If it is April in spring, the green grass is growing leisurely in the field on the south slope of my home. Mother pulled it back, washed it by the well, chopped it up, knocked two eggs into a big blue and white porcelain bowl and mixed it with shallots. Pour it into the pot with a snort. Suddenly, a thick fragrance floated directly from my kitchen, and suddenly there was a fragrance floating over the whole village. I will definitely eat two more bowls of rice than usual at that meal. It can be said that it was probably the most beautiful taste on my tongue at first.
At home in the country, it is unrealistic to eat scrambled eggs with onions for every meal. Radish, salted beans, homemade bean paste, etc. It became the standard for three meals a day when I was a child. Therefore, I hope that the guests at home will always try to get some decent dishes, even if they are vegetarian dishes fried with lettuce, they should put more oil. This is also the sincerity of mother's hospitality.
I remember a Wang Shuji who was said to be in charge of the production team in the city. According to the practice of the production team, it was his turn to come to my house for lunch that day, and the production captain specially got half a catty of meat for my house. I didn't smell the meat for nearly six months after the Chinese New Year. I helped Secretary Wang put a piece of pork belly in my bowl with chopsticks during dinner. At the moment of entrance, the smell of meat stayed on my tongue for a long time, which was hard to swallow.
Although I seldom eat meat, I have fed pigs at home. The most unforgettable thing is that every time after dinner, my mother carefully sweeps up the leftovers on the table, pours them into an old washbasin, puts some rice bran, mixes them with the water from the pot, and feeds them to the pigs. The kitchen and stove are clean and tidy, and nothing is wasted.
After half a year, the pigs fed by my family will be driven out of the pigsty by the captain of the production team and divided into small portions by the butcher in the village. They will be delicious on the tip of everyone's tongue in the production team. My family is half of the country, and my father has been working in a foreign factory for many years. At that time, work was the only basis for distribution, and my family only got a pot of pig blood, a pair of small intestines and two pounds of neck meat, which was a generous reward for raising pigs for half a year. Anyway, this is meat, and my brother and I are still very happy. Seeing that we were happy, my mother's tired face showed a warm smile.
Bread is the pillar of life. On the premise of eating well, the first thing is to eat enough. It can be said that in my father's and grandfather's generation, both are struggling for food and clothing. They go out early and come back late, working hard, and their hunger has covered all the flavors on the tip of their tongue. Therefore, on the issue of food, the most important thing in my family for generations is food. We strictly follow a family rule, that is, eat as much as possible in a bowl and don't spoil food.
According to my father, Seven Sisters had a big table for dinner at home. Although it is a spectacular sight, my grandfather's request is not to talk about eating and sleeping, especially not to allow even a grain of rice to fall on the table. In those days, it was good to have food in the pot. When have you ever seen a delicious dish? No, you can't eat meat unless you celebrate the New Year. When father was eating, there were a few grains of rice left in the bowl. My grandfather's face fell at that time. He called his father to the dining table, pointed to the bowl with his rough forefinger and said loudly, Eat clean! Don't you know that a grain of food is a sweat? ! I think my grandfather at that time was not only an order, but more importantly, he inherited an indestructible frugal family style.
There was nothing delicious at that time. "Filling your stomach is a kind of happiness," my father said.
Everything my father said was true, especially those days. I believe this very much. Perhaps, this is a tradition inherited by my father. I still maintain a reverence for food. Every time after dinner, there will not be a grain of rice left in the bowl. Whether there is food or not, there is basically no leftovers on my dining table.
When I was seven years old, I was studying in my hometown. When you study, you have to go through several hurdles and go through villages to get to school. Mother got up early, put breakfast on the table, watched me finish eating and went to work in the production team. After eating, I put the leftover rice into a ceramic cup my father brought back from the factory and took it to school for lunch. Once, my mother put half a slice of salted fish on rice! I'm hungry because I have to walk so far before I get to school. I know that's my lunch. I can't eat it on the way.
In class, the rice and half a piece of salted fish in the ceramic cup under my desk attracted me like a magnet, tempting my hungry stomach. The class was finally over at noon. I rushed to the playground behind the school with a cup in my hand and couldn't wait to open the cup full of rice. Soon, the rice and the half piece of salted fish were quickly delivered to my mouth one by one, which is now called "second eating". That tastes really good! After the food stays in the mouth for only a short time, the tip of the tongue is stirred quickly and quickly enters the stomach bottom. The cup of rice just now is as clean as washed. I saw one side of the playground and watched my puppy leave disappointed.
As we grow older, we will divide the fields into households, so we no longer have to worry about food at home. In the first year of Chinese New Year, my mother went to a town ten miles away and bought eight pounds of pork. I still clearly remember that the fat of pork is really thick and shines in the winter sun. Mom said, the twelfth lunar month, all kinds of new year's goods are available, you can eat them! The more we eat, the more we have! Grass carp and pork are hung on the wall of the kitchen, and tofu ground by mother with soybeans and celery grown in her own field is in the bucket. The wood in the stove was burning brightly, and I saw the red flame rising to the side of the pot. The smell of meat colliding with ingredients quickly emanated from the pot, which directly stimulated my taste buds. These ingredients, through the mother's hand, have become rich dishes on the table. On New Year's Eve, eating New Year's Eve and watching the rich dishes, my taste buds gradually opened like lotus flowers.
Life is getting better and better. The dishes on the dining table are gradually enriched. Mom's cooking also has color and fragrance. Sometimes I accidentally dream that I seem to see those dishes cooked by my mother steaming on the table with a chopstick in my mouth. My tongue feels a kind of happiness that I have never felt before.
With the growth of age, many things have fallen into the long river of time. Looking back on the past, the sights and objects in my hometown seem clearer, especially the taste of rice, the light jar dishes and the hunger I have eaten, which have always remained in the memory of my tongue. Whenever and wherever, I will remember it and revisit it often.
On TV, a channel has a special program about the taste on the tip of the tongue. There are food in the country, firewood in the stove, bamboo shoots on the mountain and even snails in the field everywhere. Their color, fragrance and taste arouse people's appetite again and again. The ingredients and scenes that my hometown also has are played again and again by the photographic equipment in the city without taboo.
It suddenly occurred to me that the more time has passed through the baptism of years and the infiltration of time, no matter the delicacies of mountains and seas or the delicacies of the world, the simplest taste left on the tip of the tongue in hard days will always remain in the taste buds of life.
About the author: Tang Shuxun, a native of Yongzhou, Hunan, works in Xiangtan. He likes reading and writing, photography and calligraphy, planting flowers and grass, everything in life. This article contributes works for the author, and the pictures are all from the Internet.