In my hometown, perhaps more broadly, there is a kind of tomato, which we call "small sea eggplant". Although it is small, it is very sour, so it is very popular. It is a good choice for many food systems, such as "mixed sea pepper", "fried gourd" and "boiled tofu soup", and my favorite is the "sour sea eggplant" made of it. Although pickled, the sour taste is not as pungent as when fresh, but becomes soft and mellow. When eating hot pot or making a scene after winter, putting some sour sea eggplant in it is especially warm and refreshing, because it still retains the warmth of summer.

The sun patrols everywhere with one eye open. It is too generous to some places and especially stingy to some places, but it is almost meticulous to the eastern corner of Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. No one will think that the summer there is too long or too short. In summer, the swallow's wings are just long enough to cope with long-distance flights, while rice keeps storing sunlight in grains to the limit. Henna and eggplant shine in the green leaves all season. Look, it is so eye-catching, swaying rhythmically in the breeze, like waving to the boy who came to pick eggplant, for fear of missing its best eating time. Before it matures, it always grows quietly, feeling that only the color similar to the surrounding leaves will not be ruined. In fact, for a long time, tomatoes were only used as ornamental plants, and stupid humans just looked at red tomatoes and couldn't understand their meaning. It was not until one day that a French painter gambled his life that this delicious food was added to our menu.

What a humble small sea eggplant, it never needs hard farmers to plant it specially, nor does it need to loosen the soil and fertilize it after emergence, or even leave seeds. It is completely wild. It can survive in cornfields, sweet potato fields, konjac bushes and even ridges, and it is strong and rich, but it can at least mediate people's appetite for half a year. Therefore, eggplant is the only thing that farmers will not get rid of when weeding. Can be preserved and grown with crops.

If the small sea eggplant is too rampant, it will not disturb farmers, because it is too easy to store. As long as you pick it back, wash it and put it in a sealed container with salt, you can turn it into a sour sea eggplant, or make a spicy tomato sauce with oil and hot sauce and put it in the refrigerator, which will not change its taste for a long time. During the summers in boarding school, apart from the long smell of sauerkraut, it was this spicy tomato sauce that gave my mouth a brand-new feeling. I also have a bottle of sour eggplant from last year in the kitchen. I have repeatedly moved my index finger, but I just won't eat it. Probably get it in Guangzhou and it will become a treasure. Be sure to see enough before eating.

Because there are fish in sour soup in the shop, I heard that Kaili people can't make red sour soup without small sea cucumbers. Once I just brought some bottles of pickled eggplant from home, and I tried to make fish with it. I don't want it to taste fragrant and soft. Pan Xiao was full of praise. After that, we made it several times, but we didn't want the sour eggplant to be gone, and then we could only enjoy it for a long time.