That bowl of sweet persimmon and egg soup

I like to drink persimmon and egg soup since I was a child.

When I came home from work, my wife had already cooked dinner, and my wife was off duty today and made a big table of delicacies. Needless to say thin skin tender meat, red color Dongpo meat, fresh meat, hot and sour delicious Boiled Fish with Pickled Cabbage and Chili; not to mention spicy Mapo tofu, crisp golden braised ribs. Just a bowl of sweet persimmon and egg soup is a rare delicacy, which reminds me of sweet memories and makes me unforgettable for a long time.

Tomato, also known as tomato, is also called persimmon here because it is introduced from abroad. In the north, through high-temperature greenhouse technology, persimmons can be planted all the year round. Persimmon is rich in nutrition, which can lose weight, eliminate fatigue, increase appetite, improve digestion of protein, reduce stomach distension and food accumulation, etc. Persimmons can be eaten raw and cooked with eggs. It can be said that the diet is a perfect match, as if the two items should be eaten together. Its cooking method is simple and easy to learn, reasonable nutrition, bright color, pleasant taste, refreshing appetizer, deeply loved by the public, is an ordinary popular dish in the families of ordinary people.

In my childhood memory, every family in our village would plant some persimmons on their own plots every summer after the contracted production arrived. Persimmon can be eaten not only as a dish, but also as fruit. In that not-so-rich era, persimmon naturally became a delicious snack for friends. After school, friends often sneak to the vegetable garden behind the village, no matter whose persimmons, pick a big persimmon, after a while, almost a jin of big persimmons on the belly. From then on, I fell in love with persimmon.

In the 1980s, materials were still relatively scarce in our rural areas. In winter, people stored cabbages, potatoes, radishes and so on. Even if they had money, they could not buy other dishes, let alone few coins in their hands. You can drink a bowl of sweet persimmon and egg soup in winter. It can't be described in words. Every year when persimmons are ripe, our family will make dozens of bottles of persimmon paste and store them, so that we can have a season-changing dish for the tooth festival in winter.

Persimmon paste is very simple to make. First, prepare the glucose salt water bottle for hanging bottles, wash them clean and set aside, then cut the home-made persimmons into small orange-like petals and stuff them into the bottle. When all is done, put the bottle into a cauldron and cook for half an hour, waiting for it to cool slowly. The most important step is to seal, press the cork, fasten the bottle mouth with plastic paper, and then apply candle oil to make sure it is airtight. Finally, it is stored in a room with no light and low temperature, so that the processed persimmon sauce can be preserved until next spring. Take it out in winter and drink a bowl of sweet persimmon and egg soup, which is sour and refreshing, with a big appetite, which is very useful.

Year after year, there are more high-temperature vegetable greenhouses, fresh vegetables are available all the year round, and persimmon sauce is becoming less and less, gradually disappearing from view. But I always feel that today's persimmon and egg soup is less sour at that time, although so many years have passed, those bottles and cans and sweet and sour taste still occupy a place in a corner of my brain.

With the passage of time, my twin brothers and I were admitted to Changle No. 2 Middle School in the autumn of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. In front of the boiled water room in the school, there is an old lady who sells vegetables. She is a family member of the teaching staff. She is in her fifties and has a kind face. She rides a tricycle to sell vegetables every day. She sells two dishes when she puts two thermal insulation buckets on the tricycle, but one of them must be persimmon and egg soup all the year round. Basically every day, my brother and I will buy persimmon and egg soup, 50 cents two tablespoons, a full enamel jar, our brothers 50-50, for a long time, the old lady will occasionally give us an extra spoonful. In this way, after drinking the old lady's persimmon and egg soup for three years, my brother and I were admitted to the university.

After graduating from normal University, I returned to Changle and became a teacher of the people. At that time, another teacher and I lived in a single dormitory, and we two young people could say that we had the same taste and made persimmon and egg soup by ourselves. Two persimmons, four eggs, one cilantro, two or two noodles per person, and a good meal.

Later, when I went to the city, I married a wife and had children. The only thing that hasn't changed is that persimmon and egg soup is still a common dish on my table. The wife also likes to drink persimmon and egg soup, and the son also inherits his father's genes.

Persimmon and egg soup is such a simple home-cooked dish, which makes me fond of it. Persimmon and egg soup is really delicious!