The Northern Stories of Chef Lao Tan

Chapter 496
People often say that there is nothing better than home-cooked food, and it is true.No matter how good the food outside is, it is not as good as eating at home.People who are not always outside can't feel this feeling.

The little stupid chicken and the butcher shop always make it, but no matter how good it is, it doesn't taste like home.If Lao Tan had tasted two yuan in the past, he would have shut up, but today it was stewed in a big pot with firewood at home, and it was very delicious, so he ate a few more yuan.

His son, Jiaheng, is growing up. As the saying goes, half a child eats me to death, and he is at the age where he can eat, and he enjoys eating.

The old lady ate little. After drinking a bowl of porridge with shredded chicken and cornmeal paste, she took two mouthfuls of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and put down her chopsticks.

"Mom, are you ready?" Old Tan asked.

"Eat well, a bowl of porridge is enough for my meal. If there is no porridge, I will eat half-la'er flower rolls. Your fifth sister fry a spring onion and eat it. I don't eat chicken, mutton, etc. I can't chew it." ——People can’t eat meat when they are old, it’s not easy to digest, just a little bit of oil and water in every meal.” The old lady said.

Fifth Sister said: "Mom can't eat much in one meal, but eats frequently, at least four meals a day. In the morning, I drink porridge, order pickles, and sometimes steam a chicken cake.

Wait until ten o'clock to eat the second meal. If I am at home, I will make her pimple soup, and if I am at work, she will make it herself.I eat a lot at noon, sometimes small rice, cakes, and flower rolls. Mom loves to eat cornmeal, sometimes I make porridge for her, and sometimes I put big pancakes on it.

She doesn't eat in the afternoon after lunch, and eats less in the evening, sometimes noodles, sometimes dumplings, depending on her mood.If she finds that the food is not smooth, she will make a small bowl of camellia noodles and eat some fruit. "

Old Tan said: "Mom knows how to keep in good health. When you reach the age, eat less and eat more."

The fifth sister said: "Mom is thinner, she looks dry, her eyes are not good, she has no other problems, her physique is better than mine."

The fifth brother-in-law said: "Well, that's not true. My mother's physique is better than your fifth sister. Your fifth sister is not good, and the cold will not come down. The east wind blows and the west wind blows, and the nose is blowing all day long."

"Old uncle, I don't think my old aunt has either—" Jia Heng defended my old aunt.

"This is your return. Your old aunt will recover from her cold and wine when she is happy." The fifth brother-in-law said.

Jia Heng didn't believe it, and said, "Just lie, my old aunt is not like that, it's not my old aunt."

Fifth Sister laughed and said, "My eldest nephew is still facing me."

Usually, the old lady went straight to the kang and lay down after eating. Today, the son and grandson were happy to come back and sat for a while.Seeing that the wine his son and son-in-law drank was red, he asked curiously: "What kind of wine are you two drinking? Why is it so colorful? Fruit wine?"

Old Tan said: "It's not fruit wine, but the brewed wine has medicinal herbs in it."

"Well, medicinal wine, I'm still thinking about fruit wine. What's the matter with this medicinal wine?"

"It's good for the stomach." Old Tan said.

The old lady shook her head and said, "Alcohol hurts the liver and stomach, but is it good for the stomach? Hmph, the wine seller is fooling you, so you can buy it?"

Lao Tan and fifth brother-in-law laughed.

The old lady went on to say, "I've drank good medicinal wine. I had backaches in 55 years ago, and I couldn't straighten up. Your second brother-in-law entrusted someone to give Taodeng tiger bone wine, and told me to drink a cup every night before going to bed. .

Not to mention, I'm really in charge, and my waist won't hurt after drinking most of the bottle, that's all.Hey, that's called medicinal wine. It's really made from tiger bones, with ginseng in it.The current medicinal wine is all fake, and the medicinal materials are not real. Is there real wine?Just fooling you drinkers. "

Fifth Sister said: "This wine is brewed by Guohua himself."

The old lady said: "I make it myself? It's okay to make it by myself." Then she said: "Drink less if you make it yourself. Alcohol is not a good thing. Eat more meat."

Old Tan and the fifth sister-in-law laughed, and the fifth sister said: "Mom, you go to the kang to rest after eating. They drink their own, not much."

The old lady squinted on the kang, and the fifth brother-in-law said to Lao Tan: "Mom is happy to see you and Jiaheng are back, or else the kang will be in the morning, so I won't sit here."

After dinner, Lao Tan and his fifth brother-in-law went to drink tea and chat under the shade of a tree in the yard. Fifth sister cleaned up the dishes in the house, and Jiaheng went to the garden to inspect the eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes.

It is quiet at noon in the countryside. Occasionally, a donkey bray can be heard far away, half the village can hear it.

The sun is burning hot, the sky is blue, with a few white clouds floating leisurely.At this time, the peasants are lying down on the kang and taking a nap, and even the naughty children have stopped, either falling asleep on the kang or on a small bed under the shade of the trees.

The countryside is so good, no matter how hot it is, the mountain wind blows down, the doors of the front and rear houses are open, and the house is cool without an electric fan. At night, you have to cover yourself with a thin quilt, or you will catch a cold.

At some point, Jia Heng moved from the garden to the back of the house, and when he came back from the back of the house, he held a freshly picked apple pear in his hand, and came to the shade of a tree and asked his fifth brother-in-law: "Old uncle, can this pear be eaten?"

"You can eat it, but why can't you eat it? It's not very sweet, and it's not yet time." The fifth brother-in-law said.

Jiaheng took a bite, chewed a few times and said happily, "It's delicious, very sweet."

"You can eat it if it tastes good, Kazuki." Fifth brother-in-law said.

"I want to pick the apples too, but they are too small and green, so I didn't pick them," Jiaheng said.

"Apple still needs a month." The fifth brother-in-law said.

"It's still a month away, so I won't be able to eat anymore." Jiaheng said regretfully.

"It's okay, I'll mail it to you when it's ready, and I won't put it in the cellar until you come back to eat during the Chinese New Year." The fifth brother-in-law said.

"I want to eat something just picked from the tree—how about it, tell me when it's ripe, and I'll come back, okay old uncle?"

"Okay, but you have to come back, don't come back by then."

"We'll have a holiday on October [-]st, won't we be familiar with each other then?"

"It's ripe."

"I'll be back in October."

After drinking a pot of tea, the fifth brother-in-law couldn't keep his eyes open, so he went back to sleep after talking to Lao Tan.Lao Tan was not sleepy, he sat there drinking tea and looking at the mountains outside the yard.

The mountains are green, with cornfields on the slopes and pine trees on the top of the hills, and the corn leaves rustle when the mountain wind blows.

Lao Tan remembered the scene when he was a child in school.There is a long lunch break in summer. After eating, we go to the fields on the mountain to collect weeds. There are gray vegetables, Xitiangu, grasshopper vegetables, and Lalaman. A large bundle is taken home and thrown into the pigsty. The pigs rush to eat it, just like delicious food .

There are many gray vegetables and Xitiangu corn fields, and drilling the corn fields is the most uncomfortable, not to mention the sweltering heat, and the corn leaves are still stinging, especially on the neck, which burns.Once you sweat again, don't mention the feeling, it's like ants crawling on your neck, and you bite your teeth while crawling.

After pulling the weeds and coming out of the field, the first thing to do is to unbutton the clothes, blowing against the mountain wind to feel cool and refreshing——

When I was a child, I was very playful, and I was not in a hurry to go home after weeding, and squatted in the soybean field to catch grasshoppers.I forget the time as soon as I catch it, and often run to school in a hurry, lest I be late.

Catching grasshoppers requires patience, and if you don't have patience, you won't be able to catch them.Grasshoppers screamed under the soybean leaves. First they searched for the sound and approached quietly. When they got closer, the grasshopper stopped screaming when they heard the sound.

Seeing that there was no movement, the grasshopper thought that the danger was over, so he yelled again, and it was easy to find.

After you find it, you can't rush to grab it with your hands, as it will be easy for the grasshopper to run away.A good way is to uproot the whole soybean seedling, so that the grasshopper will not run under the leaves, even if it is caught.

I grabbed it and put it in the cage, then put a few soybean leaves in it, took it home and put the cage under the bean stand in the garden, and after a while, I heard the katydid with a big belly, which was crisp and melodious.

Old Tan was able to catch grasshoppers, and sometimes he caught four or five at noon, and the friends in the village would share one and go home happily.

Pesticides are often used in the fields now, and there are very few grasshoppers calling, but there are some in the garden—the grasshoppers also know that the vegetable garden is not poisonous.

"Dad, let's go up the mountain to pick mushrooms tomorrow." said son Jiaheng.

"Then it has to rain again. If it doesn't rain, there will be no mushrooms." Old Tan said.

The son looked up at the sky, the sun was hot and the sky was clear, and he couldn't help mumbling: "When will it rain—"

(End of this chapter)