Wu Xiulian didn't stay at Jiang Xinyu's house for long before she left. After the mother and daughter took a nap, they went to work in the private plot.
Today I started plowing the ground to plant carrots and cabbages. The cabbages planted this time are early cabbages, and the amount planted is not large. I will plant another wave of cabbages and radishes in September and October. When they are mature, they will be stocked and stored for the winter.
Eat slowly.
Jiang Xinyu wore a straw hat and picked all the red peppers, while Comrade Chen Xiuyun prepared to boil the chili sauce.
The sun was too strong, and she was sweating before she started working. She picked up a red and green tomato, wiped it clean, and put it in her mouth.
The tomatoes were warmed by the sun. She ate them and counted the watermelons in the ground.
As long as she comes from the private plot, she will definitely know how to count watermelons. She knows basically every watermelon in the private plot. She remembers its characteristics. She also knows how many watermelons are eaten at home.
She counted three times in a row and said loudly: "Mom, I lost two big watermelons."
Chen Xiuyun didn't take it seriously. People couldn't look at melons every day when they were planted in the ground, and not every household planted melons in their private plots. It was normal to lose a few melons, but it didn't make people happy after all.
After Jiang Xinyu finished eating the tomatoes, she began to bury the soil in the pit where the seeds were planted.
She had fertilized a lot of her own land. The pig manure and chicken manure at home had made the land fertilized a lot.
After planting the seeds, the two of them weeded again. Chen Xiuyun was so hot that she pulled a tomato and sat on the stem to eat it.
"What are you going to eat tonight? I'm taking it home now. The peanuts I dried before are almost gone. I'll fry some salted peanuts when I get back."
Now there are only two people in the family, mother and daughter. Unlike other families who struggle to eat when there is not enough food, the two of them do not consume much food every day. Since the vegetables in the private plot have matured, the expenses for the two have not been large.
What Jiang Xinyu has eaten the most in the past two months has been frogs. There are so many of them in the mountains and fields, and she never gets tired of them even if she eats them every few days. But the taste is different from pork.
She wants to eat a lot, seafood, beef, various fish, braised stew, soup noodles, etc. She wants to eat all kinds of delicacies decades later.
She wiped her sweat and asked, "When are you going to buy some ribs? If you don't have ribs, you can eat pigs!"
She still misses the pork belly noodles made by Comrade Chen Xiuyun!
Chen Xiuyun was convinced, "I see you just want to eat. How can you be so greedy when you go to someone else's house? I won't be able to support you if they send you back."
Whoever can eat meat every three days or even once a month is considered a good family in the village.
Chen Xiuyun felt that with her little girl's nature, it would be difficult for her to save money in the future, and any money she had might go into her stomach. Chen Yi was someone who would spoil her. Before the two got married, Chen Xiuyun began to think about their future.
The family is worried.
When Jiang Xinyu was about to reply, she saw a group of children with muddy trousers and wet legs coming from a distance. When she saw the basins they were holding, she waved.
Jiang Xinyu occasionally gave candies to children and asked them to help catch frogs. When these children saw her and waved to her, they came over in honor of her.
"What's in your basin?"
The children, with sweat on their faces, handed the basin to her and said, "These are the loaches and shrimps we caught over there."
The loach in the basin was still rolling energetically in the shallow layer of water, which made Jiang Xinyu's skin crawl. It was hard for her to like such slippery strips.
As for the small river shrimps, their transparent bodies and trembling whiskers look very pleasant.
This is all food. Jiang Xinyu’s eyes lit up. The loach is also very delicious when it is cooked. As for these pure natural river shrimps, whether they are fried or stir-fried, they should taste good.
"If Sister Xinyu wants it, you give us candy, and we'll go get a basin for you and bring it back."
When a child mentions candy, his eyes sparkle.
Jiang Xinyu nodded hurriedly, "One pot for two candies, you divide it between yourselves."
With the children's happy expressions, she asked again: "Is the ditch over there deep?"
The children shook their heads and gestured. There was a small ditch over there, and the water only reached their knees, so nothing would happen.
From the children's accounts, there are a lot of shrimps in the creek.
After the children left, Chen Xiuyun said speechlessly: "What's so delicious about that loach? It's fishy. Do you think there is too much sugar at home?"
Chen Xiuyun knew that Chen Yi gave sweets to her little girl from time to time. She really felt that Chen Yi didn't know how to save money, but she was doing her best to treat her daughter.
The earthy smell of loach is simply unpalatable, as are the river shrimps and crabs. There is no meat at all and the taste is average. People in the village catch frogs because they are delicious when fried and can satisfy their cravings. Loach and
Small river shrimps and small river crabs are not so popular, otherwise the rivers and ditches would not be able to overflow.
Jiang Xinyu said confidently: "I'll show you how to make fried loach when I get back."
She doesn't know how to fry, but she knows how to make delicious loach.
Thinking of the delicious fried loach she had eaten in the past, she had already started to salivate.
Chen Xiuyun didn't want her to mess around, so which one did she come up with that didn't cost any material?
If someone else's family needs a month's worth of oil for cooking, she can finish it all at once. No one can live like this.
If Jiang Xinyu knew what she was complaining about, she would have to defend herself. Nowadays, when people cook, they just use an oilcloth to wipe the bottom of the pot, and they don't need more than two ounces of oil this year!
After Jiang Xinyu returned home, she soaked some mushrooms that Chen Yi had given her before, and then eagerly waited for the children to bring her things back.
There are really a lot of shrimps in the small river ditch. The children are quite experienced. They dug a small hole next to the ditch. After a while, a lot of shrimps swam in the hole. They could hug them directly in the straw bag. Jiang Xinyu didn't wait long.
A large basin full of loaches and river shrimps arrived.
Since there were too many things and there was no water in the basin, Jiang Xinyu saw that there were really a lot of them, so she took out an extra candy and gave it to the children.
The children were very excited and said that if they want their help in getting things in the future, just ask them.
Jiang Xinyu separated the loaches from the river shrimps and filled the loach basin with water. These loaches were slippery, and Jiang Xinyu felt alienated, but she could bear it for the sake of a bite to eat.
The loaches vomited sand for a day or two. She scoured for river shrimps many times. After cleaning, she cleaned the shrimp heads, trimmed the shrimp whiskers slightly, pulled off part of the tail of the shrimp, and tugged it for a while.
The shrimp threads came out.
Seeing her quick hands, Chen Xiuyun also learned to do it, and gave up before she could pull out a shrimp thread. "How can you pull it so smoothly? Who did you learn it from? Do you still need to use this thread?"
Jiang Xinyu said shamelessly, "I read it in a book, and I can teach myself without a teacher. This thread is the excrement of the shrimp. Of course it must be removed. After cleaning, the taste will be better." She would not be able to swallow it without cleaning it.
Chen Xiuyun didn't care how she arranged these things. She lit the fire and started to prepare fried peanuts.
Chen Yi and her son will come tomorrow, and she always has to prepare something for the reception.
Jiang Xinyu processed the shrimps very quickly. She wanted to make some of them into shrimp paste and some to fry them.
"Mom, make some sorghum noodles and treat you to noodles with shrimp paste later."
While Jiang Xinyu was chopping shrimps into paste with great interest, a bicycle bell rang at the door.
Yesterday, Chen Yi went to another village to show a movie. He left the Wuliqiao Brigade a little late and rested in the village in the evening. He went to the county again in the morning and went to the police station when he came back in the afternoon. So here he is.