Hard times have room

Chapter 2 Dinner
Pushing open the bamboo door, Baolin saw her 5-year-old cousin Wen Jun was playing grasshopper with her 2-year-old cousin Baozhu. They were all children of three uncles and three aunts.

They are too young to be able to do much work, and they are too busy to work, so they let their elder brother and younger sister take care of the house at home.

"Wenjun Baozhu, see what elder sister brought you back."

Pauline walked over to the two who were playing attentively, put down the basket while talking, and took out the delicate red raspberries wrapped in leaves.

This is the unique taste of April. The raspberry tastes sour and sweet. It is a good snack for many years without snacks.

"Big sister, eat, eat, eat." Baozhu, who was not very good at speaking at the age of two, was the first to speak. This is a little greedy cat who likes to eat the most.

Wang Wenjun looked at the raspberries that were wrapped in leaves and gave off a sweet and fruity aroma. He swallowed, hesitated for a moment, and said slowly, "Sister, let's wait for everyone to come back and eat together."

Children of the poor have been in charge of the family early, and Wen Jun is quite sensible at a young age. He understands that it is not easy to understand family members, and he can share without being domineering.

Baolin always liked this sensible and obedient younger brother, and she never forgot to share with him any wild fruit snacks or the like.

Because the third aunt had to go to the ground to earn work points, Baolin watched Wen Jun from childhood until she was 4 years old, until she took over the spatula in the hands of her grandmother.

Now baby Wen Jun also continues the tradition of taking care of the big and small, taking care of the treasure at home and taking care of the house.

"No need, there aren't many raspberries brought back by eldest sister today. Wen Jun and Baozhu can eat them. Tomorrow, eldest sister will find a little more time and bring raspberries and thorns to make catecha. Let's eat together."

"Wenjun, now the eldest sister is going to cook, you can take Baozhu to sit at the door and eat while waiting for grandma and the others to come back. When you see grandma and grandma and they come back, come and tell sister, okay?" A little thorn in Xiao Wenjun's head.

"Guaranteed to complete the task, eldest sister, go and cook, I will be obedient." Wang Wenjun thought about the task that his eldest sister entrusted to him, which was the importance of himself, and suddenly his sense of responsibility rose.

Now is the spring planting season, the entire team is busy planting sweet potato vines on the mountain, and the commune primary school has a farm holiday.

There are not many people who go to the back mountain to dig wild vegetables and pick wild fruits, so there are still some wild fruits on the back mountain, not all the monkey boys in the team are clean.

Bao Lin handed the raspberries wrapped in leaves to Wen Jun, and instructed: "Remember to use a gourd scoop to scoop up water to clean it before giving it to Baozhu.

After he finished speaking, he came to the kitchen with the back basket, put the wild vegetables into the wooden basin, picked and washed them, removed the old wild vegetables stems, chopped them up and put them on the chopping board for later use.

The sunset completely sank, and Canxia faded. Looking around, it seemed that the entire Shanghe Village was a little gloomy.

Most of the people in the village had green smoke floating from the eaves.

In the village, dinner is eaten early, and it is necessary to have dinner before it is completely dark.

Otherwise, when it gets dark, you have to eat in the dark or light an oil lamp. Most people in the village have night blindness, but they are frugal. Most of them have urinals or urinals.

No matter how long she has lived here, Pauline's living habits and thinking have inevitably been affected and changed, but she is more like an authentic villager.

It's a bit late today, so let's make a sweet potato and wild vegetable porridge. It's easy and fast to fill your stomach, and then you can take a little pickled cabbage from the jar and you'll be alive.

Pickled cabbage is still the spring bamboo shoots pickled this spring. After scalding with boiling water, use cool white to cover the bamboo shoots. Sprinkle some salt to seal and cover them for three days and then eat them. It’s that simple.

After the sour bamboo shoots are opened, some people may feel a little smelly, but some people will feel very fragrant.

The techniques of making pickled sauerkraut were learned by Paulin from her grandmother before. The sour bamboo shoots made are sour and fresh, crispy and very appetizing.

At the beginning, I marinated three jars, but now I have eaten one and a half jars in less than a month.

Since Paulin was 10 years old last year, she took over her milk's spatula. Every day her breakfast was a sweet potato and wild vegetable porridge made by her milk with three or two sweet potatoes, and she padded her stomach.

There is food in the stomach, so as not to get too hungry before leaving work at noon.

Just eat three meals a day at the Wang family. Although the meal is too thin, it is not enough, but it is better than most people in the village.

As for this meal, I don't know how many big girls and little daughters-in-law in the village secretly hated that I didn't have a good eye for the Wang brothers, but they made two foreigners cheaper.

Back then, Bao Lin's father's grandfather was a very partialist. Although her grandfather only had two brothers, the old man loved his young son or disliked her milk, a shrewd and powerful daughter-in-law, which led the two elders to favor her uncle and grandfather very much. Her grandfather is also very filial.

When her grandmother was divided, she only divided two broken thatched houses and her own belongings, and nothing else. The whole family was poor and white, and even mice were not cared for.

For this reason, her nanny, the matchmaker, said that no one would look up to her uncle and her father, and the two brothers were both in their 20s and hadn't talked about kissing, so they dragged on and became the old leftover men at that time.

Later, there were disasters everywhere, and the whole of China was in chaos. Shanghe Village was backed by Daqingling and next to Daqing River. The harvest of the fields was okay. Although the harvest was also reduced by [-]%, it was better to live by the mountains than in other places.In addition, Shanghe Village is not a wealthy place, there are few fields, and the location is remote enough, and the impact of the disaster is also small.

At that time, several families fled to Shanghe Village and settled down in this remote small village. After so many years, they have recovered.

Back then, in order to settle down in Shanghe Village, the eldest aunt Li Tao, her mother and her brother married Li Tao to the uncle, and later gave birth to Wen Hui and Wen Can.

Li Tao's younger brother, Li Qiang, married Xu Xiuying from the Xu family who was a widow in Shanghe Village, and her husband was a widow. She brought her a daughter named Li Cao, and later gave birth to Daya Li Ju, Erya Li Juan, and Li Bao, who was just 4 years old. Egg.

Baolin's mother, Su Hongying, also fled from the famine in those days. She was caught by her father and brought home and became a relative.

In that year, when the army was in chaos, the Su family went to Shanghe Village completely, and Su Hongying married her father, Wang Jiandang, who was considered an old leftover man at the time.

Now it's late spring and early summer, there are plenty of wild vegetables that are fresh and tender. Every afternoon, Paulin has to dig up enough wild vegetables for a day, and then go home to cook.

If you have enough time and you find a lot of wild vegetables, you will go there a few more times. If you can’t finish eating, you will dry the vegetables and save them to eat when you have no more vegetables.

Today in April, there are many wild vegetables and wild fruits. In the morning, you can follow the mushroom-picking team in the village to pick up some mushrooms in the back mountain and come back to make mushroom soup.

If you can't finish eating it, you can dry it, and then sell it to the acquisition station. Shanghe Village has beautiful mountains and clear waters, good water and soil, and mushrooms are delicious. You can often buy a good price at the acquisition station.

Of course, because Bao Lin cooks all the meals at home during the holidays, Bao Lin doesn't have to go to the fields to help earn work points like Wen Hui and Wen Can did.

Pauline had worked a few times before, and she was so tired that she couldn't straighten her waist and bent over all morning.The work points are really hard to earn, and the food for the New Year is really the hard-earned money of the family.

Later, it was Paulin's father who felt bad for her, just as the pig raising job in the village was free, and Paulin's milk took advantage of the situation.He also asked Pauline to take over the spatula of her milk when she was on vacation, and asked her to do some chores such as digging wild vegetables, cooking, housekeeping and feeding chickens every day.

Her mother took over the job of raising pigs in the village. This job is easier than going to work, not one or two points, and the work points are not low, 8 per day, and the breeder can give extra bones during the Chinese New Year. into the water and the like.

Usually when Paulin goes to school, Mrs. Wang can feed the pigs and come back to cook earlier.

If it weren't for the fact that the village party secretary was her cousin, the two families had a good relationship, and there was no suitable person to go to, this job would not be her milk!
There are more than 5 households in the village, and there are not many pigs, only [-] pigs, two of which were killed by the village brigade for the New Year, and the remaining three were sold to the purchasing station to share the money for the New Year.

Of course, Pauline didn't feel embarrassed to play when her family was working hard, and because of her own experience and personality, she usually didn't talk much outside, so she seemed very reticent.I don't call with my peers, just one or two friends who usually pick up mushrooms, scrape firewood and dig wild vegetables. I usually have a lot of work at home, and I don't have much time to play together.

Thanks to Pauline's unremitting efforts, three sacks of dried wild vegetables have been piled up at home. There are half burlap bags for dried mushrooms, and a burlap bag for dried bamboo shoots, which looks very impressive.

But if the whole family really eats it, it will not last long.

This is still the fruit of more than half a month of hard work by Pauline in mobilizing the whole family to work together during the slack season.

Paulin took out the 8 sweet potatoes left at noon from the cabinet where her milk was rationed every day in the kitchen. After washing the sweet potatoes with water that had been washed with wild vegetables, she carefully scraped off the dark spots on the sweet potatoes with a kitchen knife.

Cut the sweet potatoes into hob cubes and set aside.

Then he went to the old broken jar with charcoal next to the stove, took out the firewood box, took the pine needles on one side and set it on fire, and then began to add twigs to the fire.

Pauline's movements were very skillful, and after a while, the fire gradually grew.

After the fire started, Paulin added four scoops of water to the large pot on the stove. Simmer for a while, then put salt water on the wild vegetables, roll it, and it will be out of the pot in about half a minute.

Just that idea, sweet potatoes, wild vegetables and salt, can you make any tricks?Anyway, Paulin can't do it. Following the common practices of farmers who learned from her milk, the taste and ingredients are also the same. The only difference is probably the two dishes of sour bamboo shoots.

The salt used at home is coarse salt granules, which is cheap at two cents a pound, but it is a bit difficult to dissolve when cooking, so when Paulin cooks, she likes to dissolve the coarse salt granules in water in advance, and then pour salt water directly. That's it.

As soon as the sweet potato and wild vegetable porridge was ready, it was placed in a wooden basin specially for rice, when Wen Jun's excited shouts came from outside: "Eldest sister, grandpa and the others are back."

(End of this chapter)