Sorghum Rice Porridge

.The following is a story about Liangmizhou. I hope you like it.

Sorghum Rice Porridge

Introduction to Liangmi Congee

Sorghum is an annual cultivated crop with thick fibrous roots. The culm is thick, erect, and 0.1-1m high. The leaf sheath is loosely wrapped around the culm, densely covered with warty hairs or glabrous, first densely covered near the edge and the back of the leaf joint, with densely covered cilia on the edge; the ligule is a circle of cilia; the lobes are long lanceolate or linear lanceolate, 10-45cm long, 5-33mm wide, pointed at the apex, obtuse at the base, rough on the upper side, and slightly smooth on the lower side. The panicle is cylindrical or nearly spindle-shaped, usually drooping, with a more or less interrupted base, 10-40cm long and 1-5cm wide, often varying with different varieties. The main axis is densely covered with soft hairs, and the bristles are significantly longer or slightly longer than the spikelets, yellow, brown or purple; the spikelets are elliptical or nearly spherical, 2-3mm long, yellow, brown or purple; the first glume is 1/3-1/2 the length of the spikelet, with 3 veins, the second glume is slightly shorter or 3/4 the length of the spikelet, obtuse at the apex, with 5-9 veins; the first lemma is as long as the spikelet, with 5-7 veins, the basal palea is thin papery, lanceolate, 2/3 of its length, the second lemma is as long as the first lemma, ovoid or spherical, hard, smooth or with fine dot-like wrinkles, and separates from the base of the first lemma and the glume when mature; the tip of the scales is uneven and wavy; the base of the style is separated. Flowering and fruiting period is summer and autumn.

Now, more than a dozen kinds of miscellaneous grains are packed in small bags of 450 grams, and then packed in a large exquisite packaging box, and the price is more than 100 yuan. I have no way of knowing whether it is really because scarcity makes things expensive, but this price is probably more expensive than this year's pork.

This was given to me by my older sister this year because she knew that I had a habit of drinking porridge, a habit that dates back thirty-eight years.

It was around 1970, the second year after I went to the countryside. The agricultural movement of learning from Dazhai was in full swing. In the winter of that year, the village was putting its greatest effort into building water conservancy projects. Thinking about it now, it was almost a reckless act. They started building the reservoir without any surveying or exploration. Hundreds of people dug the frozen soil and pulled rickshaws in the severe winter to build the dam.

The loudspeakers played revolutionary songs and model operas, and the radio station summarized good deeds and publicized them to the members at any time. No one dared to neglect them.

Every morning whoever arrived first would be praised on the blackboard or on the radio, and whoever arrived late would be criticized on the spot. Everyone was afraid of being criticized, so one came earlier than the other, until one day an educated youth arrived at the construction site at 12 o'clock in the evening, setting a model for being the earliest to arrive.

I usually arrive after five o'clock because I am too tired and sleepy, and I don't need to be checked or praised at all.

I started working at 5am every morning and had lunch at 12pm, which meant I only had 7 hours in the morning. I couldn’t skip meals. When I got up every morning, the first thing I did was to make porridge. At that time, most of the food in the mountainous area where I lived was sorghum and corn.

I took turns drinking sorghum rice porridge and corn porridge. Maybe it was because of a day's work that made people eat whatever they wanted. I ate this kind of rice every morning for almost a whole winter, two big bowls every morning, but I never got tired of it. To this day, I still love drinking these kinds of porridge.

The reservoir built with sorghum rice porridge in our stomachs was unable to store any water in the second year because the surrounding mountains were full of dark underground cracks and all the water leaked out.

Thirty years passed, and people no longer had to work like that, but what they ate had also changed dramatically. Rice and flour, which people couldn't get in the past, were no longer popular, and these grains became precious.

A few days ago, my older sister brought me these grains. I couldn't wait to open them and cook a pot of porridge with sorghum rice and red beans. The sticky sorghum rice and red bean porridge tasted soft and sweet, and it brought back the feeling of drinking porridge in the past.