Affection for Sidaogou during the Famine

These two dishes are simple to prepare, do not require much oil or salt, and taste great!

For a period of time afterwards, in May, all kinds of wild vegetables in the suburbs grew up, and purslane grew close to the ground, growing wildly in patches.

purslane

The meat is so tender that you can squeeze out the water. After blanching, it can be served cold or steamed in dumplings. It tastes sour and is very appetizing. It can be preserved for a long time after being dried.

After blanching, the gray-gray vegetable can be used for cold dishes or soups, and it has a crunchy texture in the mouth.

Although the dandelions and the coleus are a little old, they don’t mind. They pick them, wash them, dry them, and save them for winter. They mix them with cornmeal and steam them into steamed buns. They are delicious and save food.

Green amaranth is at its most tender and fresh, with lush leaves, suitable for cold dishes or soups. It is full of fresh flavor and is also delicious with slippery noodles.

It is also easy to preserve after drying. After soaking in winter, it can be used to steam buns or dumplings. It is delicious and nutritious and is one of people’s favorite wild vegetables.

Plantain, thistle, Bidens pilosa, Amaranthus chinensis, Notoginseng, Erigeron candidum, Broomrape, Dandelion, Water celery, Willow buds...

There are edible wild vegetables everywhere! They are plump and tender, growing lushly all over the mountains and plains.

The people have finally survived the lean period of early spring and ushered in the season of free wild vegetables everywhere!

Too many, really too many!

In later times, these would be considered mountain delicacies! The prices of some wild vegetables are so high that ordinary people in cities dare not buy more if they want to try them.

When it’s in season, it’s nice to buy one or two occasionally to enrich your dining table.

The price can be as high as 10 to 20 yuan per pound, while the lowest price is 7 to 8 yuan per pound. If it is on the menu of a high-end hotel, it can be sold for hundreds of yuan.

It has become a luxury for ordinary workers to eat wild vegetables!

But now, pollution-free wild vegetables grown without pesticides or fertilizers are everywhere. You can never pick them all! No matter where you bend down, you can quickly pick a large basket.

Now, even a clay basket could not meet their needs, so Han Zhaozhao and Niu Xiaoyun simply threw away the baskets and replaced them with large backpacks.

They picked wild vegetables, just like picking grass for cattle, carrying baskets home. After carrying them for two days, they changed their method.

The key point is that it is too heavy. The backpack is filled with tender wild vegetables. It is pressed firmly, but it is still quite heavy.

After picking the wild vegetables, they simply dried them on clean large rocks on the mountain. After they were dry, they packed them in sacks and carried the dried wild vegetables home.

After picking for five or six days, both the Han and Niu families had stored five sacks of various dried wild vegetables. Han Zhaozhao wanted to pick more, and Niu Xiaoyun couldn't stand it anymore!

Wild vegetables are good, but no one can eat them as meals for a whole year, right?

Five sacks of dried wild vegetables weigh a total of one or two hundred kilograms. After soaking, a small handful is enough for the whole family to have a meal.

Now they have enough money, and if they add some more grain, they will be able to eat until the year after next.

"Zhao Zhao, we can't pick anymore. There are too many. There is no room for them at my house!" Five big sacks also take up a lot of space!

There are six people in their family, but there are only two and a half rooms. Everyone sleeps on bunk beds. How can there be so much space to put things?

Han Zhaozhao stood up reluctantly and looked at the green amaranth in front of him. It was so fresh and tender! He wanted to pick all of them and take them home. What should he do?

Her hoarding disorder strikes again!

“It would be a pity not to pick such good green amaranth! It will become old in a while.

How about this, we can pick purslane on one last day, and after we finish picking this piece, we will pick that piece of purslane.

After they are dried, they will be given to Xiao Sanzi's family. No one from his family goes up the mountain to pick wild vegetables. Tomorrow is Sunday, and the wild vegetables will have been dried, so he will be asked to bring a sack and carry it back home.

It saves us from having to watch him eat in the winter, and it's annoying when your family wants a handful and my family wants a handful."

Niu Xiaoyun thought about Xiao Sanzi's shamelessness. He really had the nerve to ask for free food.

For the families he got along well with, he would eat and take things from them, and never treated himself as an outsider.

He can really come up with wild vegetables when he comes to someone’s house!

"Okay! Let's pick vegetables for another day! Zhaozhao, look, my hands are all green from picking wild vegetables.

Xiao Sanzi has a good life, but I have a miserable life! My hands are numb from pulling, and I still think about his family having no vegetables to eat in the winter. This kid only knows how to pick up what is ready. If he doesn’t treat me well in the future, he has no conscience! "

Han Zhaozhao agreed with her. Judging from the current situation, Xiao Sanzi's life was better than theirs.

They said this in a joke. None of them took it to heart and helped those who needed to help. After all, they just got along well with each other!

The two of them helped the Qian family stockpile three sacks of dried wild vegetables.

As the weather gets hotter day by day, the wheat harvest season has arrived.

The school had a wheat harvest holiday and organized students to go to the countryside to participate in labor.

Niu Xiaomin, Niu Xiaolian and Xiao Sanzi all went to the countryside to help the farmers with the wheat harvest.

Niu Xiaoyun also went to the countryside. Her grandparents' home was in a rural area in the suburbs, and Niu's parents sent her to help cook for her mother's family who were harvesting wheat.

In June 1958, Hebei Province took the lead in proposing the slogan of "militarization of actions, factory-based field management, and mass-line leadership methods."

A county party committee team proposed to realize canteenization throughout the county and make it an important part of promoting labor cooperation.

Soon after, more than 1,700 public canteens were established, and more than 280,000 people ate in the canteens. According to statistics, this was close to 90 percent of the county's population.

The neighboring province of Henan also began to respond, and rural agricultural cooperatives successively established various canteens.

Newspapers in the capital began to report on the incident, praising it highly. Local newspapers in other provinces and cities also followed suit and published the same report.

Han Zhaozhao heard the news from the radio in Grandpa Guan’s house, and she knew that the era of the big pot in history was coming!

When the old lady got off work in the evening, Han Zhaozhao told her about this, "Grandma, Grandpa Guan said that this trend will soon spread all over the country.

Our Beijing is the capital, and maybe in the next ten days or so, we will open public canteens.

Grandma, that’s good now that we have public canteens. No one has to cook at home anymore.

Whether you have a job or not, whether you are an adult or a child, everyone can eat for free. You no longer have to worry about whether there is enough food, the government will cover it all!"

The old lady munched on the multi-grain steamed bun in her hand thoughtfully, feeling a little unsure.

“It’s hard to say whether this is good or bad, but why do I feel uneasy?

Zhaozhao, you should go to the mountains less these days. Go to the entrance of the alley and play for a while. Don't ask around. Listen to what those old men playing chess say.

I don't know how this news spread outside, come back and tell me so that my family can prepare early."

Han Zhaozhao: The old lady is smart enough. She knows how to find a way to get first-hand information so as to make future plans.

"Grandma, do you think it's bad to eat in a public canteen?"

After finishing her meal, the old lady pushed her bowl aside and began to explain the ins and outs of the meal to her granddaughter.

"Your great-grandmother used to help in the kitchen at a landlord's house. She once said that there are many tricks to cooking!

Whether it's thin or thick, more or less, it all depends on how much food there is.

The rice was too watery, so no matter how full you were, your stomach wouldn't feel full. Once you peed you'd feel hungry again, so you could only drink water to fill your stomach.

If the rice is too thick, especially if it is made into dry food, it can fill your stomach and relieve hunger, but it also wastes a lot of food!

There is a saying in my hometown: save money on noodles, spend money on buns, and sell the land to eat fried cakes!

You see, the amount of food consumed can vary greatly depending on how white flour is eaten.

Also, other families have strong laborers, so it is more cost-effective for them to eat more, but my family has the elderly and children, so it is definitely not cost-effective to eat less.

I don’t know what other people think, but I don’t want to go to a public canteen anyway.”

Han Zhaozhao nodded repeatedly. Her grandmother was the truly sober person in the world!