"Have you had lunch? The cafeteria is serving food now. If you are hungry, go and get some. You can still have time to clean up these when you come back." Tian Tian said as she looked at Yu Juanhua's embarrassed look, trying to make her relax a little.
"Oh, right," Tian Tian suddenly thought of something, "You haven't exchanged your food coupons yet, right? How about I lend you a food coupon first, and then you can return it to me after you have exchanged it?"
Nowadays, most rural students bring food from home to school in exchange for food coupons. City girls like Liang Rong and Li Wenxiu already have food rations every month, so they just need to bring their food coupons to eat at the beginning of each school day.
Although you can take grain to the grain station to exchange for grain coupons, the grain station requires a certificate from the team leader to exchange for grain coupons weighing more than three kilograms. The school does not require a certificate, and you can exchange grain for grain coupons at school. Therefore, rural children generally choose to take their grain directly to school to exchange.
Tian Tian saw a bag next to Yu Juanhua. Now that she had grown older, she could tell at a glance that the bag was filled with corn kernels. Combined with Yu Juanhua's clothes, it was also obvious that she was from the countryside.
The clothes he was wearing were all covered in patches. The quilt that was taken out and placed on the bed, which had not yet been made, showed that it had been used for many years. Not only was it covered in patches, but there were also several holes in it where the cotton had leaked out.
Yu Juanhua glanced at the lunch boxes in their hands and nodded, "Thank you! But I'm not hungry yet, and I brought some dry food from home, so I won't go to the cafeteria to get food for now."
After hearing what Yu Juanhua said, Tian Tian stopped caring about it. She and Liang Rong and the others put their lunch boxes on the table, took out their own bowls and chopsticks and prepared to eat.
"Now that school has started, we have to eat Chinese cabbage stewed with tofu all the time. In summer, it's Chinese cabbage stewed with tofu, and in winter, it's just Chinese cabbage stewed with tofu. Occasionally, we'll stew a little meat in it, but that's very rare." Liang Rong and Li Wenxiu both went to school in the food factory's school, and they all knew the school's practices. When they opened their lunch boxes and saw the Chinese cabbage stewed with tofu inside, they started complaining.
Both of their families are relatively well-off. Not to mention Liang Rong, just by looking at the clothes her parents wore today, you can tell that they are at least a cadre family, so they definitely have no worries about eating.
Even Li Wenxiu's family, which was composed of two working parents, received meat coupons basically every month, so she could eat meat once a month.
"Isn't it the same at home? Today we eat cabbage, radish, and sauerkraut, and in summer we eat eggplant and beans. At least we have meat to eat at school. In our village, we may only be able to eat meat once a year, when we slaughter pigs." Tian Tian said.
Liang Rong and Li Wenxiu looked at each other and kept silent.
"That's right!" Tian Tian opened the lunch box and suddenly thought of something. She quickly went to get the box she brought today. The box couldn't fit in the cabinet, so after asking Li Wenxiu's consent, Tian Tian put the box under their bed.
Tian Tian went over to open the box and took out three cans. These were the sauces and pickles that Old Mrs. Tian had specially brought for her because she was afraid that Tian would not be used to the food.
"This is the pickles and chili sauce my grandma made specially for me. It's really delicious. Would you two like to try some?" Tian Tian asked.
"What kind of sauces are these?" Liang Rong asked curiously, looking at the two bottles of sauce and a bottle of pickles on the table.
One bottle of sauce was bright red, and looked like chili sauce. The other bottle of sauce was black, and nothing could be seen.
"This sauce is chili sauce!" Tian Tian unscrewed the red bottle.
"This sauce is mushroom sauce!" Tian Tian unscrewed another bottle of sauce. These mushrooms were picked by her when she went up the mountain in August. Old Mrs. Tian dried all the hazel mushrooms and made the other mushrooms into mushroom sauce.
Tian Tian also made a lot of money from Li Jiuniang by selling those mushrooms.
The last bottle is the pickles made by Grandma Tian using little finger cucumbers. They are crispy and delicious.
Liang Rong and Li Wenxiu did not bother to be polite with Tian Tian. Each of them picked a sauce, poured a little bit into the lunch box, and then lowered their heads to taste it.
After tasting it, both of their eyes lit up.
"How is it? Delicious, right?" Tian Tian didn't dare to say anything else, but Grandma Tian's cooking skills were absolutely amazing. She just usually didn't want to put oil and seasonings in the dishes, so that's why it seemed that Grandma Tian's cooking didn't taste very good.
But when it comes to spring planting and autumn harvest, Old Mrs. Tian always cooks particularly delicious meals.
Grandma Tian put a lot of effort into making the sauce this time. She put a lot of sugar in the chili sauce, which tastes sour, sweet and spicy, and is especially good with rice.
As for the mushroom sauce, although Grandma Tian didn't put any meat in it, she added a lot of lard and several spoonfuls of soybean paste, so it tasted particularly delicious.
"It's delicious!" Li Wenxiu swallowed the cabbage dipped in hot sauce in her mouth and praised Tian Tian sincerely. She liked spicy food very much, but the taste here was mostly salty. Her mother usually didn't make spicy dishes for her, so she could only eat the chili peppers in the side dishes. Now that she tasted the chili sauce produced exclusively by Old Lady Tian, she was amazed and very satisfied.
Liang Rong, who was standing by, had a light reaction to the mushroom sauce and chili sauce. Instead, she really liked the crispy cucumber twists pickled by Grandma Tian.
But they were both very sensible. Each of them picked up a spoonful of sauce with chopsticks and did not touch Tian Tian's chili sauce anymore.
Tian Tian didn't mind giving it to the two of them, because except for the saltier mushroom sauce, the cucumber pickles and chili sauce couldn't be kept for too long. The weather was not cold now, so they couldn't be kept for more than a week at most.
But Tian Tian likes to get along with people who know their limits. She can share things with others, but you cannot treat her things as your own without any bottom line.
"Juanhua, why don't you take a break and eat before cleaning up? It's also a good opportunity to try the sauce my grandma made."
Tian Tian warmly invited Yu Juanhua to come over and have a taste.
Yu Juanhua looked at the two glass bottles of sauce in Tian Tian's hands, swallowed, and her stomach growled. Finally, she nodded, took out two green vegetable dumplings from the package she brought with her, looked up at Tian Tian embarrassedly, and used Tian Tian's spoon to scoop some sauce and spread it on the vegetable dumplings.
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