers, the most common thing is hemp food. "Grilled meat, skewers, hemp food, fried noodles, eat!" Come and sit! The stallholders' muffled Guanzhong accents roared one after another, each one tempting than the other, and the aromas of hemp food, grilled meat and skewers drifted far away. Many restaurant staple food thin, hemp food is also impressively listed, it seems that hemp food is indeed the favorite of Guanzhong people.

I like to eat hemp food, but also because of the nostalgia and affection contained in it.