Water chestnuts native to India, the Buddha country, have a umbilical mark in the middle of the round belly, so we call it "Bodhisattva navel" here, that is, the navel of the Bodhisattva, and the name of this kind of fate is very interesting. The people of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are called "ground chestnut" or "ground pear", and if they are shouted, they become "mines" and "black taro", which is purely taken from its appearance. It is said that Sichuan people do not distinguish between water chestnuts and mushrooms, and water chestnuts are called mushrooms, so what are they called by them?

The ancients listed water chestnut and water chestnut, lotus and gourd as food to distinguish it from melons and fruits. Water chestnut skin color has purple black, dark red, etc., the flesh is white, sweet and juicy, crisp and delicious, since ancient times, it has the reputation of "underground pear", and it is one of the "eight immortals" in our south of the Yangtze River. When Zhou Zuoren talked about sugarcane, water chestnut, peach, plum, apricot and persimmon, he once sighed that "fruits are also good in their hometown".

There is a kind of "clear water horseshoe" canned food, which is a peeled water chestnut, which can be used to make canned food, which shows that water chestnuts can be put on the table. Something like a small flat spinning top with an oblique beak-like apical bud is unknown. But when I went to Beijing last year, there were already a lot of vendors selling water chestnuts with honey on bamboo skewers like selling sugar gourds.

Water chestnuts are the fruit with the most rural character. In the early years in the countryside, the trees raised in the water growing in the field, yams, water chestnuts, fragrant lotus roots, peaches and pears, and broad beans and peanuts were all God's love and gifts for rural children. After autumn, the children go to the water to eat the camelina to eat it. The water chestnut is round and not lost, and the little girl in the village, with the forehead hair called the "toilet lid", is also round and not lost, and obliquely combs a braided braided by Feng Zikai's brush, which also makes the little poem of the old man in the hall more and more interesting and rich: "New Year's greetings and new clothes, white socks and shoes; ”

I admire Wang Zengqi's method of fiddling with words. I remember watching "The Ordination" back then, and reading "The straight round leaves of water chestnuts like shallots", as well as the string of beautiful footprints that Xiaoyingzi stepped on and messed up the heart of the little monk of Minghai...... An old man who has seen so much of the world has sprinkled water chestnuts of ordinary and unusually smart words in that dense water. The "crookedness" of the "crooked water chestnut" alone makes people feel how much fun and childlike pleasure they have. Children in the countryside in the south of the Yangtze River, who has not been "crooked" like Xiaoyingzi? With bare feet, "crooked" in the cool mud, "crooked" to a hard bump, reach out and touch it, heh, a round red, purple, red and purple water chestnut!

Water chestnuts are on the market in large quantities in winter, when the yellow water chestnuts have already been burned into a circle of black embers. Digging water chestnuts is called "picking the navel" in our place, rows of people pouting their buttocks and going in together, inserting their hands into the mud and picking, the scene is very spectacular. The children carrying baskets, like picking up ears of wheat and rice, followed closely behind the adults who worked in the collective, and their feet kept pounding in the mud, searching for fish that had slipped through the net, and when they found a large one, they could not resist the sweet temptation, rubbed it twice on their clothes, and sent it to their mouths. In the years of economic depression, the villagers could only rely on water chestnuts in exchange for two oil and salt money. On a cold night, a light like a bean, a family gathered in front of a large basket, and quickly cut water chestnuts. Those water chestnuts that swirled between the ten fingers turned from dark red to incomparably delicate pure white in the blink of an eye. Early the next morning, a group of people carrying water chestnuts and walking quickly left their footprints on the small wooden bridge with thick frost on the way to the supply and marketing cooperative.

Fields that have been planted with water chestnuts will be replanted with rice, and water chestnuts will not be able to grow water chestnuts for several years. When Yuntian rests, he sits on the ridge and uses this thing to weave a robe, which is very cool and full of interest when draped on his body. In the swamp puddles, wild water chestnuts grow like shallots, and when you pick up a handful, the beards of the stage characters hang on the ears, which can make the children frolic indiscriminately. The wild water chestnut is purple and shiny, the size of wild hairy chestnut, the entrance is extremely sweet, and there is a very heavy "soil paste dew" called by the old man of Zhitang.

Water chestnuts are large, round, sweet, crisp and slag-free. The bright red and oily water chestnuts have a fresh earthy fragrance, the most pulp water, crunchy in the mouth, and the sweet juice splashes everywhere. In addition to eating raw, the old black commonly known as the "copper hoop bodhisattva navel" is cooked, because of the high starch content, the skin can be wiped off with a hand, and there is a different kind of sweet and glutinous smoothness. Air-dried water chestnuts are wrinkled, the skin is not easy to peel, and it is best to eat raw, because it is dehydrated and saccharified, so it is exceptionally mellow and sweet and crisp. Sitting at home in rainy and snowy weather, take a knife to carefully peel the dried skin of water chestnuts, not in a hurry or impatient, and then send it to the mouth, that kind of crispy and sweet taste, is the best enjoyment.

Water chestnuts can be cooked into a variety of delicious dishes. The so-called cheap and cheap, expensive and expensive, the villagers cut the water chestnut into thin slices, sprinkle with white sugar to entertain the guests, refreshing and simple, and in the cooking skills of the city people, water chestnut is a good ingredient for making kung bao vegetarian and spicy chicken, water chestnut fried shrimp, pure white with a little touch of light red, more tasteful. There is a kind of water chestnut lion head, chop the water chestnut and mix it into the minced meat, add egg white, cooking wine, starch, monosodium glutamate, minced green onion and ginger and salt, make a large meatball, fry it in the oil pan until it is yellow on both sides, put the broth, add soy sauce and sugar, simmer it thoroughly over low heat, put it into the blue and white porcelain plate with the cabbage heart on the mat, pour the marinated thickener, it is natural, fresh and tender with crisp, salty and sweet, red and green contrast, it is really full of color and flavor.

Water chestnuts are tender and tender, which can treat fever and thirst, and can also prevent the spread of encephalopathy and influenza. I remember that in the early spring more than 30 years ago, a brain flow spread in the countryside. One day, a group of Red Guards came to our place, using tin canisters to publicize measures to prevent brain flu among the villagers, and distributed many red, red, green and green leaflets. Since then, we have eaten fried bacon with Bodhisattva garlic sprouts every day, and we have escaped the plague until the Bodhisattva sprouts and garlic sprouts are drawn.

Lentils are easy to raise, no matter whether the thin soil is fertile and the soil is in the shade, as long as you make a basin big pier, put a little bottom fertilizer, put two seeds on it, and the seedlings germinate in three or five days, shaking the tender leaves in the wind, and climbing the fence with the slender vines. In early summer, rain after rain will make them gather enough strength to spiral and spread, turning the entire fence into a thick green in a few days. Sometimes they even get tangled up in the clothesline, and if you're not careful to climb up to the treetops and bloom all the way, you'll have to wait for the old lentil seeds to be harvested.

In the countryside, lentils are always the deepest relationship with the fence outside the half-hidden door, especially in a certain autumn day, a piece of fence that falls into the eyes, just because it is full of lentil flowers, and a few chickens drilling around, it will make us feel the tranquility and warmth of the home. Such a fence courtyard is also the home of the gnats in the summer night and the weaver in the autumn night, "the white flowers and green vines are higher than the house, and the sound of the cold insects and stones at night", thinking of the morning dew and the green shade and cool breeze under the lentil fence in childhood, thinking of the distant cries of the summer insects and autumn insects in the night, so there is nostalgia and nostalgia. If Zheng Banqiao's inscription poem "full of autumn wind lentil flowers" shows a faint nostalgia for the passage of peaceful years in the local atmosphere of the agricultural era, then the same Qing people, Cha Xueli's "clear water and shallow sand, a few bushes of bamboo and savage people; the most pity autumn full of sparse fences, with rain obliquely open lentil flowers", is to express the shallow sorrow of life, just like the loneliness of lentil flowers blooming in the rain when the curtain is about to close.