Chapter 7 Tell the ancestors to eat instant noodles

I have never eaten a dish made by my mother. Because my mother doesn't cook. In Beijing opera, when it comes to beloved daughters-in-law, it will be said that they "don't even recognize the kitchen door".Of course my mother recognizes the kitchen door, but she usually just steps on the kitchen threshold, even if she "enters". When I tried to recall the "scenes" in which my mother appeared in my impression, there was no picture of my mother's back in the kitchen.Not once. I grew up thinking that the "kitchen" wasn't part of the home.Because the scope of my activities as a child never included the kitchen.The kitchen door, like the hood of a car, does not need to be opened when there is no emergency.

The person who goes in and out of the kitchen most frequently is of course the one who cooks at home.The earliest one I can remember was Abasan, we all called her "Caifa". Color-haired ladies usually cook according to their mother's "instructions".So, after all, my mother is a hidden master of cooking? Never! Mom can't cook, she can only "talk about food". She can "talk about the dishes", because she "hears" all the dishes.She's a go-to for all kinds of recipes.She strictly abides by the principle of Confucius - "Speak but don't do".

Since I was a child, I have always listened to my mother ordering dishes from "Ms. Caifa". One set of "Today's Set Menu" was designed by my mother and executed by Ms. Caifa. Whenever my mother "places an order" with Ms. Caifa, the names of the dishes I often hear include: "hundred-page knot", "bean plate", "bianjian", "water bamboo", and "smoked fish". These ingredients commonly used in Shanghai cuisine are like "ghosts" to me. I have never seen what they look like, but their names are really familiar.I don't know whether they are animals or plants, which part of the animal or plant, what color, and what unit is used for calculation?

I have only seen them when they are cooked, and for me, the way they appear on the dinner table is the basis for my identification. If someone has only seen fried poached eggs in his life, he will take it for granted that when the egg falls out of the hen's belly, it looks like a poached egg. If there is a poker game at home that day, my mother will of course be more troublesome in matching the dishes. First of all, I must arrange a few dishes that are "kitchen dishes" that "Cai Mansion is good at", so that the guests can feel which house they are visiting. In addition, there must be a few "innovative dishes", lest guests feel that the kitchen can't change.I often feel that when my mother and the lady with colored hair are "hesitating" about the menu, there must be something wrong with the "innovative dishes".

That's why I often hear my mother "checking up" the cooking steps of popular dishes with friends on the phone or at the poker table. After asking clearly, my mother will "report" to Ms. Caifa. This word-of-mouth habit really often makes me dizzy, thinking that side dishes are really a major event in life, and I must go all out to pass the test.The reason why my mother never used menu cards or notes may be because the lady in charge of the kitchen with colorful hair couldn't read well.I often look at the price list that Caifa uses to report to my mother after buying vegetables. Caifa draws them with pencils. Fish is fish, and tofu is tofu. After the items are drawn, the prices are written in Arabic numerals.

My mother never went to the vegetable market to buy vegetables, so she never knew the "today's vegetable price" market, which of course gave Ms. Caifa a lot of room to play when reporting accounts. But mother naturally has her "information network".Every afternoon, when the poker game starts, you can hear the wives of each family asking each other about the price of vegetables: "How much is one tael of yellow croaker today?" "How can bean sprouts be so expensive recently?" Of course, I didn't know until a long time later that inquiring about vegetable prices in this way was just self-comforting.In the situation where adults like my family often go out to socialize, no one knows how much food they buy and how much they eat.We little ghosts who are eating at home, how can we pay attention to whether there is an extra yellow croaker on the table, or whether the bowl is missing?

The results of it?Of course, there will be such things as the same yellow croaker being reported three times, and the same bowl of hoofs being served on the dinner table for three days. Occasionally, when I watched the dinner scene, I felt that Wang Xifeng should require everyone to eat instant noodles for every meal, so that the accounts would be much clearer, and Wang Xifeng would have more time to "gender communication" with her husband.