In the winter of ten years ago, near the Spring Festival, I wrote an essay "When the Bacon Fragrance Comes Again" because I missed the landscape of my hometown and the taste of my hometown.
After I finished writing, I submitted to newspapers and magazines, which were successively published by several newspapers such as "Maoming**" and the Internet**, and later published in "Knowledge Window" magazine.
Occasionally, when the child was doing the Chinese test paper, he actually achieved the reading comprehension adapted from my essay, which was really exciting and exciting for a while, and it was also great in front of the child!
In recent years, I remembered my hometown and this essay, so I posted it to share it with everyone, share the taste of my hometown, share different meat, share different practices, share different emotions, maybe it's all the same, a feeling called nostalgia.
It's time for the bacon meat to be fragrant
I listened to the winter wind again, saw the snow fluttering, and smelled the bacon again.
In the early winter, when you meet bacon, you can hear the footsteps of the old calendar and the new year.
The winter quilt is like a magnet, full of attraction, but a mellow smell of meat unstoppably pulls me out.
It's bacon! I marveled at the familiar and yet unfamiliar taste.
I went in search of incense and found four large pieces of bacon hanging high on the balcony, presumably this is a masterpiece brought by my mother from her hometown.
This can't help but bring back memories of my thick incense smell of bacon.
When I was a child, I lived in a mountain village, and at the end of each year, every household slaughtered pigs, salted meat, made bacon, smoked bacon, and ate bacon, and the fragrance of bacon wafted everywhere in the whole small mountain village.
In my imprint, bacon is an indispensable part of winter, like snow, ice, and year.
When I was a child, I even stubbornly thought that if there was no bacon, there would be no winter, let alone a year.
Adults use a big plate knife to cut a few pieces of fresh pork, smear a little salt, pepper, green onions, and then hang it under the eaves with an iron hook, and it is exposed to the wind and sun for about half a month, and it becomes the most ordinary bacon.
If there is frost or heavy snowfall, fortunately, with the blessing of nature, this bacon will have a more natural taste.
The Book of Changes: The Commentary on the Swallowing of Swallows records that "Xi is in the sun and is in the fire, and it is called bacon." ”
That is to say, it is dried in the sun and then smoked with wood to get real bacon.
I often think that for more than 2,000 years, generations of families in this small mountain village have been passing on the classic delicacies of this countryside according to this method in the Book of Changes.
I don't know when it began, the villagers accidentally discovered that the bacon smoked with pine and cypress branches in front of the house and behind the house tasted stronger and longer, so the cypress branch bacon became a unique scenery in the village.
The adults lit the pine and cypress branches to "crackle" the bacon, and the children pretended to work on the side, adding branches to the fire, in fact, they wanted to smell the aroma of the meat to relieve their cravings.
As the fire increases, the oil in the meat continues to overflow, and it rises vigorously outward, and then slowly drops down the smooth skin of the meat, and drops into the firewood, making a "squeak, squeak" sound, and the flame is bigger and more vigorous, which may be the so-called "adding fuel to the fire".
When I was a child, I listened to this kind of sound and couldn't help but think like this.
To avoid burning, the bacon should be flipped over and over until browned. After smoking, hang it on the wall or re-hang it on the eaves to continue to blow and sun, and it becomes real bacon.
There are many ways to eat bacon, the north and the south are very different, in the hometown, we usually fry and eat, but also steamed to eat, but the most common way to eat is to marinate first, and then cut or sliced, men are a snack dish, women and children are fried with garlic or celery to eat, the taste has its own merits, but all have unique flavors.
Although every family has bacon, but not much, the quantity is limited, in general, it is still rare and valuable food, so whoever holds a red and white happy event, there are always people who carry bacon as a gift, which is also extraordinarily decent and generous.
There are neighbors who take care of each other, if someone comes to the house and there is no bacon, you can borrow it from the neighbor's house, but you must pay it back, otherwise "if you don't pay it back, it will be difficult to borrow it again".
Of course, it is inevitable that when it is returned, it is politely pushed and shoved, and sometimes the meat is accidentally dropped on the ground, and if someone happens to pass by, they can pick it up for nothing, and they have nothing to say, which is also an interesting custom.
The aroma of bacon is too tempting, and thefts happen from time to time, but it is not the real thief, but it is all done by their own children to satisfy their hunger.
Occasionally, a few of our friends will take turns to "steal" a piece of bacon from under the eaves of their own houses, and then hide in the forest together, find a vacant lot, pick up some dry firewood, set up a shelf, and start to roast bacon to eat, the taste is very fragrant, but it is this fragrance that often "betrays" us, often attracting family members several miles away.
If a parent wants to bring their children back, they can go, but the meat must be left, and in this way, the parents are reluctant to let their children have a full meal.
This is actually a good plan that we have been thinking about for a long time, and we are quite proud.
When I went to college in Northeast China, I didn't go home during the Spring Festival, my parents sent me two pieces of bacon from a remote mountainous area through the post office, and I and a few classmates cooked and ate on an electric stove, and the corridor was filled with the fragrance of bacon.
Eating bacon and drinking a little wine can be regarded as the solution to my homesickness.
When the bacon is fragrant again, the villagers who still live in the small mountain village of their hometown have long since stopped worrying about eating meat, will no longer borrow meat, and will no longer have children stealing meat.
Life is good, but the custom of making bacon, smoking bacon, and eating bacon has never been lost, which is the fragrance handed down by the ancestors for thousands of years, which is precious.
When I went to the bacon again, my small mountain village was probably full of pine and cypress branches "crackling" with smoked meat, as if the fragrance wafted thousands of miles and the fragrance made by my mother on the balcony of my house, straight into my nose.
Note:This article is an original text, and has been published in newspapers and magazines such as "Maoming**" Knowledge Window.
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