Every year in the spring, the field is the first to grow out of the chestnut, do not wait until it draws the rod to flower to dig to, is more tender. Shepherd's purse is often eaten scrambled eggs, or do filling dumplings, although simple but full of flavor, is not comparable to fish and meat and so on. The capsule is now also often eaten, supermarkets can buy capsule filling dumplings, the market can also buy the old lady dug to wash and choose good capsule.
But there are still some wild vegetables that people in this era do not eat carefully, or that young people do not necessarily recognize. It is the common gray ash, silver ash, silver silver beet and broom seedling, I remember when I was a child, I often drank my mother with them made of wild vegetables and egg soup, the eggs are still home-raised chickens under the. If you want to identify, ash grey leaves with some red, some gray powder; silver ash greens on the green leaves with some silver gray powder; silver silver cabbage does not have gray powder. The broom seedling often grows to be a large fluffy, although the name sounds inedible, because it can be used to tie into a broom when it grows old, but in the spring when it grows vigorously pinch off the top of the young leaves, to make a soup dish is also a light and delicious flavor.
And now the more expensive toon sprouts are also a wonderful flavor. I remember when I was a child, my family's own land grew a small toon tree, alone at one end of the field, Mom and Dad found after hoeing fertilizer plowing is never careful to bypass it, so that it grows taller and grows up. Every spring, mom will be happy to pinch back a small handful of parsnip buds scrambled eggs to eat. This is my earliest gastronomic exposure to the toon.
Of course, there's a food that's called "horse jelly" (谐音) in Linyi that should be familiar to everyone. My hometown is in southwestern Shandong, and it's called horse stinging cabbage on our side. There is a piece of land behind my house that produces a lot of horseweed every spring. Until the last few years, when I planted asparagus, there was still a lot of horseweed growing in the wide rows of land. Before my mom weeded the field and brought it back to feed the goats, she would pick out the hornet's lettuce, wash it, chop it up and mix it with noodles mixed with eggs and salt, put it on a cage drawer and steam it, and then pour garlic on it and drizzle it with sesame oil and mix it, which was very tasty! Later in this side of the restaurant also ordered a cold jellyfish vegetables, but not as delicious as I imagined. Later, I learned that it is the scientific name of amaranth.
When it comes to eating steamed horseradish, you can't help but mention the deliciousness of the trees. The spring delicacy not only grows in the soil, but also grows in the tall trees. The elm money on the elm tree, the acacia flowers on the acacia tree, picking the first young buds down to wash and mix with egg batter, or steamed or fried or made into cakes, but also has a special flavor. Even the simplest way for us kids to eat - climbing up a tree and running down the elm or acacia flowers from the branches directly into the mouth, is full of sweet flavor.
Speaking of which, I think of the mulberry. The mulberry tree is full of mulberry fruit, the children are more all become the king of climbing trees. I remember around the village on both sides of the diversion canal, not far away from one or two mulberry trees. The closest one to my house has a hug thick, the fruit of the mulberry is purple-red when ripe. I have climbed to the big mulberry tree to eat a mouth full of purple. There is another kind of mulberry tree that bears white fruits, which are also white when ripe and seem to taste sweeter.
After the implementation of the parcel to the household in the eighties, most of the fields allocated to each family were regular mobile lotteries, but every family had one or two pieces of self-reserved land that were immobile, often near the edge of the village. At that time, farming families still mainly lived a self-sufficient life, and often used the piece of land closest to their homes as a vegetable garden, which remained unchanged for years. Known as the garden, in fact, there is no fence or anything, there is also to prevent the sheep to come in to nibble. At that time, very few people to buy vegetables and market, home garden what vegetables are planted, basically to meet the demand. You could even see clumps of sugarcane, which were definitely grown by people with children at home.
When I was a child, I was often sent to the garden by my mother to pick vegetables before the arrival of the meal time, or a pocket of peppers, or two zucchini, or three eggplants, or a few cucumbers, or a handful of bean curd ...... these vegetables or stir-fried or cold, are common dishes on the dinner table. Sometimes will carry a basket to cut half a basket of leeks, come back to wash and chop up the egg on the dumplings to eat, is more than the frozen dumplings in the supermarket now more beautiful food. Leeks do not have to plant too much, two small short rows will be enough to eat, this side cut the other side of the long, is the most economical vegetables. The vegetables were exposed to the sun, the flavor of the fresh, not now the opposite season of the greenhouse vegetables can be compared.
The garden also has a variety of melons. The family with small children, usually planted in the garden melon face melon willow melon and so on, that is the children used to play snacks. When I was a child, I loved to chant east, west, south, north and south melons, then thought the east melon later realized that it was a winter melon, because there are also watermelons, pumpkins and so on. So I always thought it was the orientation to the various melons named. Coincidentally, our side of the round flat ripe golden kind called pumpkin, the long curved pumpkin called the north melon. So the east and west, south and north melons are complete. I remember one year my mother planted a winter melon grew incredibly large, a hug thick, stood up half a man high, picking the ground floor cart to bring home, placed in the hall under the high table, a number of meals can not be eaten. When I was in high school, the school cafeteria had a period of time often cut into large pieces of winter melon with a bit of fat meat slices fried to eat soft. I looked inside the cafeteria and saw the kitchen chef standing with a shovel on a huge wok, which was very large. Even with that kind of stir-frying, I thought the winter melon was quite tasty. Once when I came home on a weekend I cut the melon into big pieces and fried it in the family pot, but it was not cooked well. Later, after the mother's secondary processing before eating into.
One year my father had a whim and planted some watermelons to sell to earn some money. In order to prevent thieves from stealing the melon, but also built a melon shed, so that the brother was still young to guard. But did not see the thief, but see a lot of watermelon rotten in the field. Turned over to see, rotten watermelon are open on a triangular cover. After investigation, I learned that my brother did a good job. He had nothing to do, he looked for ripe watermelon to eat, take a knife to cut triangular small mouth, not ripe, he then took that triangular small cover to buckle, and afraid of being found by my father, turn the mouth to the bottom, next to the soil, so the watermelon rot faster. It seems that my father did not earn much money that year. But several of his children did not stop eating watermelon.
I remember another piece of my family's land was planted with rapeseed one year. When the rapeseed flowers bloomed, a golden one, that year only parents and brother and sister-in-law at home, the four of them photographed a group photo sent to the outside of the school. It is still in the picture frame of my home, and I see it all the time to relieve the pain of homesickness. My mom used to pick the tops of the canola flowers when they were tender, salting them with salt and mixing them with sesame oil to make an excellent side dish. A few years ago with the unit colleagues together to go to jiangsu xinghua tour, saw the thousand island rape field, so beautiful! Other people in the photo when I lamented really beautiful, I was in the photo when I lamented if you can pick some tender flowers back to pickle and eat on the good.
In recent years, the planting of melons and vegetables have become a professional, specializing in selling and planting, very few families to stay in the garden, planting wheat is also less, most of the planting such as asparagus can earn money cash crops. What kind of food you want to eat can be bought at the market. Although this may reflect the economic progress, but it is a lot less fun.
Later, when I went to high school, my father planted a peach tree, after my father's repeated experiments, many grafting, and then more than an acre of peach orchard with several varieties of peach trees, sweet and crisp peaches, ripe after the big and soft peaches, and apricot trees grafted with the golden peach and so on. When the peaches were ripe enough to sell, my father asked me to guard the orchard while he took baskets of peaches to the market. I took a mat and a large novel to find a flat place under the peach tree to read, and when I got tired of reading, I got up and picked some peaches and washed them in a bucket of water, and ate enough peaches to sell them at the market. Next to the peach orchard is my family's vegetable garden, sometimes eat enough peaches to pick melon or tomatoes to eat in the vegetable garden. The tomatoes at that time were purely natural, without dyeing and ripening, so they tasted sweet and sour.
The above pictures are from Baidu
In fact, I didn't see any stolen peaches, so I had to guard the peach garden, but I lost more. But how would my father care how many peaches I ate? It was originally planted to be eaten. Almost to the dinner time, sometimes I will go to look for the kind of ripe pink and big peaches, although the sweetness is not enough, ripe but very face, with the hands of a pinch can become mud, pick a few take to my old granny lost teeth to eat, and tell her old man: this is called the longevity of the peaches (I watched the "Journey to the West" after their own name), eat this kind of peaches can be a hundred years of life. In fact, at that time the grandmother was already more than ninety years old. Sure enough, has been smilingly alive grandmother smilingly ate this peach, smilingly lived to one hundred and two years old. Granny passed away when I was away at college, I heard later, the grandmother has been to go before they are very awake, but also instructed around a large group of people to get out of the way, she is going to leave, for fear of their own souls pouncing on who. I believe that year I gave her old man to eat the birthday peach really played a role.
There is a small piece of land at the head of my vegetable garden that I have carved out for myself. There, next to the diversion canal, a deep ditch, usually the ditch is full of grass, both banks are also trees; but the canal is connected to the river. Every year, during the flood season, the river would flow, blue and green, like a small river.
The grasses in the ditch were of the richest variety, and we often found surprises in them. The most useful was mint, a plant that was easy to grow, even if you pinched a piece of stem and stuck it in the ground. Its roots in the soil can also reproduce more mint shoots, a mint if pinched off the top, will be divided into more branches. So by the end of the day my ground was covered with mint all the way to the bottom of the gutter.
Sometimes when my mother wanted to change the taste of our meals, she would let us take a basket to pick the tender top leaves of the mint, pick enough to come back to a small half-basket, washed and chopped into the egg batter, sprinkle a bit of salt and mix it well, the pan put on the oil, heated up the mint and egg batter to the pan and poured, pan frying on both sides to turn over the aroma of the nose, which is my mother's masterpiece, the mint pancakes. The first thing I've noticed is that I'm not sure what I'm talking about, but I'm sure that I'm not sure what I'm talking about, and I'm sure that I'm not sure what I'm talking about, and I'm sure that I'm not sure what I'm talking about, and I'm sure that I'm not sure what I'm talking about.
Work outside, each year can only winter and summer vacation back home. The ditch is still there and the mint grows every year. So every summer vacation back, although the mint is not as tender as the spring, but in a piece of mint bush can still pinch a lot of young top buds to. My mother would also make me mint pancakes, a food that people in my hometown don't think about much anymore. And then later, when I brought my son back, he too fell in love with this delicacy.
I will take my son back to my hometown to live for a period of time in the summer vacation every year, but also to let my child feel more of the rural life, can recognize a variety of fruits and vegetables, can identify the east and west, south and north melons; I also want to let my child in the field to touch the field, can appreciate the real weeds and flowers; I also want my child can eat my mother to do the rough tea, can know how to cherish the essence of that grass roots! ......