The canteen of the student era is full of thick smoke and fire. Whether it's watching a movie or eating in the cafeteria, I can't help but think of the stove when I was studying every time.
Speaking of student stoves, "too cool" is an unavoidable character. This person's surname is Guo, and the single name is a good word. He is the master chef on the stove, responsible for cooking and boiling water. The rice was still well done, and the water was boiling badly, and it often could not be boiled. The student baby drank the water of the seventh child, and her stomach was uncomfortable, so she went to the principal to reflect. The principal called Guo Liang to the office for training. The next day, the water we fetched was straight and warm. A few bold students went to "file a complaint again", who knew that the principal came to say: "Alas, I can't mess with it!" Later, I heard that Guo Liang called the principal to scold Mao, and without saying a word, he actually threw the chicken that the principal's wife raised behind the bungalow to death.
When the student saw that Guo Shi was a hard stubble, she did not dare to come hard. I don't know which day, the door of the house where he lived had two eye-catching big words written: "Too cool." I couldn't wipe it off, the exhibition lasted for nearly two months, and the school felt that it was "obstructing the view", so it painted the door again. However, the words written in the hearts of teachers and students are difficult to erase. Since then, both teachers and students have called him "too cold".
In those years, it was no exaggeration to say that students may not know what the principal's name is, but they definitely know that there is a master on the stove who is called too cold. People who are too cold are very hard, and no one's fire is skimmed at school. However, the food he cooked was OK. Don't mention how fragrant the noodles are. In fact, it is the noodles that are boiled and put some cheap dishes such as potatoes, cabbage, and coriander. In this way, we students can't afford to eat every meal. Poor, most of the students of that era studied on their backs. Go home on the weekend to get steamed buns, usually with three or four large pot helmets. Sometimes, also let the shuttle carry. The name was written on the snakeskin bag containing the bun, and when they arrived at the station, everyone rushed over to turn over their own buns. Don't dare to take more, summer is not good to keep, easy to break. Winter is frozen hard, cold as iron, can not be broken, can not be soaked. When it is hot, the steamed bun grows green hair, scrapes it with a knife and knife, soaks it in boiling water and eats it with the green spicy seeds or green onions brought at home. It was cold, and the bun was as hard as a brick, so I broke the bun on the bed board, broke it vigorously, and soaked it in a porcelain bowl filled with boiling water.
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Therefore, I was extremely red-eyed at the classmates who could eat burning noodles. Fifty cents a bowl of noodles, which can be eaten once a week, is also a luxury for me. Especially in winter, the snow is as big as a mat, which can freeze people to death. Holding the burning noodles, the heat and aroma hit the sixteen-year-old soul, and for me at that time, this was the whole meaning of life. As Heiwa said in "White Deer Plain" when she ate rock candy: "When I earn money in the future, I will buy it a pocket of rock candy." "I also thought that when I developed, I would eat burning noodles all the time. If you're lucky, you'll be able to pick up slices of fatty meat in your dough. Hold it in your mouth for a long time before you are willing to swallow. Later, when I told my daughter about this detail, she said it was a fable.
The tofu brain made of too cold is much softer than his person. There are few delicious things on the student stove, cabbage, potatoes, dumplings, burning noodles, and then there is the local famous snack tofu brain. My father and I used to eat once at the town market, and the bean fragrance was a mixture of fragrant aromas, coupled with the unique aroma of the spicy seeds in the oil, which was the rhythm of the incense. However, when I was in my first year of high school, my family was short of food, and there was money for you to improve your life. In fact, there are more delicacies on the stove, which is a huge temptation for the guy who is growing up. Stewed vegetables (with meat), oil cakes, red meat boiled steamed buns, twist flowers, lamb steamed buns. Everything can make people wet. But I am also a boy with a backbone, how can I lose this ugly in front of my classmates. I always walked around the teaching stove, deliberately walking a few more steps to get to the student stove.
For the sake of Fangze, who kissed the tofu brain, I actually did something that was disgraceful and ashamed of myself. There was a classmate in the class who didn't like to write essays and wanted to invite me out of the mountains, and an essay was fifty cents. I wrote him a semester essay plus a love letter and earned seven or eight dollars. It is said that the Nobel Prize will not be declassified until fifty years later, and I unsealed the file more than twenty years later. At the time, this secret was really known only to both of us.
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Over the cool uncle, come to the bowl of tofu brain, spicy more put.
Come on ball, my name is your name?!
Uncle Guo, scoop a bowl of tofu brain.
That's right, hmm... You're a piece of.
After saying that, I smiled triumphantly, and sat and waited for the delicious food. In the gap between waiting, I glanced around, eating tofu brain few people. Most of the residential students are carrying steamed buns, it is estimated that they will be eating green dragons across the sea mile, the so-called green dragon across the sea is boiling water bubble steamed buns on the green onions, this is our own ridicule of the name.
The fragrant tofu brain came up, I was not willing to eat, first close to smell, a burst of refreshing spleen, no, the fragrance of the soul of the qin people soaked into the bones. It was so fragrant that, like most township parties eating tofu brains, I took out the pot helmet bun I had brought with me and dipped it in the spicy oil floating in the bowl. Who knows, the hard pot helmet can't be dipped in the aroma of spicy seeds at all. At this moment, I inadvertently glanced back, and the class teacher was holding a soft steamed bun dipped in spicy oil on the tofu brain. When the eyes met, he sensed my embarrassment, got up and walked straight over, and quietly stuffed me with a hot steamed bun. I didn't say anything, and my freshly open mouth closed again. Tears swirled a few times in his eyes. Fortunately, it did not fall, and the classmates sat at the next table.
The food on the teaching stove is one of the motivations for me to study. The big, thick yellow and brilliant oil cake, the golden temptation of biting the corner of the mouth and the oil flowing, stimulated the small heart of the village teenager countless times. Later, I saw Mo Yan's words in the book, he said that he desperately wrote a novel in order to eat dumplings, and I also secretly swore that for the future freedom of food, I must work hard to study.
Food sometimes limits people's imagination. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that anyone would have drunk someone else's leftover mutton soup. This happened in the dormitory. Saying that it is a dormitory, it is actually a bed board at the back of the classroom. There is a row of pot helmets hanging on the back wall, which is very spectacular, but it is a kind of sad grandeur.
The same is the dormitory, although the rudimentary of our time, compared to the father's generation, it has belonged to the luxury configuration. Listening to my father, he slept in a wheatgrass shop when he was in high school. There was no mattress, lying directly on the paved wheat grass, covered with a torn cotton wool quilt. My uncle was afraid to sleep in the wheatgrass shop that he dropped out of school. Almost sixty years old, he is still running day and night for life. If you could have endured the wheatgrass shop, you probably wouldn't have to worry so much.
In those years, chinese rural babies had the purest sleep, I always thought so. Now that the conditions are better, the student dolls are not sleeping well.
Xiao He's parents are public family members, and the conditions in the house are good, and there is no need to carry steamed buns. He ate on the stove every once in a while, and every three or five minutes he went to teach the stove, and every day he did not repeat it. One morning, he had just finished shaving a bowl of lamb bubbles, and his forehead was covered with sweat, so he went to wash his face. At this moment, Xiao Song did not resist the temptation and called the steaming mutton soup to attract him. He saw that I was left in the dormitory, and squeezed out a complex and mysterious smile at me, which was clearly tinged with a hint of bitterness. I went out on a loan and pretended not to see anything. When Xiao He returned, the old bowl was gone. I said help him return it to the stove. Since then, Xiao Song has been much closer to me.
Later, I transferred to Qianxian No. 2 Middle School. The financial situation at home is better than before, and I only carry two pot helmets a week. Eat steamed buns in the dormitory in the morning and evening, and serve on the stove at noon. I still remember the stew on the stove, a jar of vegetables, four steamed buns, and more money to forget. I just remember buying it with a meal ticket. The meal tickets were exchanged for grain pulled from the family. The grain was picked up by my father on sealand road. In those years, there was no charge for stopping cars on the road, do you believe it? At the end of the 1980s, my mother was teaching in Artemisia Township, twenty miles away from the county seat, and (private teachers) we often stopped the big car and sat in the big car.
I remember once, she took a coal truck to Qianxian to see me. Eat dumplings, ask for half a pound. My mother said she had eaten when she came and told me to eat it quickly. I naively believed it. It wasn't until that year that she failed the college entrance examination that she told me about the blank space of this life. I'm sorry mother!
Soup dumplings are winter favorites. Spicy soup, on top of a few strands of green coriander, white raw noodles, fragrant, stirred, hot breath up. I broke the pot and steamed steamed bread into it, buried it in the bottom of the bowl, and asked this dry food that the Qin and Han marching soldiers brought with them to fully accept the baptism of hot soup. I buried my head in hard work, met the bun in three or two clicks, picked up a piece, put it in my mouth sharply, did not hurry to chew, and waited for the sucking to reconcile, before reversing it between my teeth twice, and then swallowing violently.
Thanks to the meal ticket, I can improve my life. But I didn't dare to make a fool of myself, for a while I didn't resist the magic of food, the first half of the week "eating fragrant and drinking spicy", the second half of the week to nibble dry pot helmet. When I went back on the weekend, my father taught me a lesson, and from then on I was "a long stream". The main delicacy that improves life is the red meat steamed bun. The poor slices of fat meat, mixed in the bubble bun pile, are so conspicuous, just like the fat beauties I met on the streets of Xi'an later. Blessed with broth, this special Qianzhou pot helmet, also like a tiger and wolf, the ancient soldiers suddenly encountered several tender women on the battlefield, and immediately collapsed. I chewed it up, no matter the strange eyes of the female classmates at the next table, and no matter whether his male classmates called me like a mack. Purring, eating and drinking, meat rotten steamed; sucking and sucking, spicy screaming, sweating. Just that's right. What happened to McKe? Not a wheatecker, who cut the wheat in your house?!
School meals are also like a siege, even if it is good, it can not compete with the delicious stirring outside. Day students who have never lived in school yearn for student stoves, but residents crave food at the entrance of the school. People are so weird, in my grandfather's words, they are all. I just wanted to eat the dried flower bun at the gate. Ordinary soy products are marinated in the broth, and they taste more fragrant than meat, I listened to my classmates. Until graduation, I only clipped it once, but I touched it several times in front of the stall. Of course, the boss's woman is also an important reason for her pain. In order to be able to talk to "Huagan Xishi", I went out and bought one for a dollar and five. Said three words, worth it.
Let's have a dried flower bun.
Good.
How tall are you?
High.
I took the bun and turned around and went back to school.
Classmate, you forgot the book.
I picked up the book and said "thank you."
The bun outside the south wall of the school is unforgettable in this life. A dollar is like five, meat, dipped in spicy water to eat, the United States collapsed. Its fragrance is attractive, and the key lies in the usual way of purchasing. Over the wall "smuggling", the boss is outside the wall, we are in the wall. While the school police were snoozing, I climbed to the wall with my hungry classmates, put the money down, extended my arms, and grasped the bag containing the bun. A puff of smoke ran back to the dormitory, and a few of us feasted. Before the class teacher checked, the buns had long been reincarnated.
The Tianshui writer Wang Xuan wrote an essay called "The Gap", which described a special group. The school does not let students go out to eat, and the sellers look for gaps in the school walls and back doors, in this way to maintain the almost struggling human fireworks.
Many times I have taken meals in such gaps. Vegetable buns, cold skins, vegetables, buns, and bold classmates also took a few cigarettes. The people take food as the sky, and the student's school life is also in this strip, a mouth bun, a pot helmet to swing to the third year of high school. I rented with Tian Wa, Yuan Yuan, Hailong, and Shuguo to No. 17, Nanma Road Lane. Nineteen dollars per person per month. After living outside, a few of us basically achieved the freedom of food, and no longer had to buy food across the wall.
In the second semester of the third year of high school, everyone's living expenses have increased. The pot helmet is still on the back, but the back is less, and we have the "wallet bulging" to eat lamb bubbles. About once a month, the target is Zhongyi Canteen. In the first two years of coming to Qianxian County, I passed there countless times, peeked at it a few times, and then licked away my saliva. Finally, I don't have to be as addicted as I am in the novel. In difficult times, some people stood in the corridor of the tube building, holding a broken bun and pinching the smell of meat wafting from the neighbor's house.
I hurriedly broke the lamb pot and helmet, and took the bowl to cut the meat. Fat and thin, as well as blood, liver, stomach and other miscellaneous flesh, thick and solid, dense layers. Pour the soup, sprinkle with green onion coriander, the aroma of the lamb is fried soup, all come out, mixed with the unique aroma of coriander, really fragrant! How can a fragrant word be obtained? It was the most fragrant lamb bubble I've ever eaten in my life.
Before you start eating, take a sip of the soup and let the warm mutton soup soothe the stomach that has been lonely for many years. One bite of meat, five bites of steamed buns, three bites of soup. The momentum of the Qin people is all in this bowl of steamed buns; the male strength of the son dolls is in this bowl of steamed buns; the lonely anger of the cold window reading is all in this bowl of steamed buns. Before I could finish it, the bowl was empty.
I sighed, don't you eat it! Tian Wa said: "The empty bowl hides the sky, what is the fear of emptiness, and will fill it with talent in the future." The people who shaved the steamed buns on the table stopped chopsticks and looked at us both in unison. Xiao Jing's bun was not finished eating, and he snapped and pressed a dollar on the table, saying that whoever dared to eat his remaining bun would belong to whomever he left. Gangzi didn't say a word, picked up the bowl and went to his mouth, really like a rural person filling in the kangli. Finished eating, grabbed the money, and left. Several of my eyes widened. Shu Guo gave a thumbs up and read the words in the book in a strange tone: "This is not a small ambition"! Sure enough, Gangzi was admitted to a prestigious school, and later became a problem in Taiyuan.
Too cold has long since retired. Yongzhong moved to a new campus. The row of canteens in front of the stadium turned into shops. Good to come back to the noodle restaurant I don't know where to move. The pot helmets we carried, stacked up, were three stories high.
The main hall of Qianxian No. 2 Middle School has endured wind and rain, and it is still alone. What kind of building is standing on the site of the old stove? On second thought, I haven't been back to my alma mater for twenty years.
Is the aunt who sells dried flowers still there? Her daughter is also estimated to have become a greasy middle-aged beauty.
Late at night, let's write about it. I was a little hungry. I can't go back to the student stove!
Author | Weibei Knife Rider | Shaanxi people