Prose: whole grains

Drinking tea and listening to the rain, sitting alone in the soft light accumulated by a desk lamp. Thoughts inexplicably revolve around the word "whole grains". Growing up, I ate three meals a day. I don't know how much I ate, but I never seriously thought about why the grain was. What are the names of miscellaneous grains?

The book says that rice, wheat, soybeans, corn and potatoes are called "five grains". The so-called "whole grains" refers to all food crops. Look at potatoes, there are as many as ten kinds. They are terrestrial plants, and underground stems or tuberous roots are edible. Not cold-tolerant, frost-free cultivation.

Looking out from the Weibei Plateau, I can see one rough mountain plateau after another. There are few acres of flat land in Yuan Shang. On the contrary, between the hillsides, there are endless terraces. Wheat is extremely scarce in this land. Mao Feng is a whole grain. When the autumn wind blows, it is corn that hangs yellow leaves next to fields of different heights, for fear that others will not see them. Holding high the red torch-like ears is sorghum. Xiaomi and Xiaomi are much more low-key, hanging their heads quietly, hiding in sorghum fields like shyness, and strings of black particles hanging on the purple branches of buckwheat. Potatoes (potatoes) squeeze the ground into bumps, as if afraid that people will forget themselves. ...

At this time, farmers who are as energetic as this land will stretch their wrinkles, and sorghum noodles, soba noodles, corn dumplings and potato rice will float in their minds, which will make them have a round belly. ...

Stirring ball

"Corn flour, disturbing the crowd, raising children is not as good as providing for the elderly ..." When we were young, we often read this nursery rhyme.

There are many kinds of raw materials for mixing dough, such as buckwheat flour, sorghum flour and corn flour. The best is buckwheat noodles. The buckwheat noodles that have just come out of the pot stir up the dough, which is translucent blue-gray. Scoop it into the soup bowl, take a sip and slide down the throat. It's really refreshing. If spread into thin slices on the chopping board to dry, it will be semi-green and translucent, and it will taste almost like buckwheat jelly, smooth and cool. It is the best summer product in summer. Sorghum noodles are stirred up and scooped into a bowl, which is a rosy ball and tastes very delicate. It's just that the output and cultivation of these two kinds of grain are relatively small, and the most is of course corn flour.

In winter, the yellow dust rolled up by the wind on the Loess Plateau is as high as a house, just like a series of khaki trains on Yuan Shang. As soon as people walk out of the house, their ears are blown into ice, as if they would crash when touched. As a result, every household closed the door and burned the heatable adobe sleeping platform. At noon, there was a fire in the stove, the bellows creaked and the water boiled. The woman held an old rolling pin in one hand and sprinkled flour into the pot in the other. Flour should be spread evenly with a rolling pin, otherwise dough bumps will form and it is difficult to cook. The heat should be just right, otherwise it will become raw food or a pot of paste. Therefore, although it is a daily dinner, it is often a standard to measure whether a woman is capable.

There is a widely circulated joke about a mother and daughter. The daughter went to stir up the ball and the mother went to sew the quilt. After a while, the daughter shouted, Mom, the dough is very thick. Mom said, add some water. After a while, the daughter said, Mom, the dough is thin. Mom said, sprinkle some noodles. So, finally, the daughter exclaimed: Mom, no, the pot overflowed. Mother scolded with anger, you melon girl, if you hadn't sewed yourself into the quilt, you would have hit you long ago-

Although this story is a mockery of those stupid women, it also shows the difficulty of inciting groups.

The best corn flour is stirred until golden brown. Pick with a rolling pin. The dough hanging on it is not thin or thick, and the color is clear. If you taste it, it is soft and palatable, and has the unique sweetness of corn flour. That's almost enough. Cover the pot and simmer for a while.

There are doorways to eat jiaozi. First, in an old bowl, mix the soup with salt, vinegar, Chili oil, and the "frying dish" cooked by shallots, then take out a bowl of sauerkraut from the old urn, chop it up, put it in, then rush into half a bowl of boiling water, and immediately scoop a spoonful of hot-fried it. Golden fried noodles are surrounded by a bowl of soup with red oil flowers, surrounded by green onions and sauerkraut, which is really delicious. When eating, stick your mouth to the edge of the bowl, pull up a small ball with chopsticks and suck it quickly. The ball has slipped into the gastrointestinal tract and snorted, and you immediately felt a warmth in your stomach.

Young children like to stir the fish leaking from the perforated clay pot, and the golden fish swim into their mouths one by one until their bellies swell up. They are still standing by the chopping board, eagerly looking at the fish in the pot. ...

After eating the dough, there is also a reassuring pot bottom, which is crispy and golden. Soaking the soft rice crust in the pot with the prepared soup is another delicious food. People with many children, this small rice crust, often lead to a war.

Some foreigners don't know when to eat jiaozi, but they finally stir it. They don't stir with chopsticks to make a bowl of bad paste soup. Otherwise, they chew as slowly as noodles, and of course they are bitter. At that time, I heard such a story: after the Cultural Revolution, Ba Niang in the village used a pot of hot cooking to feed the cadres sent by the county. I didn't want to, but this delicious meal in the eyes of the villagers was stirred into an indigestible paste by the cadres stationed in the team and stuck in his stomach. The next day, the resident cadres angrily held an inquiry meeting in the field, saying that Ba Niang "fanned the flames for the resident cadres."

Potato rice

Weibei people call potatoes potatoes. Potatoes are also the main crops here. The temperature difference between day and night is large, and the light is sufficient, which is very suitable for the growth of potatoes. Especially in some mountainous areas, the frost-free period of a year is very short, and the wheat will not mature until July, so the yield is not high, so most fields are planted with potatoes.

Potatoes are also an indispensable vegetable and food on people's tables here. Especially in winter, there are no dishes here, only some radishes, cabbages and potatoes. So every winter, if there are guests at home, vinegar potatoes will definitely be served in the dishes.

People here used to lead a hard life. Potatoes have become the staple food of every household. All day long, people eat potatoes, either burnt or steamed. The only way for people is to use more brains and come up with many ways to eat with a potato and improve their lives.

Let's say the most common potato steamed bread, and people have made many tricks with it. The simplest way is to shred potatoes, add appropriate amount of salt powder and knead into water, then add flour to make a thick paste, spread it on a steaming sheet, and steam it in a pot for 20 minutes to make a white potato steamed bun. After taking it out, cool it a little and dip it in a little pepper water. The taste is smooth and rich, and the taste is unique. Later, I don't know which clever woman found that the more broken potatoes are, the smoother they are and the more delicious they are. I simply found a piece of scrap iron and asked the man to nail out the dense holes with nails. When the back is turned over, it becomes a special eraser, and the wiped potatoes become white juice. The potato buns made in this way are not only smoother, but also more refreshing. Those foreign guests always taste it for the first time.

Another kind of potato steamed bread is a bit difficult to start. Only when people can't go to the fields on rainy days, wash those small potato eggs, boil them in a pot with skins, take them out, peel them off, mash them with a rolling pin, add a proper amount of salt, pepper leaves and flour, then roll them into thin slices and stick them in a small pot for cooking. When the lid is lifted, the whole room will be filled with a special smell, which will make people's stomach stir. The women cut off a piece near the water tower and stuffed it into their mouths, revealing a happy face in the delicious taste.

In winter, it snows heavily outside. People in the kiln sat on the kang and enjoyed the warmth of the kang. This season is the best time to eat warm braised potatoes. Cut the washed potatoes into small pieces, put a little oil in the wok, stir-fry for a while, add water to the newly spilled potato pieces, then add appropriate amount of pepper leaves and salt, bring to a boil with high fire, and then simmer slowly. When the potato noodles are cooked and the soup is not much, cover the potatoes with flour and stew for a long time, and then mix the potato flour evenly when the water is dry. After cooking, I saw the potato pieces covered with white dry flour, and the smell was fragrant. After eating, I feel warm all over.

Lehe noodles

When outsiders hear music and harmony, they don't understand what it is.

At that time, many villages had several music beds. Lohas beds are usually made of good mahogany. A piece of wood more than two meters long, one meter on each side, is cut into a square with a thick bowl mouth, and the part more than one foot long in the middle should be more than one foot thick. Carve a round hole with a thick bowl mouth in the middle, and install an iron sheet at the bottom. There are many small eyes as thick as vermicelli on the iron sheet. On this piece of wood, a thick wooden stick with rafters is connected by chains, with a movable round core in the middle and a thick bowl opening in the round core. When pressing the surface, you put the surface in the round hole and then press the core on it. When people sit at one end of the barbell and press it hard, the noodles become strips the thickness of vermicelli, which flow down continuously, fall into the boiling water pot and roll up quickly. After taking it out, let it cool in cold water. This is Lehe.

You can use wheat flour, sorghum flour and buckwheat flour.

Making sorghum noodles is very complicated, often in the winter morning. A woman boiled water, then put sorghum noodles in a small iron pot and made a fire under the stove. Then, she put boiling water into the sorghum noodles and rubbed them quickly. When the noodles were mixed evenly, they were half-cooked and turned into rose red. Then she quickly took out the pot, rubbed it into long strips on the chopping board, cut it into sections and steamed it in the pot. Then put it on the music bed while it is hot and press it into music bed. When eating, use some "stir-fried dishes" cooked with onions as seasoning, add pepper and salt vinegar, and put them in an old coarse porcelain bowl as big as a small pot. When eating, the family sat around the kang, sipping corn and biting sorghum. At that time, it was a delicious meal.

Wheat flour and buckwheat flour are made in the same way, that is, a small amount of grey water is put into the water (the water is soaked in the ash made of alkaline plant ash strips and buckwheat flour), the flour is synthesized into dough with appropriate hardness, repeatedly kneaded into smooth channels, and then put into a bed on a pot. Squeezed Lehe is directly put into boiling water, and it will be cooked after rolling for a while, so it needs to be cooled with cold water.

When eating wheat flour and buckwheat flour, stir-fry a pot of soup. Generally use tofu, Chinese cabbage, or cooked radish slices. If there is cooked meat left in the hole in the wall, cut a little diced and put it in the pot with chopped green onion. This kind of food is only eaten when entertaining guests, and it is rarely eaten on weekdays, especially buckwheat noodles, which is simply a treasure. People in the village are willing to use it to entertain guests at weddings or funerals in the morning. If soba noodles are served with mutton fish soup, the fishy smell of mutton and the unique taste of soba noodles are absolutely unique. That kind of taste makes people feel indescribable comfortable, as if they have got the greatest enjoyment. Even if they can eat mutton for a lifetime, it is nothing. No wonder people in some places can't help shouting when they stand on the high headland: buckwheat noodles and mutton soup go hand in hand. ...

polished glutinous rice

I remember when I was a child, every year on the eve of Dragon Boat Festival, I would cook a pot of glutinous rice at home. Glutinous rice is made of good sticky millet. This crop is endemic to the Loess Plateau. It does not criticize the richness and barrenness of the land and its short growth period, but just fills the gap between summer and autumn, adjusts the use of the land and enriches the products on this land.

After the annual wheat harvest in the village, farmers seize the time to rake the wheat fields and plant millet. A few days later, after a rain, rows of millet covered the ground. Before long, I pulled out a long-haired spike and hung down my heavy head.

In autumn, the autumn wind blew for several days, blowing golden millet all over the ground. Farmers cut the millet back and grind it clean, and there will be golden and shiny millet. Take it to the mill and grind off the shell, and it will become Huang Cancan's rice grains.

Millet and glutinous rice are not easy to cook. Many families, all elderly grandmothers, went into battle in person. Wash several bowls of milled millet carefully, and then simmer in boiling water. The wheat straw burns under the pot, the soft flame licks the dark bottom of the pot, the bellows patters silently, and the pot makes a burst of cooing sound. The child tugged at the bellows, but began to doze off and nodded forward. ...

When I woke up, I was already on the kang, and a thick smell of millet poured into my nose. I saw grandma had brought a bowl of golden rice to the kang. Smooth the glutinous rice, drop a little white locust honey, and give off luster. The temptation made the child salivate, picked up chopsticks and followed grandma's appearance, picked up a ball and put it in his mouth. As a result, a smooth and sweet taste penetrated into the depths of the soul from the tip of the tongue. That feeling is really an unspeakable happiness. ...

Enthusiastic villagers are most willing to let others share this happiness with themselves. In the early morning of the Dragon Boat Festival, aunts send their own glutinous rice to each other. Strange to say, although the raw materials are the same, the glutinous rice cooked by different people really tastes different. Tasting each other becomes a feast of the Dragon Boat Festival.

Millet can also be used as dry food. The best millet is ground into powder, mixed with warm water, placed on the chopping board for half a day, then agglomerated into cakes one by one, and oiled in an iron pan. Then put the squashed millet dough into the pot and bake it slowly with warm fire. When the deep yellow pattern is branded, take it out, put it in a steamer, steam for half an hour, and cover the pot overnight. When you take it out, you can see that it is covered with a thin, dense, honey-like juice, which tastes like a layer of honey.

Similar to the taste of millet dry food, and corn flour. Just a lot softer. Generally, corn flour is softened and loosened with warm water, and then the pot is put into a warm water pot for fermentation overnight. After the dough expands, spread a half inch thick on the steaming sheet and steam it in the pot, which becomes the corn dough sheet. It looks golden yellow. Cut it into squares with a knife, and you can see that it is like a sponge, covered with pores as big as small grains of rice, and it is soft to pinch with your hands. It tastes sweet, too Unfortunately, it's not easy to cook, and it's rarely eaten.

People in their hometown rely on these coarse grains to have plenty of food and clothing year after year. Now, decades have passed, people who have stayed in the countryside for less than a year, sloping fields have been converted into forests, and the fields in the garden have become uniform. In spring and summer, wheat is everywhere, and in autumn, it is continuous corn with apple orchards in the middle. Sorghum, millet, millet, buckwheat and other plants that are very troublesome to grow and harvest have disappeared. People usually eat steamed bread with white flour, and whole grains have become a rarity. Occasionally, I saw a whole grain restaurant in the city, and those tastes didn't seem to be as simple and mellow as they used to be. Only when the villagers get married can you taste those authentic miscellaneous grains. At this time, you will see the middle-aged people who live in the city on weekdays come back and sit on the long bench at the square table, open their posture, pick up a bowl of buckwheat noodles and eat them to their heart's content, which makes people smile. The charm of some things is really beyond the control of time. ...