Nostalgia Prose: Drinking Lamb Soup

Text: Yang Xiaoguang

Picture: Source Internet

As the saying goes, "Drink soup before a meal, and you will be slim and healthy; drink soup after a meal, and the more you drink, the fatter you will become." This makes sense. Drink a few mouthfuls of soup before meals to lubricate your mouth and esophagus. This can prevent dry and hard food from irritating the mucous membrane of the digestive tract, facilitate food dilution and even swallowing, and promote digestion and absorption. The most important thing is that drinking soup before meals can make the food in the stomach fully close to the stomach wall and enhance the feeling of fullness, thereby inhibiting the feeding nerve center and reducing people's appetite.

The recipes I used for the three years I attended Qinhuangdao Technical School included a lot of soup (soup) for a little rabbit crossing the river. It is neither soup before nor after a meal, but soup while eating. Meals in technical schools are 40-60 per cent. That is 40% of fine grains and 60% of coarse grains. There are many varieties of refined food, such as: pasta, steamed buns, Hanamaki, sugar triangles, noodles, dried noodles, pimple soup, rice cereals also include rice and rice porridge. It's easy to mix dry and thin. The whole grain food is relatively simple: the dry one is cornmeal steamed bread, the thin one is cornmeal batter.

Even when you are away from home, going to school or living on campus, you must also master the entry-level ways of living and running a household. After a month, the consumption of coarse and fine grains must be balanced. Dry and thin, thick and fine must be eaten in combination. Rice is delicious, but you can’t eat rice every meal for less than half a month; steamed buns are not delicious, and you can’t eat steamed buns for more than half a month.

After exiting the school gate, crossing the railway and crossing the highway, we could vaguely see the brick factory cafeteria opposite. There was a simple shed set up outside the door of the brick factory cafeteria. Although there was no signboard, we knew it was Sheep soup restaurant. You can enter the shanties, but you can't go to the canteen of the brick factory. The Zhuanchang Canteen operates externally as a hotel with the purpose of profit. As soon as the curtain of the shack was opened, a dense cloud of hot air rushed in, and the aroma went straight into the nostrils. Lamb offal soup is rich in nutrients, suitable for all ages, and can be eaten in all seasons. Especially when the weather is cool and cold, eating it can drive away the cold. A bowl of mutton soup will make your whole body warm and comfortable. After lifting the curtain and entering, teachers and students who usually eat in the cafeteria lined up, sitting on long wooden benches, holding a golden pagoda (wotou) in one hand and a large porcelain bowl of mutton soup in the other, sipping and sweating profusely. Dry steamed buns and mutton soup, it's a perfect combination of delicacies.

A bowl of mutton soup costs 2 cents. At the bottom of the bowl, put the intestines, tripe, blood, deboned meat and other mutton offal, as well as seasonings such as coriander, chives, and salt. The lady in charge of the spoon will put a large spoon toward it. The boiling cauldron filled with mutton bones and heads was stretched out, and the milky white mutton soup was poured into the bowl. White mist rose up and covered my face, and my taste buds burst into bloom like a tuberose. I took out my own small spoon from my pocket, took a sip of the soup and drank it. The fragrance of the haggis and the heat of the boiling soup penetrated my heart and reached my heart. In the stomach. If you like spicy food, add a spoonful of chili oil to the soup. If the taste is too strong, you can add salt. The red color is chili oil, the green color is green onion and coriander, and the milky white color is mutton bone soup. Just the sight of it will make you feel full of food and make you smile. I took a sip of the mutton soup and took a bite of the steamed buns. The steamed buns seemed to have burrs when I chewed them. Infused with the fresh aroma of the mutton soup and the spiciness of the chili oil, I tasted much smoother. I thought I felt like eating steamed buns with noodles.

Sitting on a long bench and drinking hot soup, steamed buns taste better than steamed buns. We teachers and students were chatting and laughing, and while we were holding the second bowl of soup, the door curtain made a noise, and a gust of cold wind brought in several pink-faced female classmates. Guests give way to guests first, some of us stand up, and those of us who sit sit close together to make room for latecomers. They also had two steamed buns and a bowl of soup. They were reserved, pushing back and forth, and eating and drinking leisurely. One of them broke the steamed bun into small pieces, put it into a soup bowl, and ate it with a small spoon. The lady's elegant eating style was clearly displayed. The other girls followed suit one after another, their cheeks filled with balsam, sweating on their foreheads, and in the hot atmosphere of the small space, they took off their red scarves, revealing their beauty even more. Years later, I learned that it was the textbook way to eat mutton steamed buns.

After many years, I still miss the row of simple houses outside the brick factory and the mutton soup restaurant. I know that it is not so much that I miss that bowl of mutton soup, but that I miss those hot years together.

I got up early for morning exercise outdoors and saw the mist on the road. It reminded me of the steaming steam from the big pot of mutton soup when I first lifted the lid. So I was more cautious and looked for a place where I could drink mutton soup along the way. Son, I'll have a drink later. There must be an old song out there still singing: when I was young I would listen to the radio and wait for my favorite songs and when they came on I would sing along.