Childhood Laba porridge

Early in the morning, the omnipotent circle of friends and WeChat group were all about Laba Festival greetings and the display of various Laba porridge ingredients.

After lunch, I searched at home and found more than ten kinds of ingredients for making porridge: white glutinous rice, blood glutinous rice; corn kernels, buckwheat kernels; black beans, black kidney beans, black sesame seeds; red beans, peanuts , red dates; barley, sago, white fungus; longan meat, walnut kernels, raisins. I counted, there are sixteen kinds. I just put all these in a cardboard box for grains at home. I just finished eating the small yellow rice and large yellow rice. I didn't remember to put the red wolfberry and black wolfberry. I looked for lotus seeds, pine nuts, and ginkgo. Twenty-four items are not a problem. .

I washed them clean, put them all into the electric pressure cooker, turned on the "beans/tendons" setting, and let them go. Just responding to a scene, because there is no expectation, so I don’t ask about the result.

I remember when I was a kid, I was looking forward to the stars and the moon, and I finally looked forward to the Laba Festival, but I couldn't get the eight things together. Rice (it doesn’t have to be rice, just rice), corn kernels, peanuts, red beans, soybeans, and then there are none. There is no other way. If you can't get all the eight items together, you will be laughed at by the children if you go to school without eating Laba porridge. In the end, potatoes, carrots, and green vegetables came into the battle one after another, and finally saved the little master's worries.

My parents are both tailors, and the twelfth lunar month is the busiest. People who don’t make new clothes all year round still want to make new clothes for their children for the New Year. If you can't make a whole suit, the eldest brother can make a coat, and the second brother can make a pair of trousers. So all the cooking work was left to us sisters. Of course, we are limited to cooking corn grits porridge and corn grits rice (called rice with corn grits in Guizhou), but not Laba porridge.

Under the guidance of my mother, we first soaked the red beans, soybeans, and peanuts, and then picked them up and put them in the pot with the rice. After boiling, put the chopped potatoes and carrots into the pot and cook again. When the potatoes and radishes are cooked, finally put the chopped green vegetables into the pot and you can eat it in five minutes.

The Laba porridge cooked by us Benchang people in northern Jiangsu (also called Benchang people, who moved from Changmen, Suzhou) is sweet. Haimen people (who moved from Haimen, Qidong) will also put sausages and bacon in it, and the taste will be salty. My neighbor is from Haimen. When I was a child, I always had a question: How can Laba porridge be salty? I also deeply feel that Haimen people don’t know how to eat it and look down upon it.

In fact, it is precisely because of the different customs in different places that our nation’s diverse culture has been formed.

Putting those things together, the porridge cooked is almost like pig food, but we ate it with gusto. Compared with the corn grits porridge that I usually eat every day, I don’t know how much more delicious it is: it has the aroma of red beans and peanuts, the sweetness of potatoes and carrots, the delicate lubrication of rice, and the unique freshness of green vegetables... You add it, she adds it; One bowl for you, two bowls for her. The pot of porridge quickly reached the bottom. Which one should move faster? Go and shovel the bottom of the pot. The porridge stuck to the shovel will be thicker. It's so delicious! Others just lick the bowl.

Even this kind of Laba porridge cannot be enough. How much is enough? I have no idea.

We have a lot of sisters in our family, and we fight for each other. Most of the time, mom and dad just want to have a taste.

Fortunately, after the Laba Festival, the Chinese New Year has begun. The most interesting, anticipated and happiest day of the year - Nian, is coming.