As long as it's mom's cooking, it can never be replaced.
Every time I go home, my mom will ask me, "Is it still good food at home? Have you ever missed your mom's cooking when you've been away for so long? "
Looking at my mom's eyes full of anticipation and pride, I could only reluctantly and perfunctorily answer yes.
But in fact, I not only do not miss, and even a little dislike.
Compared to my mom's cooking, both the cafeteria in college and the small restaurant downstairs after work are much better than at home.
I've been complaining about my mom's cooking for a long time.
In my elementary school classroom, when I was learning a certain text, the teacher suddenly asked each of us to stand up and answer: what is your favorite dish? At the same time say your mother's favorite dish.
All the other students answered quickly and loudly, Kung Pao Chicken, Shredded Pork with Fish, Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs, Salted Fish and Eggplant in Casserole, and Goose in Black Bean Sauce....... When it came to my turn, I was stumped and couldn't say any of them.
I racked my brain and still couldn't think of anything.
Mom's cooking, in addition to fried cabbage, is fried cabbage, fried oatmeal, fried cabbage, fried mustard greens ...... I do not know if these count as a dish name, and I can not think of any other name in my mind, in the eyes of more and more people, I had to panic to squeeze out a sentence: "I most favorite is chicken thighs! "
My classmate laughed quietly, and the teacher smiled slightly, she looked at me kindly and continued to ask: "What about your mom?"
I really do not know what else to cook ah! I couldn't even come up with one, and in the face of the teasing eyes of the rest of my classmates, I popped out, "My mom's favorite dish!"
A moment of laughter, a small fat man at the front table laughed his head off, he patted my table and lifted his chin and said, "So many dishes, let you say a good, which is so said!"
I stood there at a loss for words, and my face burned so much that I wanted to burrow into a hole immediately. Luckily, the teacher quickly rounded off the situation by saying, "It seems that Xiaowen does not know what his mother loves to eat ah, tonight you can go home and observe it well, oh, good, the next one!"
I sat down with a burst of fiery shame, but annoyed to transfer the resentment to the mother, it is all my mother's fault, the family's dishes every day is fried, fried, fried, there is no dish to speak of, and I do not recognize the name of any dish, able to how to say!
After returning home, I saw the table on the table again day after day the same pattern of unchanging taste of fried vegetables, think of the classroom to remember the laughter, feel like a fish in the throat, completely unable to eat.
After living in the school, I began to eat the diner pot of food career.
Strangely enough, many people say it is difficult to eat the pot of food, I can actually eat a lot of flavor, has been from middle school to high school, the dining hall of the pot of food I actually ate the habit of eating every meal can be eaten all the way through.
Although the school cafeteria dishes do not see how sumptuous, but wins in a variety of patterns, each meal recipes are different, the same eggs can make several kinds of dishes: steamed eggs, tomato scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs with beans, eggs and meat cake, scrambled eggs with green peppers, egg dumplings ...... There are also complex some of the black bean spare ribs, steamed pork with preserved vegetables, etc., I'm very like.
Of course, occasionally there will be fried winter melon, which I hate, but compared to the home of a thousand years of the same fried green vegetables, the dining hall dishes have been considered a delicious delicacy.
When I came home on weekends, my mom would make more dishes, but no matter what they were, they couldn't escape the fate of the stir-fry.
Yes, mom would only stir-fry, put oil and salt, heat the pan, put down the vegetables, stir-fry for a few minutes, a dish is finished.
She will never do even some complex dishes, and never study different practices, as if the fried cabbage is fried cabbage, fried pork is fried pork, can not say difficult to eat, but also really can not look forward to.
I always wondered why it was so simple to fry a dish, even if the fried vegetables in the heart with some bacon, fried pork with some garlic, a few more tricks and thoughts, I will not be so resistant, but unfortunately, mom never will.
At first I also tried to jokingly talk to my mom, you can try to change a way to cook, not every time it is fried on the matter, my mom will stare at me and say: give you more than ten years of fried dishes, which began to resent?
I can only lose in a row.
At the New Year's Eve dinner, my mom was in the kitchen, chopping and chopping the chickens, ducks and geese, and we were in the living room watching the food program.
Looking at the TV, the master of the hands and feet quickly made Buddha jumped over the wall, shrimp and tofu steamed eggs, preserved meat and steam, deep-fried prawns, ginger and scallion chicken, sweet and sour lotus root folder, chestnut ribs ...... and other delicious dishes, my craving has been completely hooked up.
But every time I wait until dinner, I'm disappointed.
Totally mom's style. Fried chicken is fried chicken, fried goose is fried goose, fried greens is fried greens, fried mushrooms is fried mushrooms ...... Mom always has the ability to make a large table of dishes that could have been a variety of ordinary look.
And the most let me want to complain is, as long as the meat, mom like to chop up super large pieces, even if I every time to urge her, do not cut too big, completely can not eat, she still do what I want.
Every year's New Year's Eve dinner is always the same: fried chicken, fried goose.
I like to eat from the beginning, to the back of the indifferent, but also thanks to my mother ten years as one day of cooking and persistent practice.
The most helpless thing is that I have passed the age of a child and the age of love for meat, but my mom still retains the preferences of that year: to keep the chicken legs.
As long as the chicken is killed, mom will leave a big chicken legs, fried a big plate of chicken on the table, urged me to clip that deliberately left out of the big chicken legs, but also forcefully asked me to eat.
Whenever I saw the bowl was stuffed with chicken legs, my heart was broken.
If the chicken thigh meat has been chopped into small pieces, I think I would like to eat it, but holding such a big chicken thigh and chewing on it, and sometimes my teeth will accidentally clip into the tendons inside, so I really can't stand it.
But my mom was so kind that I had to swallow it with tears in my eyes and finish a chicken leg, and then I held my stomach and rested on the side.
As I got older, my mom's cooking seemed to get worse.
More and more heavy oil, more and more heavy salt, even a plate of fried vegetables can flow a big dish of oil, let alone meat dishes.
At this time, I don't like to go home for dinner.
Several times, when I bumped a few hours hard to return home, looking at the mother out of the dishes is a pile of oil, really can not control their temper, cold face said do not want to eat.
If all moms cooked like this, it would be fine, but it's not.
By chance, I went to a friend's house as a guest, lunch there, her mom also did a few home cooking, but home cooking can also glimpse a few heart: garlic lettuce, smoked bamboo shoots fried bacon, the ground three fresh, winter melon rib soup. A simple meal, light and appetizing, let a person eat very comfortable.
Later, I also invited my friend to play at home and stayed with her for dinner. My mom was excited to make a few meat dishes, but my friend reached for her chopsticks several times and didn't know what to put in them, and my mom kept saying, "Eat more," and "Put them in anything. The first thing I did was to ask my friend to put a thick piece of chicken in his bowl, and then I said, "This piece of meat is fat, so I'll give it to you".
Looking at the corners of my friend's mouth twitching slightly and the thick layer of butter clearly visible on the chicken, I couldn't help but feel like holding my forehead.
Mom always that I compare with other children, always say other children where where good, but when it is my turn to tell her, other people's mothers where where good, she will begin to glassy-eyed, and then began to scold me, that I'm big, wings hard, smacked her, cooking more than ten years for me to eat, but also dare to say that it is not good.
Even if I sometimes excitedly took over the recipe and said to her, do you want to try a new dish according to do, she is also indifferent to continue the same practice: fried.
Sometimes, when I advise my mom not to put too much oil and salt, she will say unconvincingly that it's not her who needs to put so much salt, it's my dad who eats a lot of flavors, and always says that her stir-frying doesn't have any flavor.
I just had to roll my eyes.
In the kitchen, maybe mom is really not talented.
Other people do home cooking, is simple and delicious home cooking, mom does home cooking, is simple but very ordinary home cooking;
Other people do cooking a variety of things, mom do cooking for years;
Other people can make a very tasty and interesting snacks, mom will only do fried fruit .......
I always dislike my mom's cooking, I think my mom's cooking is the same, heavy oil and salt but no flavor, I think my mom can't always learn how to chop small pieces of meat, I think my mom never studied the culinary arts with all her heart to improve a little bit ......
However, when I was working, I drifted around all year round, and I met all kinds of people who came into my life.
But after working for many years, and traveling to many different restaurants with different kinds of people, and eating all kinds of dishes that I have never eaten before, I often think of my mom's poorly sold plate of vegetables, the big chicken thighs that always refused to be chopped open, and my mom's only snack, fried fruits.
Once in a while, in Guangzhou, a nameless store, hungry to go in and order a clear soup noodles, I do not know is too hungry, or too long did not eat such a simple reason, actually think that the bowl of noodles and the mother to do the taste of the noodles similar to the side to eat, while in the winter of Guangzhou, tears, and suddenly began to miss his mother's cooking.
After eating the noodles back to the dormitory, call my mother, talking about their own to eat a noodle, very much like she did, she said when I came home to do to me to eat.
She on the other end of the phone, suddenly choked up, she said she was afraid of thousands of miles away from me not good, for fear of cold and hungry, looking forward to my early return home, she rambled on and on, and so I came home, buy ribs and lotus root to me to do Lotus Root Ribs Soup Sesame, which is one of my favorite things to eat since childhood.
Later, when I returned home on the Mid-Autumn Festival, my family had already prepared a good meal, boiled on the lotus root and ribs soup, and then at dinner time, I scooped up a big bowl of soup and powder, and the bowl was full of lotus root, which I love to eat.
She was so excited to give me the lotus root and ribs, and to find the big ones, that she was afraid that I would be hungry. I said I can't eat that much, but she still scooped up spoonful after spoonful of lotus root and pork ribs from the pot for me.
At eleven o'clock in the evening, I was still sitting in the living room watching TV, she had to cook a snack, but also excused herself to say that her father wanted to eat, so that I accompanied my father to eat a little bit, and then asked me to ask for a few eggs, no matter how many I said, she would knock two, said two of the best, round and full, like 100 points.
Later I lived alone in the refrigerator, the material is more and more, soup powder with shrimp beef meatballs fishballs and other assorted ingredients, but still think that mom's simple pot of lotus root pork rib soup Segen is the most delicious.
The taste of many dishes changed again and again, and the doors of many stores opened and closed, only mom's dishes, maintaining the same level of perennial, waiting for me to go home to eat, and only the door of the house, no matter when I go back, are open.
Mom once said to me, mom also knows that mom does not know how to cook, mom also knows that their cooking is not good, mom knows that you dislike ...... mom know. But mom has been cooking for decades, and your dad has been eating for decades, your dad is used to this kind of food, and mom is used to this kind of cooking, and sometimes I want to change the way of cooking, but I can't change it anymore. You have grown up with your own ideas, new tastes, and new pursuits for food, but mom and dad are not, mom and dad have been eating the same meals for a long, long time.
I pondered.
Perhaps what we are tired of is what they are attached to. What we want to change is what they want to hold on to.
I also just realized that the kitchen exhaust fan has been hanging full of oil, the chimney pipe wall is day after day and year after year of fumes smoked black, apron stained with drips and drops of grease marks, mom's hand has a little bit of grease splash scalded out of the mark ......
Mom in this no wind in the cramped kitchen for the We work tirelessly to make three meals a day, we not only feel comfortable to enjoy, but also inch by inch to complain, mom never say their own dissatisfaction, just will see us rattling the bowl of vegetables hurt, and we will only intensify, chanting that mom's cooking more and more bad, demanding that mom constantly change, change, change.
It's true that mom's cooking was mediocre, but that very mediocre cooking fed the very mediocre me.
I used to wonder why there was a taste of my mother in the dishes, and what her taste actually was.
Until I saw a video, a group of young firefighters on duty in the New Year's Eve in the dining hall to eat dumplings, suddenly a firefighter eating eating cried out, because he ate from the dumplings to eat out of the taste of his mother, and he balked at the fact that it was his mother did. The result is a turn around, but really is her mother to see him, he ate is indeed his mother wrapped dumplings.
I suddenly remembered the noodles I ate at that nameless store in Guangzhou, and the taste of the noodles reminded me of my mom, but I knew that it was not.
In the past, I always felt that my mother's cooking, no style and no flavor, it turns out that when my tongue touches, those memory taste buds will be awakened to tell me who did that.
Maybe mom's food, not the best, also worse than many people, but that is the only wholeheartedly for you to do.
As long as it is mom's cooking, it can never be replaced.