Every time I call my eldest sister during the summer to discuss the time to return to my hometown, D Village, the eldest sister always decides on the eve of July 15th of the lunar calendar. Firstly, I come to pay homage to my deceased ancestors; secondly, the corn is ripe at that time. , I can eat the corn grown by myself in my eldest sister’s garden.
During the hot season, the eldest sister’s family usually builds a stove in the yard. Because she called the night before to tell me that I was going to go the next day, the eldest sister got up early and went to the garden to break the corn and remove the foreskin. Remove the beard. Pick out the slightly older corn kernels for roasting and the tender ones for frying. The eldest sister accurately grasped the specific time when I stepped into their small courtyard. The fragrance released by the corn being roasted enthusiastically by the firewood allowed me to enjoy it with my nose before I even stepped into the threshold of the eldest sister's house.
Sitting on the left side of the plum tree, on the right side of the crabapple tree, under the shade of the betel tree, watching the eldest sister take out the corn roasted into a layer of black "crack" from the pit, and pull it out from the iron drill. I gently threw it on the ground a few times to shake off the wood ash that seeped into the gaps, then wiped the surface with a green foreskin, took another piece of foreskin to wrap the corn around my waist, and handed it to my hand.
With the green wrapper for heat insulation, you are not afraid of the roasted corn getting hot. The newly roasted corn conveyed its unique sweetness and tenderness to my taste buds without hesitation. With this once familiar taste and the heat coming out of the corn pot, my mind felt like I had received the starting gun. Command, run at a speed of 100 meters back to the time when you were a child with corn.
When we were young, we affectionately called it Baomi by its nickname. My family is a non-agricultural household. Although we do not cultivate a large area of ??land, we are allocated three acres of vegetable land in the backyard. Planting 10 ridges of corn and beans has become a common practice for rational use of garden land.
When the corn grows vigorously in the spring, and then passes through the peak growth period in early summer, it is already in full bloom during the Mengxia period, shyly showing off a bunch of mustaches in our eager anticipation, sir. Just tell us children that we can eat it as long as we wait another eighteen days.
Finally, when the corn was ripe, we children, carrying earthen baskets, jumped and followed the adults towards the corn field that was also waiting for us.
The ripening of corn is like passengers queuing up to buy tickets, following the order of first come, first served. With examples from adults, I learned to identify and select adult corn. Tear off a small piece of foreskin from the top to expose the corn kernels. Use your thumbnail to cut the corn kernels. If milk-like liquid oozes out quickly, you can eat it. If a small amount of liquid oozes out slowly or the liquid solidifies, it can be classified as old. Of course, eating corn can bring out its advantages even more when eaten burnt.
After returning to the yard with a basket full of corn, everyone worked together like a game to peel off the several layers of green foreskin that tightly wrapped the corn body, removed the dense beard, and divided it into two piles. Put the corn that is eaten open into a large pot, put a layer of freshly peeled corn on the inside and wrap the skin on it, and then put more than ten eggplants and more than ten potatoes produced in your own land on top. Staple food and vegetables cooked in one pot.
Hangbaomi’s wood-burning method is the most powerful. When the heat is crowded and escaping from the cauldron, enough burned and half-burned wood blocks have accumulated in the stove pit, and the conditions for burning corn are ripe.
My father made customized corn drills for our three sisters who were about the same age to avoid a "fierce fight" over the tools.
When the corn was burning, the three of us girls consciously got our own piece, pointed the tip of the iron drill at the bottom of the corn, and penetrated two or three centimeters into the tender flesh of the corn. Then stand the drill upside down, hold the corn, and use both hands to push the drill toward the ground, so that the drill can penetrate deep into the heart of the corn and be firmly combined with the corn. During the burning process, no matter how you turn the iron drill, the corn will not separate from it.
We gathered the burning wood fire in the middle of the stove pit, freed up the two wings, and used a drill to put the corn into both sides of the fire. The next task is to turn the roaster when the side facing the fire is cooked, so that the side facing away from the fire has a chance to be grilled, so that the corn can be evenly heated.
When I was young, I was not good at cooperating with each other. Originally, it was more than enough for one person to be responsible for cooking the corn. Because they didn’t want to take care of other people’s corn, the three sisters had to stay in front of the stove pit and send away a lot of rice. Long days in the country. Just enjoy the fragrance of green corn roasted by wood fire, have fun, laugh and play. Temporarily freed from the gloom of adult melancholy, it creates a joke of memories for adults who are far away from home, and accumulates vivid events for attachment to childhood years. Even the swallows that rented the beams of my house saw our lively scene and flew in and out, chirping and making noise, filling in the trivial gaps we left.
The corn is cooked with constant attention! We skillfully remove it from the iron drill, or use its foreskin roll to eat again, or insert a chopstick (sometimes a small branch) into the hollow of the iron drill to feed it. Attach a handle. We sat by the fence, under the willow umbrella, with the gentle breeze and the tranquility of the sunset, savoring this delicious food that adds a sense of happiness and superiority to life.
After eating the roasted corn, you will basically be 60% full, leaving 40% of the space for the roasted corn. After eating the roasted corn, in order not to reduce the taste of the roasted corn, I often walk in the yard, the open space behind the house, and among the plum trees. When the roasted corn is almost digested, it's time to cook the corn.
When I was a child, there were many people in my family. I would first use a small pot to pick out the potatoes and eggplants, and then use a big pot to pick out the white corn rice, which was steaming hot and sweet. Mash the eggplant and potatoes, tear off a large number of green scallion leaves from the home field, fill a bowl of real reddish-brown soybean paste from the home sauce vat, and mix thoroughly. You can prepare a few more chili peppers or cucumbers according to your personal taste, and you're done with this farm-style dish to whet your appetite. I ate a bite of cornstarch, paired with a bite of potato and eggplant dishes, and refused to exchange abalone and bird's nest. After dinner, I went out to play with friends of the same age, such as "hide and seek", "three words", rubber band jumping, etc. Frequent running consumed part of Xangbaomi's energy, and when I came back, my stomach was full of energy. After cleaning a place, I took an ear of cool corn and gnawed it hungrily. It became even more delicious.
When Baomi irrevocably flashed through its short adolescence, I reluctantly said goodbye to Shaobaomi and Brown Baomi.
In essence, there is no real goodbye, but it changes the form in front of me. It still appears on our family dining table in the form of corn flour pancakes in the morning. At that time, our family could get more white noodles, but the corn noodles we got were all old noodles that had not been freshly ground that year. The large pancakes stuck in a circle in the big pot were hard and thick, and it required strong endurance to support them. Only then can it be swallowed. When I tasted a large pancake made with new corn flour at a neighbor's house, I realized that it was originally as golden as a marigold in color and soft and sweet as a cake. With an appropriate amount of saccharin mixed into the dough, every bite can be swallowed smoothly and voluntarily.
Popcorn, another way of showing the appearance of corn, brings us pleasure and surprise that breaks through the ordinary. In the golden autumn of October, the cloudy air rises, and the harvested yellow corn is collected and taken home by the hard-working farmers, hiding in a specially made corn building in front of the house. The snacks that adults give to children are also made from local materials. Every family can readily satisfy children’s need for fried cornstarch at low prices. The corn flower (commonly known as corn flower) fried in a large iron pot is crispy and mellow, sharpens teeth and is easy to carry. In winter, almost every child has the same snacks in their pockets, so don’t be greedy. In order to communicate feelings, people often choose to exchange and enjoy. The fried corn flower is not worthy of its name, because it still maintains the shape of corn, but is brown and black in color, and swells slightly when heated. The popcorn popcorn popping out of a special popcorn pot can be regarded as a "flower", which is obviously not enough. Whenever a popcorn businessman comes to the village, the neighbors rush to tell each other, and each family prepares a small bundle of firewood, one or two pounds of white corn rice (yellow corn rice is also acceptable), one or two flour bags, and so on. He ran to the south gate of the production team and consciously waited in line. Most of the time my family cooks a pot and packs a bag. Corn flakes become a flavorful alternative to millet rice from one meal to the next.
My eldest sister saw me eating cornflakes one after another at the same speed and quantity as eating grapes, and advised me to eat less. She repeatedly taught me her maxim: "Even if the cornflakes are not hard to chew, they are still made of hard cornflakes." If it pops out, it will probably bloat in your stomach. Don’t hurt your stomach.”
I know the eldest sister feels sorry for her sister, but she doesn’t know that the temptation of cornflowers cannot be easily resisted by a child’s fragile determination. Yes.
If there were no corn, our childhood would be so gloomy and miserable!
I recently read Morgan's "Ancient Society". When he studied the development of the primitive society of the Native Americans, it was impossible not to mention corn native to the Americas. However, he used the official name of corn - maize. One of his points caught my attention. He pointed out that because American Indians successfully cultivated corn, and corn could be grown dry and yield high yields, the Indians who were still in primitive society did not need to fish and hunt too much to avoid the fate of starvation. As a result, their food composition is mainly vegetarian and the amount of meat is insufficient, which affects brain development. The brain develops slowly, and the cycle of inventing and improving tools is countless times longer than that of other tribes that rely on fishing, hunting and eating vegetarian food. Ultimately, the indigenous people living in the Americas have long lagged behind the civilized and developed areas of Europe and Asia.
Perhaps his research results are reasonable, but I still can’t help but feel sorry for corn. In those days, on my way to get off work, Morgan’s explanation flashed in my mind from time to time. Passing by the market, I saw a pile of green corn for people to carefully select. I looked at this crop with a cherished look that I had never seen before, which had nourished the indigenous people of the Americas in ancient times, and had traveled across the ocean and left home to join thousands of our families.
This is corn! The descendants of the maize family that Morgan mentioned come from ancient times!
It is difficult to be a human being. It is not only difficult to be a human being, it is also difficult to be a good crop. Is there anything wrong with high corn yields? Its high yield prevented those kind-hearted primitive people who had full stomachs from thinking about wild animals, and how many times of bloodshed, shouting and killings were prevented? It has made great contributions to maintaining ecological balance. Do those nomadic tribes that live in the grasslands eat meat and drink blood, and those North American Indian tribes that collectively attack bison, do they eat less meat? We haven’t seen them invent any advanced tools to push the entire social process forward in kangaroo leaps.
This simple crop, native to Latin America, Mexico and Peru along the foothills of the Andes, gradually followed people's arrangements and spread to all parts of the world after Columbus discovered the American continent and brought it back to Spain, becoming the most important One of the food crops.
The introduction of corn in China was before Columbus discovered the New World. There is evidence of this in the Ming Dynasty pharmacology work - "Southern Yunnan Materia Medica". The book records: "Jade wheat whiskers, sweet in taste and slightly warm in nature, enter the Yangming Stomach Meridian, clear the intestines and lower the qi, and treat red and swollen breasts in women or blowjobs in children, or breast milk obstruction when sleeping and lying down." The author was born in the 30th year of Hongwu (1397) and died in the 12th year of Chenghua (1476). It can be concluded that corn was introduced to my country in the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, anyone with a little knowledge of history can pick out scenes from film and television productions made before the Ming Dynasty with cornfields as the background.
When corn was introduced to our country, it was not listed as an ordinary grain but was regarded as a rare thing. Until the Qianlong period, it was still used by the royal family and had nothing to do with the common people. The "Shengjing Tongzhi" at that time recorded that corn was "retting powder by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to pay tribute." The Ming Dynasty literary work "Jin Ping Mei Ci" states that "roasted goose meat" and "steamed cornmeal and rose hip cakes" were delicacies that the rich man Ximen Qing entertained his guests at banquets. In the mid-18th century, Guangxi's "Zhen'an Prefecture Chronicle" stated that corn was listed as a "fruit genus, used to feed children" when it was first introduced. In the past two years, we have also exhibited fruity corn that can be eaten raw at the Changchun Agricultural Expo. I wonder if it is an innovation in agricultural technology or the reincarnation of corn attributes?
From the mid-18th century to the early 19th century, corn began to be widely promoted in my country, and ordinary people only saw its "married" appearance in their pots and dining tables. Later, because of its high yield and wide adaptability to various land types, it even crowded out other crops and promoted itself to the status of maintaining people's food and clothing.
Especially in years of natural and man-made disasters, it is even more imperative to save people from fire and water. I often think of adults recalling the past three years of difficult times. My poor eldest sister and second sister were both starving in the golden age of their lives, not to mention my father and mother. At that time, my uncle's family settled in the city and the conditions were relatively better. He brought a bag of cornmeal pancakes to my family, which was like an umbrella in the rain. At that time, the eldest sister and the second sister thought that the deliciousness of big pancakes was far better than the dumplings and steamed buns that could only be seen during holidays. When we were children, our parents would use this inspiring story to push the big cakes down our esophagus whenever we showed reluctance due to repeated consumption of stale cornmeal for countless times.
In the past two years, our Northeast has suffered from continuous floods, and India, Southeast Asia, and Africa are also not peaceful. In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations held a five-year review meeting of the World Food Security Summit at its headquarters in Rome to assess the current world food security situation. After the meeting, FAO Director-General Diouf pointed out that the fight against hunger "will now begin a race against time" to achieve the goal of halving the world's 800 million hungry people by 2015. Now, moving forward to October 2013, it can be said that at least 400 million compatriots currently have to endure the suffering of hunger.
I once expressed my worries about food shortages to a colleague whose hometown is in Zhenlai County. He confidently said: It’s okay. If there is really a food shortage, go to my hometown in Zhenlai. There are big corns everywhere. . Zhenlai is not a sacred place in my province, and the warehouses full of golden corn guaranteed the promises made by my colleagues.
Agricultural science and technology are changing with each passing day. For us, it is unlikely that food shortages will occur under normal circumstances. With the improvement of living standards, corn has long been removed from the ranks of staple foods, but the older generation still remembers it fondly. An old man next door once said a famous saying: "The farm can still be made without big pancakes!" If he were to resurrect from the grave and visit his own house or a neighbor's house, he would know that his views have been firmly rejected by everyone.
Zhangjiayuan has left Big Pancake, but Big Pancake has not disappeared. It has found its own position in the food area of ??the city's farmer's market. With the popularity of quick-frozen foods, sticky corn on the cob and sticky corn kernels have become commonplace in winter, and roasted corn has also become counter-seasonal. People have realized that crude fiber and whole grains like corn have the effect of inhibiting affluence diseases such as arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, as well as anti-aging and cancer prevention.
Corn is known as a longevity food. It is rich in protein, fat, vitamins and other elements beneficial to health. Its nutritional value exceeds that of flour and rice, and it has become a popular health food. According to reports, even former US President Ronald Reagan had corn flakes porridge for breakfast every morning. Polenta also has the opportunity to serve people instead of rice porridge.
Corn has dedicated its youth and life to mankind. Provide food and clothing when you are in need, and adjust your diet when you are well off. Firewood is provided for rural people to cook, and young corn stalks can be fed to cattle and used as sugar cane. When I was a kid, I didn’t have insoles, so I stacked several layers of dry corn wrappers in the water to isolate the provocation of the cold air on my feet. In the twelfth lunar month, I steamed and sticky bean buns, soaked the corn wrappers in water, cut them into pieces, and put them under the bean buns to avoid the risk of the bean buns. Adhesion to the steam curtain...
Corn is a treasure all over its body. It is always unknown and has no regrets. When I see someone (even an expert or scholar) saying "bad things" about corn, but it maintains a humble and non-controversial attitude and refuses to argue for itself, I especially want to defend it. I would like to be its volunteer lawyer and take the initiative to "defend" it.