Narration of Vegetables, Natural Notes —— Reading Random Talk on Seasons and Vegetables (Part Two)

Amon's Notes on Seasons and Vegetables are all about vegetables. Rape, mustard, lettuce, gourd, green bamboo shoots, etc. We often eat them in our daily life. The last part describes the common tomatoes, cucumbers and Chinese cabbage in my hometown and the usual ways to eat these dishes, which not only aroused our appetite, but also filled our homesickness.

Let's say ordinary potatoes this time.

Compared with many places, Shanxi people are most cordial to potatoes. They call this earthy thing "yam egg". Of course, I'm familiar with it. Potatoes produced in Shanxi are of good quality, low water content and high starch content. Fried yam eggs, a specialty of Shanxi people, can be stewed in hot pot and is also a classic ingredient in Shanxi braised dishes.

When potatoes first appeared in Europe, it was ironic. Italians who are keen on "peeping" find their neighbor Spaniards eating potatoes. They wonder how Spaniards can put things from the devil's grave in their mouths. This dwarf plant still smells strange. The British threw away those dirty tubers, but cooked the stems and leaves and ate them. People regard it as "the fruit of the devil". The French think that eating it will lead to leprosy, just because the khaki tuber looks like a diseased organ.

Ironically, this "bad thing" that Europeans are afraid of has saved people from danger again and again. Potatoes later became the national dish of the Dutch and became the main food on the table. The vitamin C, vitamin B and protein contained in potatoes can meet the needs of human body.

Irish famine is closely related to potatoes. 1845, potato was infected with "late blight", a century-old disease. That year, Irish potato production fell by 40%. They watched their crops wither and their relatives left because of hunger. 1848, a large number of hungry people abandoned their rotten homes and wandered around. 185 1 When the disaster came to an end, one eighth of Ireland's 8 million people died of famine and nearly 2 million people left the motherland.

"potato" transliterated from "batata" was mistakenly given to potatoes by the Spanish, and as a result, potatoes traveled all over the world under the name of sweet potato. Whether this mistake is beautiful or not is unknown; However, a drought in Wanli almost killed Fujian people. If Chen Zhenlong hadn't brought sweet potatoes back from the Philippines, I'm afraid you and I wouldn't exist. Also in the Wanli period, Chen Yi, a Cantonese, brought back to his hometown of Dongguan from Vietnam to try planting. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, Fujian and Guangdong provinces had become the earliest places to produce sweet potatoes in China.

After coming to China, sweet potato was welcomed like never before. Together with the corn that arrived at the same time, it became a pioneer in reclaiming wasteland, and their high yield further stimulated the soaring population of China. Sweet potato was planted on the barren land, and only sweet potato saved Fujian and Guangdong people, and the population doubled.

There is a saying in Fujian Hakka dialect: "If you marry your sister, don't marry a bamboo head and a bamboo back. If you don't tie sweet potatoes, tie pork dishes. " It means that if you marry your daughter, you can't marry the mountain forest behind the bamboo forest. Every day, either bring sweet potatoes home or bring sweet potato leaves home to feed pigs. Both sweet potato and sweet potato leaves show that it has always been a cash crop for people and livestock. People rely on sweet potatoes. When the Japanese invaded Nanyang in World War II, the local people lived on sweet potatoes.

With regard to the origin of sweet potato, Xu Guangqi told a story in his book Agricultural Administration: "In recent years, some people have obtained this sweet potato overseas. Overseas people are also prohibited from leaving the country. This man took the vine and twisted it into a water rope, thus crossing the sea. " Translated into vernacular Chinese, it means that overseas Chinese mixed sweet potato vines in the cables of seagoing ships to escape customs smuggling, and finally sweet potatoes took root and sprouted on the land of China. It's terrible to think about it. This is a smart business! It's not easy to eat sweet potatoes today!

Xu Guangqi wrote three books, Sweet Potato Book, Turnip Book and Northern Hebei Book, to promote high-yield crops and disaster relief at home and abroad. Sweet Potato Sparse is the earliest monograph on sweet potatoes in China.

Sweet potato has become the treasure of the poor, but you can't eat sweet potato for three meals a day. Sweet potato is rich in sugar and pectin, which will stimulate the stomach and cause acid reflux. Most people who eat sweet potatoes all the year round have stomach problems. However, the poor have their own poor way, that is, to cook porridge with sweet potato leaves and tender tips, which can alleviate the problem of acid reflux.

It is conceivable that sweet potato leaves have become convenient vegetables again.

Finally, let's talk about the supporting role of giving food extra points-pepper, also known as pepper.

In the early Qing Dynasty, there was a book called "Flower Mirror", which described the shape of pepper: "Pepper is full of white flowers, and its seeds are like naked pens hanging upside down. Green first and then Zhu, the most spicy taste, so people use it more. "

You think the persimmon pepper produced in Hainan is China pepper, but its origin is Havana. Pepper originated in America, and now half of the ten kinds of peppers with the highest Gaubil index in the world still come from South America, which is the hottest pepper. It is said that a small entrance is enough to burn the throat.

In China, only an absolutely tropical place like Hainan can produce the same variety of capsicum as capsicum. I have tasted this kind of persimmon pepper, and its spicy taste makes people change from pleasure to pain, and drinking water doesn't help. Finally, thanks to the decomposition of yogurt, the pain gradually disappeared; I'm afraid all the millet peppers from Guizhou, Yunnan will give way to it, because the hottest peppers produced in the world have the blood of sweet peppers.

In 20 10, the "Naga Viper", which was rated as the hottest throne, was more than 400 times hotter than the ordinary Dahongpao pepper, and there was another kind called "Soul-grabbing Pepper", which was second only to the former. In India, locals use them to drive away wild elephants. It is so spicy that wild elephants can turn around and run away after smelling its fruit, let alone eat it.

In this book, Amon tells all kinds of vegetables that are common in life in five parts, including Chinese cabbage, wild vegetables, melons and lilies: the king of all kinds of vegetables, the taste of vegetables, exotic foods, melons on the battlefield and miscellaneous vegetables in the garden. "In the era of information explosion, the way to acquire knowledge is extremely simple, so from the beginning of writing, I told myself not to just list knowledge, but also to have my own image and feelings about these vegetables." Amon said, "I want to start with the stories around people, because many vegetables or ingredients are actually common around, but many people ignore them."

"People's lives are inseparable from nature, and every local landscape, trees and fruits are part of this nature. In this way, I understand that what my father knows, what I know, and even the little things I know in my life are all natural words. We try to be natural listeners, listen to the small words of nature in the way we think we can, and build interesting stories from this complicated speech. These stories, even small words mixed with humanistic and natural feelings, can be recorded and made into natural notes that anyone can read. " (Preface)

I strongly recommend this book "A Short Story about Seasons and Vegetables". I have read this book for three times, and I have turned it over. The illustrations are exquisite, and the words are beautiful, very beautiful.

Chinese title: Shi Hua

Publishing House: Commercial Press

Page count: 336

Publication date: 2065438+first edition in April 2004.

? 2016 65438+1October 5th printing.

Note: The illustrations come from this book, and photos of other plants have been planted at home before, such as mini potatoes, early peppers and sweet potato leaves, which have been harvested in the yard at home. They are close to the land, love plants and never stay away.