Yan Xi'an said to his younger brother: "Don't always call people 'who ask for food, ask for food', people have no food to eat, it's already very pitiful." ”

"That's what it was." Yan Xiding gnawed the sweet potatoes and said, "Our father said that you are not good, if you weren't too generous a few days ago, these people would not have picked and picked when they came to our house." ”

"Nonsense, I said you were not good."

Lu Yu felt that there was actually a little bit of truth in what he said, hungry people are also people, and people are the strangest thing in the world, when they don't have everything, once they have it, they start to pick fat and thin. Of course, Lu Yu didn't dare to echo Yan Xiding, and said with a smile: "It's all their fault, why should they dislike such delicious sweet potatoes." He asked Yan Xiding again: "What happened later?" Did they ask for it? ”

"Yes. My father said that our family didn't have much food, so we could only give sweet potatoes, and they would pull them down if they didn't want to. In the end, they left with a few sweet potatoes. (In this article, sweet potatoes are sometimes written as sweet potatoes, and in the author's hometown, these two terms refer to a thing.)

Lu Yu said: "This is very good, if someone comes to our house to eat in the future, you can also give them sweet potatoes." He asked Yan Xi'an again: "How is it, is the raw delicious?" ”

"Well, it's not bad, but the cheeks are a little tired." Cooked sweet potatoes are soft and powdery, but raw sweet potatoes are very hard, a few more bites will indeed "tired face", and another thing that will "tired face" when eaten is raw lotus root, these two foods, Lu Yu only eats raw, rarely cooked.

"Why don't I feel sour on my cheeks? Sister, you can't have a mouth. ”

"You're a pig, do pigs get tired from eating? I think it's just a stone fried in oil, and you can eat it. ”

"Huh? When you say that, I really want to try it and see if I can eat the stone when it is fried. ”

……

Digging until dark, Lu Yu picked back and forth six or seven times before he dug up all the sweet potatoes in three points and transported them home. On the last trip, Lu Yu returned to the field with Yan Jibai, and wanted to take back the cut sweet potato vines.

At this time, there was already a group of people from the town in the field, who were feeling the darkness, digging through the fields to pick up the missing sweet potatoes. Of course, Lu Yu wouldn't say anything, and even sympathized with these people.

Most of the people who rummaged in the fields were old people and children, and they searched very carefully, but it was difficult to find anything, the larger sweet potatoes were picked up, and the rest were some small ones, or they were dug up. But it's safer to rummage in the fields, it's not stealing, no one will blame them, and that little gain is better than nothing.

The same is true for the rest of the village, where when the owner leaves with the dug sweet potatoes, the group of people will rush up and begin the first round of careful rummaging. When Lu Yu picked up the sweet potato vine and left, he turned around and saw a child grabbing a thin sweet potato with a black hand and stuffing it into his mouth, without washing it or peeling it, but he was still very happy to eat it with the soil, and an old man next to him looked at him eating with a smile and a kind face. Lu Yu saw it in his eyes and felt very sad. (Part of the content of this chapter is borrowed from the newspaper's "Eschatological Talks")

However, most of the villagers in Yangshan Village do not welcome this group of hungry people who come to pick up leaks, because of hunger, or because of nature, there are some hungry people in this group of unclean hands and feet, as long as there is an opportunity, they will take the sheep and catch the pigs with their backhands. However, the villagers of Yangshan Village are not short of food now, and they are not to the point of fighting to the death with you for a mouthful of food, so most of them turn a blind eye and acquiesce to some of their behaviors.

The room where the white father and son lived had already piled up half of the house's grain, and the newly dug sweet potatoes could no longer be put in it today, and they were temporarily piled up in a corner of the hall first, and Lu Yu decided to dig a cellar tomorrow to store these sweet potatoes. This kind of cellar is called a cellar, and in Lu Yu's hometown, sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes are all the same thing.

For dinner, there were sweet potatoes, and Mrs. Yan cut the sweet potatoes into small pieces, and then put them in the rice pot and steamed them with the rice, and when the rice was cooked, the sweet potatoes could be eaten.

Although he hadn't eaten sweet potatoes for many years, Lu Yu didn't miss the taste of sweet potatoes, especially cooked sweet potatoes at all. Yan Xiding likes to eat very much, he doesn't eat rice at all, only sweet potatoes.

After dinner, Lu Yu went to Anding Valley to drive back the eight and a half goats and put them in the backyard. I have collected a lot of sweet potato vines today, and I don't have to go to herd sheep tomorrow, Lu Yu plans to send some sweet potatoes to Lu Ming, Lu Ming doesn't like to eat them very much, but I don't know if the rest of his family likes it or not. In addition, sweet potatoes can be ground flour, and there are many ways to eat sweet potato flour.

The next day, Lu Yu carried a sack on his back, and more than 100 catties of sweet potatoes went to the town. Lu Ming can already walk normally, and the bruises on his head and face have disappeared.

Lu Yu asked Lu Ming again if he needed to move to the village to live.

Lu Ming still felt that there was no need to move back, the outsiders were all dead, and the town should be safe now. Since Lu Ming insisted on refusing to go back, Lu Yu didn't say more, thinking that he would run more to the town in the future, and if there was anything going on in Lu Ming's family, he could know in time.

Mrs. Zhang left Lu Yu at home for lunch, saying that she wanted to steam new sweet potatoes, and everyone tried them together. Lu Yu originally wanted to stay for a meal, but when he heard that there were steamed sweet potatoes at noon, he refused without hesitation.

Back home, Yan Xi'an sister and brother are picking pumpkins in the backyard, not only this year's grain harvest, but also the vegetables in the backyard are fruitful, fruitful, especially pumpkins, spread all over the ground.

Lu Yu doesn't like to eat pumpkin, especially the one that is ripe, it is too powdery and greasy after cooking, and Lu Yu doesn't like to eat all the greasy vegetables and fruits.

When picking pumpkins, Lu Yu remembered an ingredient that few people would eat, so he asked Yan Xiding: "Xiding, do you like to eat pumpkin grass?" ”

"Pumpkin vines? If I could, I would love it. Yan Xiding doesn't need to taste the taste of the food, he can be sure that it is what he likes to eat.

"It's not a vine, it's the one under the leaf, which should be called the petiole." Lu Yu picked some thick and ageless petioles and picked them off, and the sisters and brothers also helped to pick them together.

Picking up a small basket of vegetables, Lu Yu told the sisters and brothers that the pumpkin was delicious, but it needed to be peeled.

Pumpkin grass is slightly thicker than beans, verdant and transparent, with a layer of sharp fluff on the surface, and the outer thin skin needs to be peeled off together with the fluff to make a dish.

Pick off the leaves first, then pinch the tip of the skin at the broken place, and then pull it down, and the pumpkin petiole will be torn off a piece of skin, which is quite simple. The three of them worked together, and quickly finished peeling it, and then used their fingers to pinch the long pumpkin into pieces that were inches long.

The pumpkin is verdant and bright, and of course it is fried with red and bright peppers.

At noon, Lu Yu was cooking, and he didn't plan to steam sweet potatoes, but he couldn't stand Yan Xiding's strong request, so he still put a few pieces of rice.

Pumpkin is eaten by few people, but it is not a rare thing, and the cooking method is not special, similar to fried beans. It's just that the pumpkin without skin is thin and tender, and you need to pay more attention to the heat when frying.

Stir-fried pumpkin with red pepper, braised eggplant, beans and wild boar, made three dishes, and Lu Yu cooked another pot of green vegetable and tofu soup. Pumpkin grass tastes very good, crunchy and fluffy, with a natural fragrance. Not only Yan Xiding, but everyone likes to eat it.

After lunch, Lu Yu began to dig the cellar. Most people dig the cellar in the kitchen, and Lu Yu's kitchen has a water tank, a wine tank, a tofu tank and a kimchi tank, and there is not much space left, which is not enough to dig a pit to make a cellar.

The backyard is against the wall of the kitchen, and there is a small grass shed inside the grape trellis, which is where Lu Yu puts farm tools, charcoal and other sundries, and Lu Yu decided to dig a cellar in the shed.

The cellar is a hole in the ground, with a small mouth and a large belly, like a water tank buried in the ground. The hole was dug quickly, five feet deep, and the belly was quite large. Lu Yu jumped down to clean up the broken slag, and hugged a bundle of soybean stalks and went in to light it. The newly dug soil hole is damp and needs to be lit and baked.

In the next few days, Lu Yu's family had nothing to do, he wanted to go to the mountains to hunt, but Lu Di's farm work was not finished. Lu Yu thought that he had nothing to do, so he helped Lu Di for a few days.

Lu Di's family has planted a lot of sweet potatoes, nearly more than an acre of land, and his family can only work by himself, and it takes seven or eight days to dig up an acre of land. It was much faster with Lu Yu's help, and Yan Xi'an's sister and brother often ran into the field, and three days later, Lu Di's sweet potatoes were all dug up. Lu Di jokingly said that he would pay Lu Yu, and in the end Lu Yu asked for some of his sweet potato vines.

Lu Di said he hadn't eaten sweet potatoes in years. When they were young, there were a few years when there was a serious shortage of food, and many people in the village planted this kind of high-yield crop, and everyone had enough to eat in those years.

Everyone thought that they would never plant a large number of sweet potatoes as a staple food in this life, but no one expected that the natural disasters in the past two years had forced every household to start planting sweet potatoes.

Yan Xiding didn't understand, he thought that sweet potatoes were a good thing, very sweet and powdery, much stronger than rice, and he didn't understand why the people in the village didn't like to eat them.

But no matter what, no one in the entire Yangshan Village is no longer short of food, and even those who come from the north have tried their best to get food for the winter. Only when there is enough food can the hearts of the people be at peace, and the whole village has been in great harmony lately, except for those hungry people who come to beg on time every day, which will affect the harmony in the village.

To be reasonable, these hungry people have been asking for food for more than half a month, and the people in the village have given a lot of charity, so they should no longer be so short of food. But they still entered the village on time and on time every day, begging from house to house. Even if he is kind and kind, he feels a little impatient at this time.

Most of the people who ask for food are nearby neighbors, they come to the door, if they don't give it, it seems that they can't wipe their faces, if they do, these people will not miss any family in the village, even if each wave of people only gives a few taels of food, dozens of waves down it is not a lot. The most important thing is that some hungry people do not have clean hands and feet, and they do not do much to steal chickens and dogs and lead sheep.

The people in the village feel that this is not the case, every day a large number of people come into the village to ask for food, which disturbs the whole village, and there are always people who have few things.