Komori is a small village located in a town in northeastern Japan. It is located at the bottom of the basin and the air is humid. There are no shops here. If you want to buy necessities, you can only go to the village center where the official office is located. It takes one day to go back and forth. The protagonist of the story is living alone in Xiaosen's Shizi. Shizi is a native rural girl. Although she has worked hard in Tokyo, she can't get used to the rhythm of the city after all. After breaking up with her boyfriend, she returned to Xiaosen's life.

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summer

DISH 1 Toast

Komori is wet and rainy, and it also coincides with the yellow plum season in summer. With continuous drizzle and gradually rising temperature, indoor damp is a common occurrence. I have a deep feeling about that. The humid air is like a homeless wandering soul. Once squeezed in through the crack of the door, they scramble to stick it on the wall, floor, and window.

The returned city wants to swim directly in the humid air. But the right way to do this is to wash your face and wipe your body to avoid colds.

After finishing farm work, I came home and wanted to have a rest, but I found that my clothes had not been dried for several days, and even the wooden shovel used to mix jam was moldy. When the sky is high, light a stove to warm the house.

The heat brought by the stove is enough to drive away the moisture in the hut, and also to drive away the unpleasant mold. The remaining temperature can also bake a bread. As a southerner who has no experience in baking bread, this situation is generally to bake a sweet potato with residual temperature. This bread is really like a big sweet potato.

DISH 2 Sour Rice Wine

The continuous rain is not only annoying, but also uncomfortable. Weeds must be removed as soon as possible due to their strong vitality. At this time, I imagined that there were many weeds growing all over my body from my feet along the vines, which was horrible. I never imagined this, but I was afraid of snails crawling all over the house. To be specific, the snail without a shell may not be called a snail. I don't know what to call it. I call it a snail, like a slug? Oh yes, it's a slug.

In addition to weeds, there are also various insects in the paddy field. Insects are so annoying. I wish I could be fresh all over. I suddenly remembered sour rice wine.

Make sweet wine first. Add the remaining porridge to the starter and leave it at room temperature for one night in spring. In order to accelerate the fermentation, you can add yogurt or raw liquor for fermentation. What Shizi added was yeast for making bread, about a spoonful of which, after full mixing, could brew sour rice wine in half a day. After that, filter and bottle them, and refrigerate them in the refrigerator. A cup of wine after work will make you feel sweet and sour.

There is also rice wine experiment in the textbook, and I have a hunch that the teacher will let the forest go again.

DISH 3 Elaeagnus Jam

In spring and summer, Elaeagnus bockii trees begin to bear fruit. However, the immature Elaeagnus bockii fruit is sour and astringent, with large seeds, which is difficult to eat. The ripe and astringent fruit will have a slight sweet taste, but it is still sour.

When Shizi was a child, he went out with the army to pick fruits and eat them. When he ate Elaeagnus, he left a psychological shadow. I didn't notice the existence of this kind of fruit until I grew up and decided to use it as jam.


After picking a large handful of fruits, wash them, grind them with a filter screen, remove the seeds, and take the filtrate. After weighing, add 60% white granulated sugar of fruit juice weight and stir. You can taste the salt first to decide whether to add more sugar. Then boil it. When boiling, scoop up the floating filter residue, which is probably sour. After the jam is boiled dry, it can be bottled for use. You can take a small amount of jam and put it into the water. If it will form a small ball, it means the water is boiled dry. The cooked jam is opaque and has a muddy dark red color. When eating bread, put a few spoons on it. The taste of sour and sweet must be very strong.

I don't like sour food very much. Just the sour plum soup at home will drive me crazy.

DISH 4 Worcester soy sauce

When the local harvest of carrots, celery, ginger and spice vegetables, the city will start to make Wooster soy sauce.

Chop carrots, ginger, peppers and celery leaves, put water, soup, kelp, cloves, peppers, green peppers soaked in sweetened wine, bay leaves, sage, and thyme into the pot, pour in the cut vegetables, and boil them over medium heat. When the water is half boiled, add soy sauce, vinegar, sweetened wine and crude sugar and boil for about an hour. During the period, you can taste the flavor and add some jam, spices and the like left before to taste. It is filtered by bleached cloth and bottled.

My mother taught me how to make Wooster soy sauce, but my mother is actually a person who likes to cheat children. For example, when I am hungry, my mother will say that this is a frog living in my belly. Shizi is convinced by her mother's solemn manner. Until now, Shizi will still write "frog in the well" as "frog in the stomach".

Not only that, at first I thought "Wooster soy sauce" was my mother's unique secret recipe, but I saw it in the store.

Mother's style is like this. She likes to mix the truth and falsehood together. Shizi believes that words cannot be believed completely, and only those who feel personally can be believed. Therefore, I prefer self-reliance.

DISH 5 Hazelnut Jam

In autumn, Shizi will go to pick hazelnuts on the mountain road. After washing, dry it, grind it into pulp, put it into a pot, add cocoa powder, sugar and a little oil, and stir it until it is bright.


The homonym is "nutera" because it is "eating with wiping", so my mother said to Shizi. It was not until I saw the chocolate hazelnut jam of "nutelaa" brand in the supermarket that I knew my mother had cheated her again. My mother even knew this thing, but she admired my mother a little.

DISH 6 Stair Grass

The video I watched was about "Rain for a long time". I was curious about what it was and found that it was a translation error in the subtitle group. Because it should be called "staircase grass".

Peel and blanch the stems in hot water to make boiled vegetables or mix them with pickles.


The red part of the root is chopped into mud, seasoned with Weizeng or Sanwei mixed vinegar, and poured on hot rice.

In this way, my family eats sweet potato stems. That is, the aboveground part of sweet potatoes. When sweet potatoes are immature, their leaves are fresh and tender, and their stems are not thicker. At this time, both leaves and stems can be eaten. Stir fried Sneaker's Stick is my favorite when I was young.

The spoiler version written in March, the following is the film review supplemented on National Day.

In the food brewing class, when we talked about the brewing of soy sauce, the teacher put a segment of "self-made 'Worcester' soy sauce". It didn't look like a documentary, but it was also Japanese. It was not until the name was leaked at the end of the film that I remembered that it was Little Forest, which I hadn't seen for a long time. 197 days have passed since the last summer holiday when I made the mark of "want to see" on Douban and today when I think of its existence. However, there is a saying in the soy sauce advertisement that "the sun makes delicious and fresh, and it lasts 180 days". Hey hey, I have delayed for 197 days, half a month more than that.

Later, the teacher put a brewing process of ancient soy sauce by the way, and I would like to post it, but this article is to write about Little Forest, so far as it goes. It's not good to postpone watching the movie all the time. Since the time is ripe, I will watch it today.

I still can't write film reviews. I decided to start with spoilers.

Spring is born in summer, autumn is harvested in winter, and each season has its own food. In spring, transplant seedlings and weed, drink a bowl of homemade sour rice wine; In summer, I fish in the river and eat sashimi; In autumn, I cut straw and gathered winter food, and picked up some walnuts in the forest; There is nothing to do in winter. Prepare for spring planting in the coming year in advance.

The various beauties shown in the film not only heal people's hearts, but also attract people's imagination. Modern life, shuttling in the crowded city all day, is physically and mentally exhausted. When I came home from work and saw such a scene as "small forest", I lost more than half of my worries, and then woke up the hidden pastoral dream in my heart. I dream of getting up with the crowing of chickens in the morning, going out to work, fishing in the river and catching shrimp at noon, setting up a recliner under the tree in front of the door at night, looking up at the stars, accompanied by homemade food, drinking and playing chess with friends in my spare time, or looking for food ingredients in the mountains. It's not happy like this.

However, few people can achieve a stable life. Even Tao Yuanming, a pastoral master, is hungry (it seems that there is no comparison between ancient and modern times). I vaguely remember that there were many such "experience of rural life" projects in the past years, not to mention the high cost. What I experienced was not rural life at all, and they ended up hastily in the end.

In the film, the lens gives a relatively light picture. After all, it is a small and fresh film, not a documentary. For example, simply pedaling a bicycle for an hour or two to go to town can make ordinary people feel better. The scenery along the way is beautiful, but here and there in a hurry, the scenery is naturally neglected. The land in Shizi is not large, and it can only be self-sufficient. If you want to make a profit by farming, it is difficult to do without dozens of acres of land. He bent over frequently when planting rice seedlings in the field. He felt tired when he got home at night. He just wanted to clean up and go to bed early.
Xiaosen is a modernized countryside, and agricultural machinery has reduced many burdens on farmers. However, there are still many places in China where cattle are still plowing, and my family has also become mechanized in recent years. The sun is scorching, and pulling grass in summer is not an ordinary fatigue. Maybe I have no idea of cooking when I go home.
Communicating with others is inseparable. The city has rural neighbors to help, people are also diligent, have good cooking skills, and life is tolerable. If you were yourself, you might not be able to solve these problems. Besides, some people are born idiots of cooking, so they don't have to cook in person.

The difference between rural and urban life is not the focus of this article. I always think it will be written in Marxist philosophy. If we discuss this, it will be off the topic.

In spring, summer, autumn and winter, the passage of the four seasons is accompanied by changes in Shizi's mood. Shizi returned to Xiaosen because he could not adapt to the city life. Shizi works all day to make delicious food, which seems to be a deserved life, but it is actually an escape from the unknown life. Do farm work every day and cook delicious food. What's the problem? At first, I didn't think there was any problem. However, in the "Winter and Spring", I suddenly realized that the life of Shizi seems to have no goals, because of the words of my brother in the vast snow. The "Summer and Autumn Chapter" is all about cooking, showing the rural life of Shizi. I don't see that Shizi is striving for a certain goal. Shizi complains about the unfairness of life from time to time just to live in labor. It's not that there's something wrong with working for a living. It's just that at the age of Shizi, we should always have some young people's ambitions, such as those of schoolboys, rather than living in retirement ahead of time.
Fortunately, spring comes after winter. In Shizi, I received a letter from my runaway mother about the plan to build an orchard. Shizi gave up planting potatoes in the ploughed land and decided to go to the city. As in the end of the film, the city has changed a lot five years later, and decided to build a school in Xiaosen with my best friend. Without this part, "Little Forest" would be a documentary like "China on the tip".

If you want to relax, it is enough to read the "Summer and Autumn". The "Winter and Spring" has its own small emotions. After reading it, you will feel as much as I do. You don't need to read a bunch of things you don't know. But if you want to get something else from the movie, it's better to watch two movies.

Some people may call the countryside of capitalist countries a beautiful bubble, but for us, seeing the pastoral life in the "small forest" can make us happy. What else can we pursue deliberately?

Author: mikusa

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