Go back to the valley to farm

Chapter 270

Chapter 270 New Year's Eve
Early the next morning, Li Junge's family was busy.

Today is New Year's Eve, and the big family usually eats New Year's Eve dinner at Li Junge's house, so it's busy.

The New Year’s Eve dinner in the countryside is similar to the nine-douwan meal. According to the local customs in Jiachuan, as long as the [-]rd year of the twelfth lunar month has passed, the period from the [-]th of the twelfth lunar month to the New Year’s Eve dinner is the time period for eating New Year’s Eve dinner.

There are too many relatives in the countryside, and each family has to go down, so it really needs to be carefully and compactly arranged.

The New Year's Eve meal requires everyone to be together, and the second cousin comes back late every year, so the Li family also eats the New Year's Eve dinner late.

You can invite relatives such as your aunt's family and mother-in-law's family to eat the New Year's meal, and your family can also be invited back to your natal family or other relatives of the clan to have the New Year's meal.

Early in the morning, Aunt Bai came with taro and rice dumplings, and took a camera to shoot here and there. They wanted to follow the whole process of the Li family's New Year's Eve.

The meals for the New Year’s Eve are the most sumptuous of the family banquets, similar to the Jiu Dou Bowl, the difference is that the four major dishes of chicken, duck and fish must be complete.

Woke up early in the morning, Li Junge caught a rooster and a hen and killed them.The recipe of the hen is a simple stew. Add a lot of soup. During the banquet, the chicken soup can be bloody, the chicken soup can be boiled with pea tips, or the chicken soup can be used to make vermicelli.

A hen cannot be used to worship the gods. If one really wants to, it can only be scooped up with a bowl of loose meat.

Therefore, rural families with spare energy still have to kill the rooster, and the rooster is much more particular. Before cooking, it must be shaped, the head of the chicken is raised to the sky, and the feet of the chicken are kneeling against the chicken legs. After the shape is cooked, the whole chicken is placed in the pot. It is especially bearish and meets the requirements of worshiping gods.

The duck does not require a whole duck. There are many ways to make it. It can be stewed old duck soup with sauerkraut and radish, fried duck with ginger and pickled peppers, or roasted duck with konjac. People who know how to cook can also make sweet Skin duck and camphor tea duck.

Li Junge made konjac in the past two months, and the leftovers were frozen into snow konjac. Now it is time to make sour cowpea snow konjac roast duck.

Eating fish for New Year's Eve dinner is indispensable in all parts of the country. Taking the idea that there will be more than one year, Li Junge caught two five-jin grass carp in the fish pond and prepared to make the classic watercress fish.

Taking advantage of the New Year's Eve dinner today, my dad also went to the vegetable field to chop a lot of vegetables and came back. Except for today's use, I have to eat until the fifteenth day of the New Year.

There are more meat dishes, such as bacon, sausage, crispy meat, steamed meat, and other fried and boiled dishes, which can be described as diverse.

Another thing that is indispensable is twice-cooked pork, because sacrificial meat must be eaten after the sacrifice is completed, so twice-cooked pork is an inevitable choice.

So getting up early in the morning, the whole family grows yellow flowers, fungus, and dried bamboo shoots, chooses vegetables, chops pickled ginger, soaks peppers, steams glutinous rice, cuts meat, cooks bacon sausages, fried crispy meat, meatballs... There are a lot of things to do. , to use the old saying, that is to be so busy that the braids don't stick to their backs.

The three masters and apprentices of black, white and brown are really welcome. When Li Junge was frying meatballs and crispy meat in the kitchen, they were filming and scooping them into their mouths, calling them delicious and hot.

Li Junge rolled his eyes: "You guys will get angry like this! I have to make cold tea for you in the winter!"

The three masters and apprentices of black, white and brown grinned: "You Chinese are too particular. We don't exist. They all grew up eating fried food! I just haven't eaten such delicious fried food! Much better than KFC McDonald's Already!"

I didn't bother to care about them. After everything was ready, Li Junge started cooking the knife head meat again.

Knife head meat refers to a square piece of meat cut with a knife against the end of the meat head after the meat is cut piece by piece when slaughtering a pig.

The meat cut into pieces from the pig, the side near the back is the meat head, and the side near the belly is the meat tail. There is a string at the end of the meat tail to hang the meat. When cutting the meat, you can only cut from the side of the meat head first. .

Shanxia usually uses the knife head of the rib meat to worship the gods, with the word "bao", which is used to worship the gods and pray for blessings.

The head meat is cut long, and after cooking, the fattest section is cut into squares and reserved for sacrifices.

Cut the remaining part into square piers, heat the wok, and start to scald the pigskin with the skin facing down.

After the pigskin is scalded until it is browned, start to smear brown sugar on it while it is still hot.

After the brown sugar is evenly spread, start slicing, then take two bowls with the skin facing down and form a "one book" style, put some sprouts on the side, throw some ginger slices and pepper, and pour some soy sauce; The glutinous rice mixed with sugar is spread on the side, and made into sweet and salty burnt rice respectively.

For cooking, steaming, and soup, the fire will start cooking in the morning.

For lunch, the family just ate the finished product at 01:30, chicken soup with rice, crispy meatballs with salt and pepper, bacon sausage, cold vegetables and ear root.

The trio of black, white and brown were salivating, but they couldn't eat anymore. They were already belching from eating crispy meat and meatballs.

After eating, I can be free for a while. Dad started to prepare snacks such as peanuts, melon seeds and rice crackers, and made tea.

First came the fourth grandpa and the old man's family, including the seven younger sisters.

Then came the uncle's family, including the first cousin, the second cousin, and the younger cousin, including Yu Ning, Yu Duo and Yu Song, eleven of them.

After a while, the eldest aunt's family also arrived, and even the eldest cousin's family, including Ma Cuiru's little sister, five members.

The second aunt and the second uncle are still at work, so they came late. The second cousin was on duty in the field army and couldn't come. Only the second cousin Xie Zhilan and Jing Zilun came, but the cousin Jing Yuanxia and her cousin Wang Guojian brought the younger sister Wang Meixian The cubs are back too, and this is seven.

Including the four members of my family, and Ayin, who stayed at his post for the last day, changed the background color of the website to red, and then came over after patrolling the village for a long time, there are a total of 35 people, large and small.

The three masters and apprentices in black, white and brown were amazed: "Wow... It's like the opening plot of "The Godfather"!"

The eldest aunt and the second aunt pulled the old man and talked, laughed and wiped tears. When they got angry, they would pat him twice, scold him for being heartless, and then laugh after the pat.

The old man hid with a smile, and if he couldn't hide, he accepted it with a smile. The posture was clearly enjoying, as if being patted by two younger sisters was a very happy thing.

The foreign aunt Lan Bing couldn't stop smiling as she watched this warm scene.

The elder brother and the elder sister-in-law sat next to the old aunt, explaining to her the relationship between each other and each other, and let her straighten out the family context.

Everyone just sat in the open dam and chatted.

As soon as the two sisters came, they took the taro rice dumplings and the children running around in front of the house.

Aunt Bai shook her head helplessly, she had to do this important task of shooting by herself.

Li Junge was mixing cold dishes, when Wang Meixian and Jing Zilun ran over, each holding two short bamboo sticks, sticking a ball of sesame sugar syrup on the bamboo sticks, while they kept stirring and playing "garbage sugar". while playing the game, he asked, "Uncle Erpi, why don't our family stupefy them?"

Li Junge kept chopsticks in his hand, and said with a smile: "Firecrackers are going to be set off everywhere tonight. I'm afraid they will be frightened, so I let them go to the mountain."

The two little ones immediately shifted their attention: "Does our family prepare a lot of firecrackers?"

Li Junge said with a smile: "There must be more! Uncle Erpi also prepared a lot of throwing and cleaning cannons for you, as well as fireworks and so on. Then you have to play hard!"

The two little ones were so happy that they turned around and ran, shouting as they ran, "Brother Yu Ning, Uncle Er Pi said that he has prepared a lot of firecrackers! Take us to play at night..."

Li Junge laughed loudly, mixed the cold dishes, then went to cut the cured meat, and had to make a platter.

A Yin also came to help in the kitchen, she was a little embarrassed to face this situation, so she felt at ease staying with Li Junge.

It was almost dusk, and after a while, my father came in and took the meat and the rooster, and said, "We are going to worship the gods, Ayin, do you want to come and see?"

Li Junge put down his work and said to A Yin: "Come on, I will also introduce you to the customs of our Han people during the Chinese New Year."

I saw that my father took out the newly invited lucky paper this year and pasted it on last year's lucky paper in the main room, and then came out to find a place on the east side of the courtyard, and arranged the chicken and the knife head , I found another cement joint, and inserted three incense sticks and two candles.

Li Junge explained to A Yin: "This is to respect the heaven and the earth. The sky is the god and the earth is the only one. Thank them for the good weather this year. Lijiagou has a bumper harvest of fruits and abundant products. I pray that next year will be as safe and smooth as this year."

Ayin nodded, bowed to the incense burner with his parents, and folded his little hands reverently for a few obeisances.

Li Junge said with a smirk: "The next step is to worship the family god in the main room. You can also worship this, but after you worship, you will be a member of our family."

A Yin blushed, and secretly gave Li Junge an elbow.

Seeing that the paper money was burned out, the parents waited a little longer, brought the rooster and the knife head to the main room, and placed three sticks of incense under the tablet of the emperor, relatives and teachers of heaven, earth, and lit two candles, as a respectful meeting , mouth to pray for blessings.

Then they worship the Kitchen God in the kitchen, and finally they worship the Four Officials God of Wealth in the pigsty house.

In the old custom, if the ancestral graves are nearby, you can go out with a knife and a rooster to pay homage to the ancestral graves one by one.It's like inviting the ancestors to have a New Year's Eve dinner.

The next step is to "burn the burden paper".

Burning burden paper is an important ceremony for New Year's dinner. Li Junge explained the custom to A Yin while watching his parents fiddle with it.

Burden paper is made of wool paper, which is piled up into a stack of many sheets. There are three rows on a bundle paper, and each row has eight money eyes.

Unlike paper money, if there are only six money eyes in a row, it is money paper.

Money paper belongs to scattered money, which is used to worship the gods and give to the little ghosts.

The burden paper should be sealed into a package with white paper, like a brick, and written on special paper, also called "fire list", which is specially burned for the ancestors of the family.

When the fire bill is bought, it is printed with a special seal, just like a bank remittance slip, which is trustworthy.

The content filled in above is which house foundation so-and-so burned how many papers to give to the deceased relatives, just like the remittance slip, and the remittance time should be written on the year, month and day.

After filling out the fire form, the old rule is to paste it on the prepared bamboo frame into a rectangular shape, and burn it to the ancestors together with the burden paper. When burning, recite the invitation words in your mouth, and let those ancestors come to eat the New Year's meal and collect the paper money.

But now the rules are loose, it’s fine to put the fire bill on the burden paper and burn it, and the ancestors can find a box to pack it on the other side.

Hei Hei Zong was puzzled, and Li Junge explained: "'Death is like life', 'The major events of the country lie in sacrifices and soldiers'. We have always been serious about sacrificing ancestors."

Since it is a sacrifice to the ancestors, the Li family members all have a share. The relationship between the Lijiagou branch is harmonious, and the parents don't care about it. Therefore, when the father is setting the table in the main room, the old uncle, the eldest aunt and the second aunt all come to help.

Some families with bad relations can only go to the master’s house at this time, and if the aunt also goes up to take care of it, the aunt and son will be angry, thinking that they will rob their own blessings.

Aunt Biao worked hard, and the ancestors had to share some of the blessings with Aunt Biao, and he would get less on his side. This is intolerable.

(End of this chapter)