Mother Li stroked her stomach. She was full, "I'll go out for a walk and then come in to rest."
Li Min hurriedly cleared the kang table so that his mother could get off the kang.
Li Zhengguo looked at Tian Jing tenderly. This family was full of vitality because of her. He was glad to be reborn.
Tian Jing glanced over, and Li Zhengguo quickly calmed down, "What do you need me to do?"
Tian Jing stretched out two fingers and said, "First, find the stone mortar and clean it. Second, make me some thirty-centimeter-high wooden boxes. I plan to use the wooden boxes to grow pumpkins."
"Okay." Li Zhengguo smiled happily.
Tian Jing turned around and walked out, smiling like a fool. What was he going to do?
Li Min helped her mother walk around the door twice, and then sent people into the house anxiously. She still had to work.
Mother Li knew that she was very busy this afternoon, so she didn't waste any more time. She sat on the kang and asked her daughter to do something.
The pumpkin in the kitchen pot has been steamed. After washing the pot, add water and boil it again.
Li Zhengguo took advantage of the fact that there were few people strolling outside at noon, and quickly left the house carrying a pot of pumpkin that Tian Jing had covered with a bamboo drawer and drawer cloth.
Li Min looked at Tian Jing and saw that Tian Jing was indifferent to her elder brother's behavior. She couldn't help it, "Sister-in-law, how can you keep calm?"
"You must learn to pretend to be deaf and dumb, otherwise you will be disliked by others, and you may be bitten by others in the future."
She has encountered too many things in the last days, and being hated by others for various inexplicable reasons often happened to her.
She learned to pretend to be deaf and dumb, which is a common social survival rule in any world. If she doesn't step on her bottom line, everything will be easy to talk about.
"You mean my eldest brother bit you?"
Li Min's words made Tian Jing almost choke on her saliva. She didn't want to talk to this social novice, "Quickly wash the pig liver, cut it into five or six pieces, and put it in boiling water."
Li Min went to work quickly, but her sister-in-law seemed a little annoyed. She had better stop talking and work.
Tian Jing started cutting the meat and oil.
When the pork was cut, Li Min also called her. She took the liver out of the water in the pot, scooped out the water in the pot, brushed the pot and added water, and urged Li Min to add firewood. She continued to cut the lard.
When the water boiled, she directed Li Min to add the pork liver, star anise pepper, salt, ginger, onion and garlic to the pot, and also poured a little white wine.
"Okay, let's simmer over low heat. You go down to the cellar and get forty or fifty sweet potatoes and wash them. Then wash the kudzu rhizomes. After I've used the kitchen knife and chopping board, wash them and cut them."
"How about I borrow a knife? Two knives are faster." Li Min was impatient. One knife was too slow for the two of them to do the work.
"Okay, go and come back quickly."
Either go quickly or come back quickly, even if you bring someone back, "Sister-in-law, hey, I let it slip. Sister-in-law Niu is going to come over and watch us work."
"It's okay." Tian Jing didn't care. She didn't intend to tuck it away. "You wash the sweet potatoes and I'll cut the lard. Sister-in-law Niu, you and Li Min go sit outside first. The kitchen is too messy."
"It's okay, it's okay," Mrs. Niu still said in a loud voice, "I'll go out and help Li Min."
Tian Jing put the chopped lard into the only enamel basin. This enamel basin was missing a lot of porcelain. It should have been used to hold lard, but now Li Min used it as a soup basin.
Looking at the oil on her hands, Tian Jing was about to ask Li Min to come in and scoop hot water for her. Li Zhengguo came back with a basin. Seeing her helpless look, Tian Jing hurried over to help, "I'll do it."
Taking the wooden basin in his hand, Li Zhengguo scooped half a basin of hot water, grabbed a handful of plant ash, washed the kitchen knife and chopping board first, and then grabbed a handful to clean Tian Jing's hands.
Tian Jing wanted to break away, but he stopped her by saying, "Don't move, I'll help you wash the first time, and you can wash it yourself the second time."
Tian Jing allowed him to clean the oil on her hands, and also carefully cleaned the gaps between her fingernails. After the second time, she didn't help anymore, but she did help scoop up the hot water.
After cleaning all the oil stains, Li Zhengguo took out a box of clam oil and three facial oil sticks from his trouser pocket and handed them to her, "These are for you to wipe your face and hands with."
"Where did it come from?" Tian Jing didn't want to get to the bottom of it, she wanted to know if there was a consignment store in the production team.
"I asked someone to bring it from the town supply and marketing cooperative yesterday." Li Zhengguo's earlobes were a little red. He paid someone to go to the town supply and marketing cooperative. He couldn't bear to leave Tiantian for too long.
"Thank you, please put it in my room and give a stick of facial oil to your mother and your sister respectively. Don't call me a thief again." Tian Jing was still dissatisfied with Li Min arguing with her about the toothbrush and calling her a thief.
"I'm sorry, my sister can get very few things, and she was instigated by Zhang Fangcao..."
"It doesn't matter." Tian Jing waved her hand, "Didn't I think she was stupid and have already forgiven her? I don't worry about the scarcity but the inequality. The family is full of women. You can't be too partial. If you want to have money, just give it to her.
She should buy some daily necessities as a dowry, or sell one of them."
Tian Jing looked unconcerned. Li Zhengguo thought for a moment and nodded in agreement, "In a few days, when you have finished what you want to do, I will take you to the county seat with me."
"Okay, okay, while Li Min is still at home, let's go out and prepare some things for the winter. Oops," Tian Jing's excitement subsided, "No tickets."
"Go to the black market." Li Zhengguo lowered his head and whispered in her ear.
"Can you buy everything there?"
Tian Jing planned to go to the black market to sell things, and maybe buy some things, but she wanted porcelain and enamel basins, as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste.
"What do you want to buy?"
Tian Jing listed out everything she wanted to buy for him.
"There is a commodity called processed products, do you know?" Li Zhengguo couldn't help but tap the tip of her nose, "I know people from the county supply and marketing cooperative who can get processed products."
Tian Jing waved the hand on the tip of her nose, but Li Zhengguo stopped his hand too quickly. She missed him and stared at him with wide eyes, "Don't be mean next time."
"Okay." Li Zhengguo responded quickly, stroking his fingers behind his back.
"Hurry up and do your work. You haven't done any of the tasks I assigned you."
Tian Jing ordered angrily, but she felt as if she had a guilty conscience. What was she guilty of?
After carrying the chopping board and kitchen knife out of the kitchen, Li Min was still cleaning the sweet potatoes, and Tian Jing began to cut the cleaned kudzu rhizomes.
Sister-in-law Niu helped Li Min wash the sweet potatoes while watching Tian Jing's movements.
"Sister-in-law Niu, you just cut it into small pieces. You have no skills. Wait until you see me do it again. You have no skills at all." Tian Jing cut while talking to Sister-in-law Niu, whose eyes were busy.
"Hehe, that person from the right country, I..."
Sister-in-law Niu was a little embarrassed. If Li Min hadn't asked for a kitchen knife to cut the kudzu root, she really didn't know that the rhizome of the kudzu root could be cooked.
When she was short of food and clothing, when she heard that the vines used to bundle firewood that could be found everywhere on the mountain could be used for food, she shamelessly picked them up.
"Am I going too far? This is your craft after all."