Peas are actually not peas, but broad beans. I didn’t understand this until I was in college, but in my hometown, broad beans have always been called peas. In this way, broad beans are often deceived in the name of peas. Over time, broad beans become peas, and peas are still peas.

Eating peas starts with pea seedlings. When I was a child, it seemed that I could eat any seedlings. For example, mung bean sprouts, soybean sprouts, and peanut sprouts can all be fried and eaten, and of course pea sprouts can also be fried and eaten. But there is a difference between peas and others. Pea sprouts are big and it is not cost-effective to eat the sprouts, so they eat less, and things are rare and expensive. At that time, I always felt that pea sprouts were more delicious than other sprouts.

The peas will mature in May and June. In my mind, it almost overlaps with the time of planting the seedlings. The reason why I have such a deep memory is that I often took advantage of the adults to work in the fields to steal food from my grandma’s cupboard. Although grandma's skills are not very good and she can only stir-fry the peas with a little oil and salt, but to me they are delicious, tender, glutinous, and have a unique sweetness. The only thing you need to pay attention to is that you can't eat too many peas, otherwise it will be easy to be discovered if there are too few peas.

If you are too greedy, then go pick them in your own field or steal them from other people's fields. Every time you steal peas, you will be frightened. The cuckoo is the most annoying bird. It can scream "eight peas" out of the blue, which can scare you to death. But I'm generally not greedy. I just go home with the straw hat flat and boil it with some salt. It tastes great. It should be noted that boiled peas must be placed before cooking and packed in bags, otherwise the smoke from the fire and the aroma of the peas will give you away.

After another month or two, the peas will be completely mature and will be cut back and placed in the rice field to dry. The outer shell of ripe peas is black, which is very ugly, but it doesn't matter. When dry, use the "cover" to thresh the peas out, and you're done.

Sun-dried peas are a good dish to go with wine, but the method at home is very simple: dry the peas, put them in a pot and stir-fry them, and when they are cooked, remove them from the pot. I like my mother's fried peas very much, because this way I have snacks to eat. But there is a gap between reality and ideals. Often the result is that when my father drinks, there will be no peas left for me. What is even more depressing is that even the twists brought by my relatives will be drunk.

My father was so embarrassed that he cried because he was drunk because of Mahua, and he was beaten up. This fat beating has made me unhappy for many years!

It’s strange, the same thing is fried peas. Why do other people’s fried peas taste better than ours?

For example, the orchid peas you buy (the kind that come from Shuiyaba) are not only easy to spit out, but also crunchy. The peas fried by my mother can break your teeth.

There is another kind of pea that is also delicious, which is the pea eaten during the Chinese New Year. It is fried like peanuts and melon seeds. The taste is a bit salty or sweet, and it is crunchy and delicious. Although it is not as easy to peel as orchids and peas, it is still easy to take out the shells when you put them in your mouth. The most important thing is that they will not stain your clothes and are easy to put in your pocket.

However, both of these cost money and were not very cost-effective. The pocket money at that time was also limited, and there was not so much money for you to buy, so fried peas at home were more common. Although it can chip teeth, it is cheap (free of charge) and wastes time. It is a very cost-effective snack, but it has a side effect. If you eat too much, you will easily fart.

And if you eat too much one day and have a few stinky farts in a row, I’m sorry, but it’s very likely that you will get the nickname “King of Farts”, so I really have a love-hate relationship with peas.

Although peas are edible and relatively delicious, the main function in my hometown is not for eating, but for making sauce, which is called pea sauce in my hometown. There are many techniques for making pea sauce, but I can remember only three techniques: mold sauce, stewing sauce and sun-dried sauce.

Before making sauce, there is a craft, which is to shell peas. What I can remember is to use a stone mill to shell. There are other shelling methods, but when I was a child, I only cared about eating, so how could I pay attention to these things? .

After the peas are successfully shelled, soak them in water for half a day to a day, then add pork belly and chili peppers and stir-fry them. The deliciousness is unforgettable. Later I discovered that it actually tastes delicious when fried with or without the pea segments.

Remove the shells of the pea petals, put them in a dustpan, then cover the pea petals with artemisia cut from outside (a plant, I don’t know what it is called), and then wait for time to ferment. . After a few days, when you lift the mugwort, you can see that the watercress is covered with green mold, and you're done.

I don’t know the process of how to make the sauce later, because our family doesn’t eat molded sauce, so I have never seen it. I have only seen other people’s peas successfully made with mold.

The easiest way to make sauce is to soak the shelled peas, add salt, chopped pepper, and cooked oil, put it in a jar and seal it, take it out to eat after a while, and the sauce is ready. alright.

Our family eats sun-dried sauce. The process of sun-dried sauce is a little more complicated. Put the shelled pea segments in water, add salt, and put them in the sun to dry. Dry at sunrise and harvest at sunset. Do not stir, add water, or see rain. Wait carefully for about a week. When the water in the porcelain basin has almost evaporated, it is basically done. The douban at this time can be eaten raw. Although it is a bit salty, it is often added with chopped pepper and cooked oil to make doubanjiang.

Because there is more than a week of sun-drying process in between, the sun-dried sauce will taste better.

And when there are no vegetables, a spoonful of bean paste can destroy a bowl of rice. If you put a little bean paste on it when eating boiled sweet potatoes or pancakes, it will be the best taste in the world.

Later, when I went to school, I gradually couldn’t eat the Doubanjiang at home. At most, I brought a bottle with me when school started, but it was consumed in a few days. This is even more true after working. I no longer know what doubanjiang is, and the Qixian doubanjiang in the supermarket that tastes closest to it is far from it.

The doubanjiang is gone, and the taste of hometown is gone.