Ning Tang said, "I'll come back from the market and buy some dried fish and other things to send back to my parents and my second uncle and aunt."
Ning Xue nodded, and said with a rather elder sisterly air, "It's a good thing to be filial."
After she finished speaking, she glanced at Da Wa, Er Niu, and San Wa who were following behind Ning Tang, carrying bags, and frowned in disapproval, "Forget about you carrying it. The children are still so young, why are you asking them to carry so many things?"
Ning Tang was stunned. Dried seahorses and dried shrimps were small in size and light in weight, so it was not difficult to carry them. Moreover, the three children didn't complain, but Ning Xue felt aggrieved.
Ning Xue stepped forward and touched Da Wa's head kindly, wanting to take the bag from him. "I'm your mother's cousin, you can just call me Auntie. You must be tired carrying so many things back from the market. Come, Auntie will help you carry them."
She thought the eldest child would get close to her and complain to her, but unexpectedly, the eldest child looked at her warily, put his two little hands behind his back and said, "No, I won't give it to you."
After saying that, Da Wa looked up at Ning Tang with a nervous look on his face, "I didn't give it to her. I carried it all myself."
He was afraid that Ning Tang would use the excuse that Ning Xue helped him carry it and not give him the red dates.
Ning Xue stood there in a daze, her hands outstretched. Ning Tang was almost laughing at Da Wa's reaction and replied, "Yeah, you didn't give it to me. You carried it all yourself." She looked at Ning Xue and said, "You saw it too. It's not that I didn't want to carry it. It was Da Wa who asked for it."
Ning Xue gritted her teeth and hummed a sound through them as a response.
It was almost six o'clock, and Erniu was already hungry. She wanted to go home and eat the meal cooked by Chen Lie, so she stamped her feet and shouted, "Stepmother, I'm hungry."
"Stepmother?" Ning Xue was stunned and asked Ning Tang, "She calls you stepmother?"
"Yes, all three of them call me stepmother." Ning Tang said, "Is there any problem?"
They are not close relatives to begin with, and if the eldest, second, and third children really call her mom, she would feel uncomfortable.
Ning Xue frowned and said, "How can I call you stepmother? Stepmother sounds so ugly."
She patted Su Guangzong and Su Yaozu, and the twin brothers shouted in unison, "Mom."
Ning Xue glanced at Ning Tang with pride.
Ning Tang raised his eyebrows. It’s true that Ning Xue does have a bit of the aura of a heroine.
While she was battling wits and courage with the three children of the Shen family, Ning Xue had already subdued the twins of the Su family.
Seeing how close the twins are, they probably regard Ning Xue as their biological mother.
Ning Xue didn't see the expression she wanted on Ning Tang's face, and she felt unhappy. She changed the subject and began to praise the Su family twins, "Our twins are good-looking."
She glanced at the three children of the Shen family with a proud look in her eyes.
Su Guangzong and Su Yaozu are indeed very good-looking. They both look like Su Junyan. Su Junyan is handsome, so the twins must look similar.
Moreover, the twins don’t like to go out and play. Compared with the black kids that can be seen everywhere on the island, the twins are like white porcelain dolls.
On the other hand, of the three children in the Shen family, except for the youngest one, the other two play outside every day, and their skin is tanned dark. Only when you look closely can you see their good facial features. From a distance, they look like two little black coal balls.
It is said that a white complexion can hide a hundred uglinesses, but the two older children of the Shen family are uglier than the other. The third child is still young and can be described as cute at best, but he has not grown up at all.
No wonder Ning Xue would show off the Su family twins when she saw them.
Ning Tang nodded: "It's pretty good." She spoke the truth.
Ning Xue carefully observed every expression on Ning Tang's face and found that she was just purely admiring him without a trace of jealousy, which made her even more puzzled.
How could she know that Ning Tang came from that information-rich era, where good-looking child stars could be seen everywhere on TV and in movies. No matter how delicate and good-looking the Su twins were, they could not compare to the mixed-race child stars with big eyes, long eyelashes and high noses.
Ning Xue didn't give up and looked at Da Wa, Er Niu and San Wa again.
My two cousins from my aunt's family are so handsome, aren't you jealous?!
However, the three children were not old enough to know what was beautiful and what was ugly. Rather than caring about beauty or jealousy, they wanted to go home and fill their stomachs.
The eldest child frowned and said, "Stepmother, if you don't leave now, we will go home for dinner."
Ning Tang shrugged and said goodbye to Ning Xue, "The kids are urging me to leave, so I'll leave first."
Ning Xue squeezed out two words from between her teeth, "Goodbye."
When they got home, Shen Lie saw them carrying large and small bags and asked in surprise, "Did you buy out the entire vegetable market?"
Ning Tang wiped the sweat from her forehead and said, "It's not that exaggerated. I just bought a little." She stretched out her thumb and index finger and gestured to show that she really only bought a little.
Chen Lie took the bags from her and the three children and opened them. "Wow, dried seahorses, dried abalone, dried mackerel, dried shrimp...did you buy everything I told you to?"
"Yes, I didn't recognize some of the seafood, so I asked many stall owners." Ning Tang said.
The eldest child raised his hand and said, "Dad, we helped stepmother carry things."
Erniu and Sanwa nodded their heads, "Yes."
Chen Lie praised him generously, "That's great! I'll make you something delicious tonight as a reward."
The three children were praised and their faces were full of smiles.
Before cooking, Chen Lie divided the seafood, sent the extra portion to Ning Weiguo and the others, and kept the less for themselves.
After all, they are on Hailang Island, so not only dried seafood, but even fresh seafood can be easily bought.
But it’s different in Shangang Village. Shangang Village is in the north and not near the sea. It’s very rare to eat these seafoods. In any case, Ning Tang has never eaten them since he came here.
Thinking of this, Ning Tang couldn't wait to send seafood to Ning Weiguo and Sun Aiju, "Chen Lie, you cook, I'll write a letter to my parents."
Shen Lie responded with a "yes" and asked, "By the way, can my father-in-law and mother-in-law cook these seafood?"
Ning Tang shook his head. "There's only a small river over in Shangang Village. When I was at home, I only ate arowana and yellowtail caught in the river. Seafood in the city requires tickets. My parents have never eaten it, so they probably don't know how to cook it."
Chen Lie said, "Then remember what I'm going to tell you. Actually, these seafoods are very simple to cook, whether it's stir-frying or making porridge. The main problem is soaking them. For example, for dried abalone, you need to soak them in water two days in advance, and then change the water every three or four hours. And for dried shrimp, just soak them ten minutes before cooking porridge..."
Shen Lie was talking about Ning Tang while he was writing down the letter. By the time he finished, he had filled up a whole page.
Ning Tang looked at the page filled with writing and secretly sighed that Chen Lie was quite meticulous.
She added a few more words in a rambling manner, reporting her safety, filling up five pages in total. "Chen Lie, how do I send a letter from here?"
Chen Lie: "Just leave it there. I'll take it to the post office when I'm on vacation."
The next day, Chen Lie was on vacation, so he took the letter and the package full of seafood to the post office to mail them.
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