On the way back, Li Mengyue happened to meet the Li Dazhu brothers who were packing up their stall. They went back in an ox cart, which saved a lot of time.

After returning home, Li Mengyue started grinding spices.

This time she plans to prepare four kinds of spices, including thirteen spices, stew ingredients, barbecue ingredients, and marinade ingredients.

Among them, Thirteen Spices can be used for stir-frying or making soup.

With these spices, she would no longer have to cook. Even if her mother's cooking skills were not as good as hers, the dishes would taste good if she added the right amount of spices.

She did it right away, and after about half an hour, Li Mengyue had prepared the four spices.

Li Mengyue took out the paper she had prepared in advance and just wrapped the spices when Li came over.

"What smells so good?"

"Mom, I mixed four kinds of spices and put them in the dishes. They taste much better than boiled vegetables."

Mrs. Li had a mysterious confidence in her daughter and never doubted what Li Mengyue said, wondering if she could also cook delicious meals.

After talking about spices, Li almost forgot the word "䛍" for soybeans.

"Yueyue, do you think the soybeans are soaked?"

Li Mengyue stood up and looked at the soybeans. She said with satisfaction, "Mom, the soybeans are ready to be soaked to this degree. Now let's start grinding the beans."

After grinding for just a quarter of an hour, Li Mengyue felt that it was not realistic to grind the beans solely by manpower.

My mother is too weak to push the mill, and she is pregnant and cannot do heavy work for a long time. It seems necessary to buy a donkey to pull the mill.

But the soaked soybeans must be ground within a day, otherwise they will be wasted.

However, there was another woman working at home, and the two of them worked together and finished grinding the soybeans in half an hour.

After that, Li Mengyue started making tofu and bean curd cakes.

Mrs. Li sat in front of the stove and boiled the pot. Li Mengyue poured the raw soy milk into the big iron pot at once, brought it to a boil, and skimmed off all the foam.

A strainer is placed on the pot and cheesecloth is used to cover the pulp so that all the dregs can be filtered out.

After the filtration was completed, all the cooked soy milk was scooped into a large water tank.

While the cooked soy milk was cooling down naturally, Li Mengyue was not idle, but was preparing to make the brine.

Although gypsum can be used to make gypsum tofu, Li Mengyue does not plan to do so because gypsum is harmful to the body and consuming too much will affect health.

She is pregnant now, so naturally she has to put the baby first.

Gypsum tofu is passed, and white vinegar and salt can also be made into brine.

But she was powerless. She couldn't make vinegar just to make the brine.

Even if she wanted to, there was no time.

After much deliberation, I decided to use the most primitive wood ash brine.

Take an appropriate amount of wood ash from under the stove, then mix it with clean water in a ratio of 1:3, stir evenly and let it stand.

Filter out the supernatant and boil the filtered wood ash water without stirring. It is best if the water becomes clear and no impurities can be seen.

After the wood ash water cooled down, Li Mengyue added a little salt to the water, and the brine was ready.

At this time, the cooked soy milk in the large water vat is almost cold, so start pouring brine into the water vat to add some brine and simmer the vat.

Mrs. Li and the other two women watched helplessly as the cooked soy milk quickly turned into flocs, and they all cried out in surprise.

"Oh my god, just adding a little bit of wood ash water can make soy milk coagulate and turn into tofu. This is incredible."

Except for Li Mengyue, no one present knew about tofu, nor did they know that yellow beans could be ground into pulp and made into tofu.

Even though they witnessed with their own eyes how tofu was made, they still couldn't believe it.

Li Mengyue didn't care how surprised everyone was, but moved two tofu boxes from the wall of the yard, placed them on the bench, and put clean cotton cloth inside.