Chapter 20 Chapter 20 White Goose Gray Goose

In winter, the sun in Zhangmu River is warm and warm. I bought a fluffy goose and held it in my hand. It is soft and warm. The goose is a live goose-yellow pompom with red palms and beak shells and black eyes. Biting someone's palm lightly, itching feeling.The little goose chirped, beeped, and talked to itself, always flapping its small feather wings a few times before slowly lying down. To make a home for the little goose, prepare an old basket woven with thin strips, fill it with some new soft and dry straw, and prepare a plate with oily wheat in it, which is lettuce leaves. People in Zhangmuxi call lettuce oily wheat and lettuce leaves. White wheat, oily wheat cyan, white wheat off-white.Youmaizi is the lettuce we eat today. People in Zhangmuxi don’t eat it, they grow it to feed geese. When I first arrived in Hubei, I wondered: how do people here eat goose vegetables?The oily wheat fed to the goslings is cut into shreds, as thin as shredded tobacco, and sometimes some rice is added to it.At night, cover it with an old cotton-padded jacket.The goose is tender, so you can’t grab it directly with your hands. Use your thumb and forefinger to gently encircle the goose’s neck and lift it up with the goose’s head, so you can’t grab the goose when it’s full.

The goose can eat, its crop is almost as long as the neck, eating and eating, it becomes a double neck, lie down for a while, digest, and then get up to eat.When the geese are young, they have to get up and feed them once or twice at night.Watching the goose grow up day by day, feathers suddenly appeared among the fluffy fur. At first, there were one or two feathers on the feathers, and then there were more and more, and the white goose and gray goose were separated.Geese are very delicate animals. When they are young, they refuse to leave people. Especially when they have just grown their feathers and their fluff has not faded, they are timid and like to go to the wild. The fluff is dirty, and the beak is covered with grass. Accompany them, when people walk, they chirp and run with people.I go to release the geese, take a bamboo pole, tie a red cloth strip on the end, and stick it in the field. People sit and watch the sky, clouds, and distant hills, sing songs, or read a comic book, and the geese eat by themselves. After eating the grass, the crops prop up their necks, and they lie down in front of people, with their heads hooked under the wings and dozing. When it is cold, it allows me to put my hands in its feathers. The body of the goose is always very warm.The goose can’t walk when it’s dozing off, but it’s very vigilant. When people leave, it stands up and chases after it. Sometimes it’s very annoying to the goose, like a small tail. When the goose is released, people can’t go far to play.

When I was studying, I found that the neck of a goose is bent like a question mark, and also like the number 2 in Arabic. When it eats big grass, it bends its neck and chews the grass with its face on the ground. The edge of the goose's mouth is serrated. So it reaps like a sickle.Goose eats a variety of grasses, including endive, day lily, ground vegetable, mugwort, wild chrysanthemum, thundergrass, and dandelion. There are also some grasses that I don’t know, and some grasses that geese don’t eat, such as Polygonum and lion hair grass , Goose does not eat.Geese were afraid of water when they were young, and they would crawl up the bank in shock when they fell into the water. Therefore, the debate about "the ducks are prophets of spring river plumbing" and "the gooses are also prophets of spring river plumbing" in literature and history ignores one point. Ducks that have not fluffed down like water. Geese are willing to enter the water only when they are big.The goose has grown to a weight of seven or eight catties, and it is still a juvenile. It snows in winter, water accumulates in the field, and freezes. When the sun comes out, the water is gone, and the snow and ice have not yet melted. Some green grass is under the ice. Hit the ice with your mouth, or try to stick your mouth in from the edge of the ice to eat the green grass, but you can't eat it, and you are in a hurry.

During the Spring Festival, geese are killed or sold.Those were heart-wrenching days.Killing a goose, I still remember when it was a fluffy child, and there were some times when it was grazing in the wild.The goose was very fat and shed its feathers. It was put in a small wooden basin and opened in the river.There is a lot of oil in the belly of the goose, and there is also a lot of oil in the intestines.The water of Zhangmu River can be seen to the bottom, and the bottom is sand and pebbles. The water in Hefutou is deeper, and the bottom of the river can still be vaguely seen, such as washed sweet potatoes, vegetables, nickels and buttons.After washing the goose intestines, the goose gizzards, liver and heart are loosely connected, and the small fish will float over to bite the oil on the goose intestines.Use a bowl very quickly to scoop up one or two small fish.Big fish are relatively deep. They swim at the bottom of the water, and when they see a piece of goose fat escape from the goose intestine, they shoot up like an arrow, bite the goose fat, turn around and shoot like an arrow, and enjoy it slowly in the depths of the river.

People in Zhangmuxi eat geese, mostly cut for nothing.Put the goose in a pot and stew it until it is so fragrant that anyone passing by the door can smell it.The goose should not be stewed thoroughly. After the stew is done, take it out of the soup, put the goose into a big bowl, put the soup into a big bowl, paste a piece of red paper on the bowl with the goose, and place it on the spiritual seat of the ancestors to worship the ancestors. , clean hands, burn incense and candles, and bow down.After offering to the ancestors, take back the goose, cut it into pieces, boil the soup, add shredded ginger, tempeh, green garlic, green onion, crushed dried red pepper and fresh red pepper, pepper oil, five-spice powder, salt, and then add it.When eating, pick up the cold white goose pieces and dip them in the goose soup. It tastes delicious, spicy and numbing.Now that I think about it, the way to eat Baiqie may have something to do with the need to worship the ancestors with the whole poultry.