Cheng Yaoyao and Zhang Xiaofeng untied the bag of water-milled rice slurry together. When they opened the cloth bag, they saw the snow-white rice slurry solidified like clay, which was quite difficult to knead. In those days, stone mills were used, and the glutinous rice slurry produced was fine and soft in texture, which could not be compared with the electric mills and glutinous rice flour of later generations.

After pouring the rice milk into a clean bowl, the three were dumbfounded: there was no Qingming vegetable.

I picked a basket of Qingming vegetables this morning and left it on the slope. I am now in a difficult situation. It is not possible to go out to pick them now. The sun is very strong in the afternoon. The Qingming vegetables have lost their moisture due to the sun, and the green dumplings made from them are not so tender.

Cheng Yaoyao complained: "Why don't you bring the basket back?"

Han Yin was almost mad: "We are almost scared to death by you, who has time to take care of the basket. Do you have any conscience when you say this?"

Cheng Yaoyao said without hesitation: "I don't have the heart."

"Stop!" Han Yin chased Cheng Yaoyao and tried to pinch her face.

Suddenly, a timid voice came from the door: "Is Sister Yaoyao home?"

Cheng Yaoyao opened the gate and saw Xiaoqiu standing at the door. Xiaoqiu was wearing a dark blue workwear smock, with her yellow hair braided into two small braids. Although she was still skinny, she looked well taken care of.

"Xiao Qiu, what do you want from me?"

Xiao Qiu pointed at the basket on the ground and smiled timidly, "My sister asked me to bring it here."

Cheng Yaoyao said happily: "Isn't this my Qingming dish?"

Zhang Xiaofeng and Han Yin also came over after hearing this and said, "I thought someone had taken it away!"

Xiao Qiu nodded: "Sister saw you put the basket down the slope, so she took it home. She asked me to bring it to you right after dinner."

Cheng Yaoyao smiled and said, "Why didn't you bring it earlier? My family can have dumplings for lunch."

Xiao Qiu said seriously, "My sister said that there is a festival at home today and there are delicious meals and she asked me to go back and eat."

Han Yin asked curiously, "Did your grandma let you eat it?"

Xiaoqiu's big eyes, with distinct black and white, showed seriousness: "My sister said that we are also grandma's granddaughters, and we have to eat a bite at home. Grandpa said my sister was right. My grandma said she had a headache and didn't want to eat, so grandpa gave us her share of dumplings."

Cheng Yaoyao and Han Yin looked at each other and tried hard to hold back their laughter. Just by listening to Xiaoqiu's words, one could imagine how mad Mrs. Lin was at Lin Ranran.

Xiaoqiu took out another oil-paper package and handed it to Cheng Yaoyao: "Sister, my sister gave it to you."

The oil-paper package exuded the aroma of snacks. Cheng Yaoyao hurriedly said, "Hey! Keep these snacks for yourselves. You and your brother can have them."

Xiao Qiu shook her head: "My sister said she must give it to you. Thank you for helping us before."

Han Yin asked, "Where did your sister get the snacks? You can keep them for yourselves, what a waste of money!"

Grandma Xie had also heard about Lin Ranran's siblings, and seeing how skinny Xiaoqiu was, she hurriedly pulled her into the house to eat dumplings. However, Xiaoqiu was young but had her own ideas, and she just shook her head no matter how she tried to persuade her.

Grandma Xie then wrapped a dozen steamed dumplings in oil paper and said, "Take these dumplings home and eat them with your sister and brother!"

Xiao Qiu swallowed her saliva involuntarily and shook her head violently: "I...I want to go home."

"Wait!" Cheng Yaoyao grabbed her and said with a smile: "Come to my sister's house. If you don't want to eat dumplings, then drink a cup of sugar water to moisten your mouth."

Xiaoqiu hesitated this time. Didn’t her sister say that she couldn’t drink sugar water?

Cheng Yaoyao said: "You don't even want to drink water, so I don't want your snacks!"

Xiaoqiu took the cup and drank it. The sugar was melting in the warm water, and the taste of cane sugar was sweet and refreshing. Xiaoqiu's eyes lit up after drinking it in one gulp. She tilted her head back and drank it all in one gulp. The remaining rock sugar fell on her tongue, and it was so sweet that Xiaoqiu curled her eyes.

Grandma Xie also said, "Come and get the dumplings."

Xiaoqiu took two steps back and said, "Goodbye, grandma. Goodbye, fellow educated youth sisters." After that, she bowed and ran away.

Grandma Xie was so anxious that she kept shouting, "Stop running! Slow down! Isn't it bad that this child has a dirty heart? Why is he running so fast?"

Zhang Xiaofeng also said, "Yes, she looks much better these days, and she often goes to the warehouse with Lin Ranran to pick up tea leaves."

Han Yin showed her know-it-all gossipy face again: "Mrs. Lin doesn't have the energy to bother Lin Ranran and her three siblings for the time being. You don't know, Lin Wuxing's family has been in a turmoil recently. I heard that someone from Lin Ranran's father's unit came to investigate the whereabouts of Lin Ranran's father's pension and the inheritance of her father's job. Lin Ranran hasn't expressed her position yet, and the second and third wives are almost breaking their heads. And Lin Dandan, Lin Pingping and Cheng Nonuo, these three have been in a mess for some reason, and it's a mess."

Grandma Xie spat, "What a wicked family!"

Grandma Xie went back to the house to take a rest, leaving the three of them in the yard to make green rice dumplings.

Cheng Yaoyao weighed the oil-paper bag in his hand and smelled it: "It smells so good, it's cookies. Do you want to eat some?"

Zhang Xiaofeng said sternly, "Yaoyao, you are too greedy. You shouldn't accept snacks from other people's children. Lin Ranran and her three siblings are so pitiful! The money she earns from picking tea leaves for a month is enough to buy this pack of snacks."

Everyone knows what happened to Lin Ranran and the other two orphans in the Lin family. Mrs. Lin was a person who even wanted to sell her own granddaughter. She took away all the luggage in Lin Ranran's room and took away all the money. The three children got a bag of snacks from somewhere and gave them to Cheng Yaoyao. It was really heartbreaking how they were so grateful.

Cheng Yaoyao, who was told that he was greedy, said: "???" Isn't her cup of spiritual spring water worth a bag of biscuits?

Cheng Yaoyao pouted and opened the oil paper package, and inside was cranberry cookies. The red cranberries were embedded on the tender yellow biscuits, which looked very tempting, and the milky aroma filled the nose.

Sure enough, she wore it.

Cheng Yaoyao picked up a cookie and took a bite. It was crispy, sweet, and melted in her mouth. Of course, Lin Ranran couldn't compare with her in terms of cooking skills, but Lin Ranran had an oven!

Lin Ranran's portable space is the most useful golden finger in period literature. It can store everything and keep food fresh. In the original book, she inherited her father's job and became a buyer for the supply and marketing cooperative. She traded goods all over the world and made a lot of money, and others couldn't catch her.

Unlike her little lotus leaf, what kind of stupid cheat code is it? It's just an R text configuration! Otherwise, why would she always be bullied by Xie Zhao! Cheng Yaoyao shed lemon tears.

Thinking of this, Cheng Yaoyao angrily ate another cookie. The pure butter and milk flavor was rich, and the cookie baked with low-gluten flour was particularly fluffy and crispy. He called Han Yin and Zhang Xiaofeng: "It's delicious, do you want to eat it?"

Han Yin was immediately tempted, but Zhang Xiaofeng was busy pouring a basket of Qingming vegetables into a wooden basin and adding water to prepare for washing.

Cheng Yaoyao said lazily, "Don't bother, come and eat some biscuits first. The Qingming vegetables are clean, no need to wash, just soak them."

Zhang Xiaofeng then wiped his hands, walked over and took a biscuit.

Han Yin praised, "This cookie is really delicious! Isn't this the one that has been selling very well at the county supply and marketing cooperative recently? It's sold out every time it's put in stock. You can't buy it without some connections! You can buy a pack of this on the black market."

Han Yin counted a five. This price is actually not expensive. In the planned economy era, it was a seller's market, and there were many people who had money but could not buy food.

Cheng Yaoyao thought about the novel snacks sold in the county supply and marketing cooperative. Could it be that they were all made by Lin Ranran? Since her golden finger has awakened, why must she stay in the Lin family and fight with them?

Zhang Xiaofeng felt even more uneasy after hearing this: "Lin Ranran spent all her money on snacks, what will happen to the three siblings?"

Han Yin said, "It's already eaten. This is also Lin Ranran's gift. At worst, we can save some money in a few days and buy a few bags of canned snacks to send to them. But even if we give it to her, it will end up in her grandmother's hands."

Cheng Yaoyao couldn't stand it anymore and said, "Don't worry about it. How old is Mrs. Lin? Lin Ranran won't suffer any loss. Maybe she will be better off than any of us in the future."

Zhang Xiaofeng heard this and suddenly clenched his fists: "That's right! Chairman Mao once said that young people are like the sun at eight or nine o'clock in the morning. Hope rests on you!"

Han Yin also stood up suddenly and recited the quotations aloud with her. The two of them clenched their fists and looked at Cheng Yaoyao with excitement, looking forward to her joining.

"..." Cheng Yaoyao was silent for a moment: "Let's make Qingtuan."

Cheng Yaoyao specially asked Xie Zhao to move the stone mortar from the sundry room. This stone mortar was bigger than the usual one for pounding chili paste, with a round bottom, and was used by the Xie family to pound herbs in the past.

Cheng Yaoyao blanched the Qingming vegetables with boiling water, and the tender green Qingming vegetables immediately turned dark green. After squeezing out the water, he put them into a stone mortar and mashed them carefully.

The Qingming vegetables are gradually mashed into a paste, and green juice comes out. The Qingming vegetables picked early in the morning are plump, tender, and fresh. After being mashed, they are as soft as mud, without any coarse fibers. Then pour the Qingming vegetables with juice and residue on the glutinous rice paste and knead them evenly.

The glutinous rice paste after the water was drained was like solidified cement, and it took a lot of strength to knead it. This job was given to Zhang Xiaofeng, who usually did rough work. She used her wrists to soften the hardened glutinous rice paste in her hands, absorbing the Qingming vegetable juice bit by bit, and kneaded it into a large grass-green dough.

Cheng Yaoyao pressed the dough lightly with his fingers, and a dent appeared in it. It bounced back gradually, soft but resilient. "It's done. Now put the filling on it."

Xie’s Qingtuan has two kinds of fillings: red bean paste and salted egg yolk and pork floss.

Cheng Yaoyao scooped out a ball of bean paste, kneaded it into a ball, pressed it into the green dumpling dough, turned it in circles to close the top, and pressed and rubbed it again: "It's wrapped like this."

Han Yin was amazed: "How did you come up with this filling? It's amazing! I live at the captain's house, and they made qingtuan yesterday. One kind was without fillings, and the other was fried bamboo shoots with salted vegetables."

Zhang Xiaofeng smiled and said, "I live in Lin Dajun's house. They dye the dumplings red with amaranth juice and they don't have any fillings."

Cheng Yaoyao said as he rolled the dumplings: "No need to use amaranth juice, pick some perilla leaves to make it look better. If you want something salty, we can pick some bamboo shoots some other day. Bamboo shoots taste better than bamboo fungus!"

Han Yin's smile froze: "Forget it, do you still dare to go out? Even if you are not afraid, I am afraid too."

The three of them had tacitly agreed not to mention the scare that happened in the morning, but when they suddenly brought it up, the atmosphere instantly became heavy.

Zhang Xiaofeng was trying to say something to improve the atmosphere when they heard the gate of the courtyard open. Xie Zhao had returned.

Cheng Yaoyao quickly dropped Tuanzi and ran to the yard, but saw only Xie Zhao there: "Where's Xiao Fei?"

Xie Zhao said: "Lin Jiajun said he didn't receive Xiao Fei."

"Strange, Xiao Fei said she would come back." Cheng Yaoyao suddenly became nervous: "She won't... nothing will happen to her, right?"

"Don't be suspicious." Xie Zhao touched her hair. Cheng Yaoyao's hair was soft, cool and fragrant after washing. "Xiao Fei is safe in the factory. She should be working overtime."

Cheng Yaoyao thought about it and it was true. The textile factory was a closed environment, and people had to register to enter and leave. Most of the employees were women. Xie Fei lived in the dormitory, so nothing would happen. She was really afraid of the rope after being bitten by a snake once.

Xie Zhao put on rubber shoes and military green work clothes for work. Cheng Yaoyao said, "Why do you have to go to work again? I'm steaming green rice balls. We'll be able to eat them soon!"

Xie Zhao buttoned his shirt while saying, "I'm going to go check out my private plot. You stay home with your friends and don't go out."

After Xie Zhao finished speaking, he put the hatchet behind his waist and left.

Cheng Yaoyao chased to the door and suddenly called out, "Xie Zhao."

Xie Zhao turned around and waited for Cheng Yaoyao to speak.

"You..." Cheng Yaoyao didn't believe that Xie Zhao was going to the private plot, but she didn't dare to think about what Xie Zhao was going to do.

Cheng Yaoyao looked at Xie Zhao eagerly and said anxiously, "Will you come back? I'm scared."

Xie Zhao stared at her for a long while, and said in a serious yet gentle tone: "Don't be afraid. Wait for me to come back and I will bring you some wild strawberries."

Cheng Yaoyao hurriedly went to get the lunch box: "Then take the lunch box with you and decorate it more."

Xie Zhaoxian's long eyes showed an unstoppable smile as he took the lunch box. He watched Cheng Yaoyao close and lock the door before leaving.

The moment he turned around, the gentleness in his eyes disappeared instantly, transformed into a cold and murderous look, and he strode towards the back mountain.