Soybeans are mainly used to make the famous Northeastern soybean curd and dry tofu, which Li Li had to eat meat when she was a child. If there is less meat, tofu can make up for it. So much so that the next dish that came out was braised pork and tofu, which was the result of people in the meat boy generation using tofu instead of meat, but this dish is really good. When there were a lot of soybeans, Li Li remembered that her mother would grind the beans into flour and make bean rolls. After they were steamed, they would be a little dry. But I haven't eaten it a few times. It is said that the yield of soybeans is low and few people grow it.
In an era when there was no shortage of food, the villagers in Lijiazhuang brewed sorghum into wine, and some even opened a private, small workshop. Although it was also operated without a license, who cares, the sky is high and the emperor is far away. Rice and white flour only became popular when Li Li was in junior high school. They were what the villagers called "seed grains." When Li Li was in elementary school, Li Li's mother steamed some rice for her only when she brought lunch to school for her classmates and teachers. There wasn't much fat in her stomach at that time, but she was really good at eating. Li Li could skip vegetables and eat a lunch box of white rice. It smells so good! Deep in Li Li's memory, the thing she dislikes the most is sticky sorghum flour, a kind of pancake called sticky pancake. Li Li's mother bakes a large vat of sticky pancakes every winter, and they always serve them with two kinds of vegetables: boiled cabbage or boiled sauerkraut. This abominable sauerkraut. When I was young, my family was too poor to afford pork. The sauerkraut is boiled in soybean oil. It's OK for cooking in soybean oil, but it's simply too unpalatable to cook sauerkraut. And I eat it every now and then, every day, for three or four months in a row. It wasn't until spring started and the green onions sprouted that we had alternatives.
Due to weather conditions, the most common vegetables eaten by farmers in the Northeast are Chinese cabbage, carrots, mustard greens, and green onions. As for eggplant, beans, cowpeas, leeks, radish, spring onions, spinach, and mountain vegetables (mountain bracken, cat's claw, four-leaf vegetables) are all seasonal. Chinese cabbage is grown almost all year round. When I was young, cabbage could be made into soup, which was delicious even without meat. Chinese cabbage cannot be harvested until autumn. Chinese cabbage can be fried into slices or pickled into sauerkraut. The pickled cabbage turned Li Li's tongue and teeth black. She didn't know what happened at the time. Now I know it was nitrite poisoning. The meal consisting of sticky pancakes and sauerkraut gave Li Li such a heavy blow that as an adult, even if she occasionally went to a grain restaurant to eat, she would never order sauerkraut. She felt that this kind of food would evoke something sour in her soul. The thing is always there and never leaves. It's just that she doesn't want to wake it up and feel it again.