Rain, next non-stop; wind, blowing non-stop, stay at home to do nothing, long memory, back to childhood, suddenly want to eat a meal minced meat tofu.

The countryside in the nineties was still poor and backward, 365 days a year, all facing the loess with their backs to the sky to work in the fields, and there was no other side job, the most free time of the year, probably the time of the typhoon and rain, rain can not go out to work, you can pick peanuts at home, sew clothes, tease dogs, but the time of drizzle, under the tile house, the most picture emerges: it is the scene of us standing in front of the stone mill grinding tofu.

Now you can buy a large piece of tofu home for 2 yuan in the vegetable market, when we were children, our family planted soybeans in the field, harvested them and dried them, and then ground them with soybeans to make tofu.Boiled tofu will definitely put some minced meat, the aroma of tofu plus the taste of minced meat, in that era of lack of food, it was the most delicious delicacy.

The first step in grinding tofu is to soak beans, picking clean beans into a small tank filled with water soak overnight, so that the dried beans drink round and smooth can be ground. The key to soaking beans is to pick them clean and screen out all the moldy beans and small stones mixed in the beans, because moldy beans can affect the taste and color of tofu. To grind good tofu, the quality of soybean must be guaranteed.

The second process of grinding tofu is grinding beans, which is the most busy and tired of the whole link. We have no stone mill, must walk to the village center, where there is a stone mill, in the rainy season, each family are ready to grind tofu, to wait for it.

My mother was in charge of turning the mill, and I didn't have enough strength, so I was responsible for putting beans in that millstone.Because as long as the millstone rotates, the mouth hanging above the millstone has to flow down the trickle sticking out of the small eye, and the round beans on the millstone must also be drilled into the small round hole in the middle of the millstone in an orderly manner, and in the rotation of the millstone, milky white thick bean juice gurgles out from the middle of the two millstones, slowly falls into the lowest cobblestone groove along the perimeter of the second fixed millstone, and then flows into the barrel below from the two symmetrical gaps.I like to watch the bean juice drip into the bucket, I can smell the aroma of tofu out of the pot from the bean juice, and when I think about it, I forget what I have to do.In the middle, you must add water to the hole at the right time, add beans to the rotating millstone, and sweep the beans to the small round hole in the middle of the millstone.It takes about an hour to grind beans, and when I grew up, I pushed the stone mill, which was very heavy and laborious, no wonder the old mother sweated when grinding tofu in winter.

Boiling soy milk is the third process of grinding tofu.Holding firewood, burning firewood, I am responsible for making a good fire, grandma will use a basin to scoop the drained soy milk into the whole is trapped in the stove in the large iron pot, the soy milk in the large iron pot bubbles slightly, you can scoop the soy milk in the bucket.This is the beginning of my enjoyment of the deliciousness - you can drink fresh soy milk, just drink soy milk to put sugar, in that era of just solving the problem of food and clothing, this is almost impossible, but I have this privilege, grandma will always secretly bring me a bowl, scoop a bowl full of soy milk, and put some white sugar, sit in front of the stove and drink, soothe the gurgling belly, the delicacy that melts in the mouth, is the delicacy I remember the most as a child, and it is also a small stove that belongs to me alone.。

Pitched soy milk is the fourth process of grinding tofu, using a bag like a mosquito net cloth to separate the okara, which requires a lot of effort to separate the okara from the soy milk.

Point tofu is the most technical process, in the cooking of soy milk, grandma is not free, take gypsum to grind into powder, and then mixed with water. Grandma ladled the boiled soya-bean milk into a clean bucket with a basin. She stirred the soya-bean milk in the bucket with a stick and poured in the gypsum water with a ladle. In the steaming hot air, she judged how much of the soya-bean milk was put into the gypsum water. Point tender affect the taste of tofu, easy to crumble, point old will affect the taste, the loss of tofu unique fresh and tender, must be just right. It was not until the tofu was ordered that grandma could sit down to catch her breath. Her waist was already sore. And I like lying on the edge of the barrel, waiting for the milk in the heat of the milk is how the magic of the transformation into more white bean curd brain son, the heart is really looking forward to the evening that dinner. Soya-bean milk barrel, stick a chopstick, chopsticks can stand, is the best state, this knowledge I have not yet figured out, so it is done.

The last process of grinding tofu is pressing tofu. In the afternoon, grandma scoops the white bean curd into a dustpan lined with cloth. The light yellow water flows into the basin through the strips of cloth. But first scoop into half, and then heft the four corners of the package sheet up, good for the rapid discharge of water; then continue to scoop the rest, the cloth wrapped tightly, tofu will become a solid piece. Wait until the evening, get cut, piece by piece can be in the pot. In the evening a bowl of chives minced bean curd aroma, can linger for a few days of time.

It took several months to grow soybeans; it took one day to make tofu from one soybean grain to one bowl of soybean milk. In those days of scarcity, the elders always thought of ways to give us children extra meals, trying to think of the types of Three Meals a Day, is the elders hard-working, hard to pay, only a family table full of rich, grateful.

September 17, 2018