Chapter 111

Jiang Yueqin was stunned for a moment, then her face turned red: "Of course... my room!"

The building of Jiang Yueqin's house is an added building. She only built a bungalow with the money she brought home a few years ago. The room layout is a main room in the middle and main rooms on both sides. The main room on the left is reserved for her brother's wedding, so it is naturally her brother's room. The main room on the right is her parents' room, where she and her younger brother sleep, and there is a small kitchen next to it.

Thinking about the fact that they were going to add another floor upstairs, where she would definitely have a room, she raised her voice again: "My house is a building! There are so many rooms, how could there not be a room for me!"

Jiang Ning smiled when he heard it, but didn't say anything.

Her house is also a big building. Jiang's father likes lively atmosphere and hopes that his children can live together, so he built it very big, with three floors and more than ten rooms. On the day she returned home on the third day, she opened the door of her bedroom and saw her sister-in-law and nephews and nieces sleeping on the bed. They said that this would be her little niece's room from now on.

He couldn't even wait for her to come back in three days.

Jiang Yueqin was upset by what Jiang Ning said and left angrily. When she got home, she asked her parents directly, "Which room upstairs is mine?"

Her parents were stunned and fell silent.

Jiang Yueqin's father said, "What do you mean by room or no room? There will definitely be a place for you to live in the house once it's built!"

Jiang Yueqin got angry today: "I don't care, I want the room on the right!"

Two rooms were added upstairs. The left one must be reserved for her younger brother to use when he gets married, so she wants the room on the right!

Her parents waved their hands and said, "Okay, okay, the room on the right is yours."

In her parents' view, their daughter works away from home and only comes back during the Chinese New Year. She is already 19 years old and will be married in two years. What does it matter whether she has a room or not?

Jiang Ning took the clams home after cleaning their shells and placed them in a wooden basin.

There is only one bathtub for the whole family. When Jiang Ma and her family come back at night, they have to use the bathtub to wash. If Jiang Ma has no bathtub, she will definitely throw away the clams that she has worked so hard to get back.

To save time, she put a spoonful of oil in the wooden basin and scooped a large spoonful of coarse salt and sprinkled it in.

While the clams and snails were spitting out mud and sand, she went to deal with the dying small fish.

It is not easy to clean the small fish, mainly because they have to clean out the internal organs one by one. Since the small fish are small and there are many of them, it takes a lot of time. She can only wash the rice first, put the rice in a big pot to cook, pick out the small fish to be cooked at noon, marinate them with cooking wine, onions, ginger and garlic, and then continue to deal with the remaining small fish.

After all the miscellaneous fish are cleaned up, the miscellaneous fish that have been marinated for half an hour can be put into the pan and braised. To prevent the miscellaneous fish from sticking to the pan, sprinkle some salt along the edge of the pan before putting them in.

There is no fine salt in the clay pot, only coarse salt sold in bulk. After frying the miscellaneous fishes on both sides until golden brown, add ginger, garlic, and dried chilies to stir-fry until fragrant. Then add soybean paste and stir-fry until fragrant. Add boiling water and cook until done. Finally, add green and red chilies and garlic leaves when serving.

There is no Pixian bean paste, only the soybean paste dried by my aunt-in-law.

Jiang Ma is not a good cook. Every year when her aunt wants to dry the sauce, Jiang Ma asks her aunt to help her dry some. She used the sauce that her aunt dried when she cooked crayfish before.

I made braised mixed fish, cold lotus stems, and fried eggplant with garlic. I ate some of them myself first, changed the water for the clams, poured in some oil and salt, and let them spit out the mud and sand. After doing all this, I brought the meal to Grandpa Jiang, Dad Jiang, and Mom Jiang.

Because they passed by the rice field, they first delivered the meal to Grandpa Jiang. When they arrived at the riverbank, Jiang's father and mother, who had been fishing for the whole morning, pushed a small basin full of fish, sat on the shore, washed their hands in the ditch, picked up the meal and started eating.

There is water in the water chestnut basin and the fish are still alive.

Although they live next to a river, they can only go to the riverbed exposed above the river to catch some fish and shrimps when water is pumped out to irrigate the seedlings every year. They are not allowed to go to the big river, so every time the riverbed is exposed by pumping water, basically the whole village goes together. It is a rare opportunity each year to catch a lot of fish and improve their family's meals.

The women in the family would also take this opportunity to send some fish to their parents’ home.

The same is true for Jiang's mother.

She wanted to catch more fish and send them to her brothers and sisters from her mother's family.

Her parents' home is in the mountains. When she wants to eat fish, she either buys it from the foot of the mountain or catches one or two small fish from the mountain stream.

Jiang Ma is the second child in the family. She has an older brother who is three years older than her. She raised all her younger brothers and sisters and has a very deep relationship with them.

This was also a point that Jiang Ning often doubted himself about in the past.

It is natural for a child to admire his mother, but her mother is very good to her brothers and sisters, but not to her. Is it because she is not good enough?

So he became more well-behaved and obedient, suppressing his nature to please Jiang's mother.

At that time, she had no clear understanding of herself, no clear understanding of Jiang's mother, and no clear understanding of the complexity of human nature.

Jiang Ma saw Jiang Ning standing on the shore watching, and didn't want to let her go as a laborer, so she asked her, "Have you eaten?"

Jiang Ning, who had already eaten, said: "No."

Jiang's mother wanted Jiang Ning to go fishing: ...

Without a watch, Jiang's mother didn't know what time it was. All the adults and children in the village came to fish. Some families came later than Jiang Ning did. She had no reason to scold her for this, so she said, "You are so lazy. Others can catch a basin of fish in the morning, but you just waste time on useless things!"

Jiang Ning didn't want to listen to her nagging, so he turned around and left.

Jiang's mother thought she was in a hurry to go back for lunch. Plus, Jiang Ning's cooking skills were really good, and she was indeed hungry, so she ate her meal quickly.

Jiang Ning did not rush to deal with the clams when he returned, but first prepared the ingredients for making snail chili sauce and clam chili sauce.

Since it is called chili sauce, in addition to the main ingredients of snail meat and clam meat, chili is of course indispensable.

The locals love spicy food. There are all kinds of chili peppers, chili peppers, and even the peppers used to make tiger skin green peppers are very spicy. In daily life, people who are too lazy to cook just mix the chili sauce with rice.

The Jiang family also loves spicy food. The yard and vegetable garden are filled with various peppers grown by Grandpa Jiang and Dad Jiang, and there are strings of dried red peppers hanging at the door.

Jiang Ning picked a bunch of chili peppers, cut them and mashed them into chili powder. He also cut a lot of chili peppers and chili peppers for later use. Then he added chopped ginger and garlic, white sesame seeds, peanuts, and various spices.

Some spices are not available. To sort out more sources, you can come to consult the group, call 522752. She picked some celery and brought it back.

Medicinal celery is a kind of celery produced locally. It is everywhere in the ditches, but no one eats it because its celery fragrance is too strong, as strong as that of Chinese medicine, so the locals call it medicinal celery.

By the time all these were prepared, it took almost four hours for the clams and snails to spit out the sand.

In fact, it would be better to keep them for two more days so that the clams and snails would be cleaner, but she simply didn't have that much time. She had to get everything done before Jiang Ma came back in the evening.

She used a basket to bring the clams and snails to the pond, and used a knife to cut the clams open one by one, picked out the meat and threw it into an enamel basin.

This time she caught quite a lot of clams, filling up half of the enamel basin. After washing them, she poured in rice wine, white vinegar, salt grains, and starch brewed by Jiang's father, and rubbed and cleaned them repeatedly to wash off the mucus on them. This step can remove the fishy smell.

The starch is sweet potato flour that they wash themselves. Every year, they can’t finish eating all the flour, so Jiang Ning uses it up as much as he can while Jiang’s mother is not at home.

While washing, Jiang Ning's mind was already popping up with eighteen ways to cook river clams.

In fact, river clams can be used to make many delicious dishes, such as river clams and bacon and tofu stew, river clams and winter melon stew, river clams and pickled pork with pork, river clams and fresh bamboo shoots stew, stir-fried river clams, spicy and sour river clams, dry-pot river clams and snails, garlic vermicelli clams, etc. The more she thought about it, the more greedy she became, and she kept drooling.

She was in her teens and really lacked flesh. She was so skinny that she was just skin and bones.

She quickly made some garlic vermicelli and clams to satisfy her craving, and then started to process the clam meat.

Using clam meat to make meat sauce is actually not a good choice for roasting clams, as the meat will easily become tough.

But there is no way, she lacks meat.

Quickly blanch the clam meat, remove it from the pot, pour in cooking wine, onion, ginger, garlic and pepper to marinate it, then start processing the snails.

Unlike river clams, field snails need to be cooked in a pot after being washed. The thin shell on the mouth of the snail needs to fall off, and then the snail meat needs to be picked out one by one, which is very time-consuming.

After picking them out, you have to wash the snail meat several times until the water is completely clear no matter how much you rub it.

At this point, the preparation work is basically done, and then just heat the oil in a pan.

It is best to use lard to make snail chili sauce.

But if she used up all of that big piece of lard, her mother would probably go crazy when she came back, so she had to use rapeseed oil. She fry the sesame seeds and peanuts in rapeseed oil, then add celery and spices until they are golden and the aroma has penetrated into the rapeseed oil. Then she scooped out the snail meat and fried it until the surface was slightly yellow. Then she added various peppers and soybean paste that had been prepared in advance.

The method of making clam chili sauce is similar to that of snail chili sauce, except that snail meat needs to be fried, while clam meat does not. If clam meat is fried only slightly, the meat will become tough, so clam meat is added last.

When the meat sauce in two large enamel basins was ready, Jiang Ning felt a great sense of accomplishment.

She found a few canning jars on the kitchen shelf, washed them, boiled them, dried them, put the meat sauce into the canning jars in the sterilizer, sealed them with wax, and put them in the cellar.

The entrance to her cellar was right under the bed in her room, and she had to crawl under the bed every time she went in or out.

Because their place is close to the river and the air is humid, they all sleep on high beds.

At this time, it was getting dark. Jiang Ning estimated that Jiang's father and mother should be back soon, so she didn't delay any longer. Because she had the meat sauce, she didn't cook any more and went straight to making hand-rolled noodles. She rinsed the hot noodles with cold water, poured the cooled meat sauce on them, and sprinkled some peanuts, cucumber shreds, chopped green onions, minced garlic... It was so delicious.

She couldn't help but eat a full bowl of cold noodles with snail meat sauce, and then served more to Grandpa Jiang.

Before we reached the rice field, we saw Father Jiang carrying a basin of water chestnuts and Mother Jiang carrying a load of fish.

Jiang's father and mother were so exhausted that Jiang's father kept calling Jiang Ning, "Come and give your mother a hand!"

Jiang's mother was also very tired and thought her daughter would come to replace her, but Jiang Ning ran away without looking back: "I'll take the noodles to grandpa first, the noodles will clump together soon.

Jiang Ma, who was just about to relax, said: …

Jiang's mother was also a very strong-willed person. Even though she was extremely tired, she still held on with all her might and carried two large baskets of fish home.

Father Jiang did not dare to delay. He put down the water chestnut basin and quickly went to the pond to fetch water, poured it into the water chestnut basin, and then poured the two baskets of fish into the water chestnut basin, for fear that they would die.

It’s so hot, if the fish dies, we can’t let them go.

While Jiang's father was fetching water, Jiang's mother drew some water from the well, washed her face and arms, and simply cleaned the mud off her body.

After a while, Jiang's father also came over.

Dad Jiang took off his shirt, put on his shorts, and washed his hair and took a bath by the well.

Jiang's mother originally wanted Jiang Ning to fetch her some water for a bath, but Jiang Ning was not at home, so she could only drag her tired body to pour the bath water herself.

When she had finished everything herself, Jiang Ning came back.

Both Jiang's father and mother were hungry. After Jiang's father washed up, he couldn't wait to shout, "Ningning, what delicious food did you make tonight? Do you have crayfish?"

"No! I didn't cook anything. I'll just have hand-rolled noodles for dinner!"

Mr. Jiang's impression of hand-rolled noodles was still the hard-knotted hand-rolled noodles made by Mrs. Jiang. He was immediately disappointed when he heard this, and his expectations were dashed in an instant.

My daughter has become a picky eater these days.

Yes, the key to the hand-rolled noodles made by Jiang Ma is not the rolling or the noodles, but the lumps.

Dad Jiang affectionately calls it: Dumpling Soup.

It's just a bunch of dough balls, put them in clear water, add a little bit of lard and salt, and you have a bowl of hand-rolled dough balls made by your mother.

The dough balls are cooked on the outside, but when you bite them, they are still raw inside and will spray flour.

When I grew up, I saw GG’s line on TV: I miss the hand-rolled noodles made by my mom…

Jiang Ning would always reveal an expression of 'Huh~', puzzled as to why anyone would miss that thing?

At this moment, Jiang Ning took the hand-rolled noodles she made out of the cold water, put cucumber shreds, tomato slices, peanuts, chopped green onions on them, poured the clam meat sauce she made on them, and brought them to Jiang's father.