Facts have proved that no matter what era, empty promises cannot satisfy hunger, but they are undoubtedly spiritual food.
Sun was visibly more enthusiastic towards Miao Wan, and no longer tried to figure out what was in the marinade package like she did at the beginning.
After the braised food was put into the pot, she asked Miao Wan to sit aside, and she stood up and stared at the pot, with her big belly, wielding the wooden spoon as vigorously as a sword.
"What? Ada said to add more soup so it can be heated up in the restaurant? If there's not enough soup, then we have to add more water and seasoning. Do you think seasoning doesn't cost money for us girls? Can't you ask Ada to steam it and heat it up?"
After Zhang Sanzhuang gave his second brother instructions, he came into the kitchen and just said to add some soup, but his wife was furious.
He was stunned by the scolding. His wife was still thinking about the recipe, and now your words are useless?
Not to mention your sister, even as your biological brother, I haven't seen you be so considerate.
Zhang Sanzhuang placed the back of his hand on Sun's forehead, his eyes filled with worry. "Wife, you don't have a fever, do you?"
Sun waved his hand away and glared at her husband. "I just told Awan to praise you for being smart, and you're already acting stupid. You can't stand the slightest praise. What if the restaurant gave you too much brine and let others try the recipe? Get out now and don't get in the way."
After Miao Wan finished her big plan, Sun's mind was now full of the Zhang family's grand plan of opening a shop.
When the time comes, my eldest brother will inherit the skill of slaughtering pigs. Is there anyone in the family more suitable to be the manager than my own man?
By then, the braising recipe will become the signature dish of our store and no one else will be allowed to learn it.
You mean Ada?
Then she would be a member of the Zhang family after she got married. Besides, her Ada was already a master chef and her family was not having a hard time. Why would anyone snatch the inheritance from her husband, her son, or even her grandson?
Don't even think about it.
Zhang Sanzhuang was kicked out. He stood at the door in a daze for a while, then sighed to his second brother, "The Qiao family's sister is really amazing. She's even better at talking than I am."
His own daughter-in-law Zhang Sanzhuang knew that if Miao Wan had not said something, Sun would never have protected Lu Shui so much.
Miao Wan kept her achievements and fame to herself. She smiled softly and discussed with Sun what they would sell if they opened a shop in the future. Sun was so excited that she arranged the kitchen work in detail.
So, the Zhang family is actually full of capable people, and Miao Wan is not planning to keep an eye on the kitchen all the time.
The reason why she stayed in the kitchen was, firstly, because they had become godparents the day before and the two families had to have dinner together in the evening, and secondly, to estimate the consumption of the marinade and seasonings.
At dinner time, Madam Zhang and Geng came back with Qiao Rui and a group of little kids. Because the Zhang family was large and the Qiao family was composed entirely of women, men and women ate at separate tables.
The family also had some of the most delicious large intestines left. Half of them were fried with dogwood and given to the men of the Zhang family as a side dish for drinking, and the other half was cut up and given to the women and children as a side dish for meals.
Sun specially steamed a large pot of sorghum rice.
The pig intestines were placed on the rice and pressed down, and the marinade with oil soaked into the rice grains. Even though everyone had eaten braised food several times, they still ate without even raising their heads.
The men of the Zhang family were the same. They didn't even bother to drink the wine at first. They ate two bowls of rice first and then slowly ate the rest with the liquor.
Miao Wan looked at Geng and Qiao Rui. Although they ate in a good-looking manner, they were not slow at all, and their faces were full of satisfaction. She was also very happy holding the bowl of rice.
Her parents died early and her grandmother was ill. She owed a lot of debts after taking care of her grandmother.
She was twelve years old at that time and owned land in the village, but she lost it after her household registration was transferred. She could not rent it out to farm, and she could not repay her debts, so the village chief decided to be her temporary guardian and did not send her to an orphanage.
Growing up like her, eating at many people's homes, whether it was raising pigs or figuring out how to make the pigs bloom, it was all because she liked to see others eat happily, and it was a way to repay the kindness of the villagers. Later, it became a habit.
The baby in her belly seemed to know that she was happy and danced around in her belly for a while.
The two families finished their meal happily. Since they had just started selling braised food on the first day, they had to sit down and count how much money they had earned.
Zhang Erzhuang was holding the box of copper coins and was very excited. "This is the first time I have seen so many copper coins in one day."
In the past, when the Zhang family sold pigs, the most they would sell at one time was two pigs to Washi and two pigs to the military camp.
After slaughtering four pigs in one day, the family was so tired that they couldn't even lift their arms. They made a profit of 800 wen. The Zhang family was almost going crazy with joy that day.
Today, if you buy ten pounds of braised goods, you get one pound free. The total is sixty pounds of offal, which I sold for six hundred and sixty coins, excluding the ones I kept for myself. I gave away eight pig's trotters and made one hundred and thirty-eight coins each. The twenty-two pounds of pig's head, excluding the pot I sold at the beginning and the ones sent to restaurants on the street, were all bought by several people who later found the Zhang family, and I made five hundred and seventy coins.
A whole string of money had been strung together with red thread, and there were three small strings tied with red ropes, leaving dozens of copper coins.
Yang's lips couldn't fall. "I counted it twice, a total of 368 coins! I calculated with my sister-in-law, buy one catty and get one ounce free. The price is a little higher, so I can make ten coins more than if I sell it all in small quantities."
Miao Wan smiled and said nothing. Otherwise, how could there be so many businesses offering buy one get one free or even buy one get two free in later generations?
Madam Zhang was also grinning from ear to ear. "That's not even counting the 40 kilograms of offal we sold to the restaurant down the street. The Qiao family should also be credited with the 400 wen."
Yu looked up at Miao Wan, who was sitting obediently beside Geng, and nodded with a smile. "That's right. We've only sold this much today. We won't have anything to sell tomorrow. Dad, do you think we should ask Da Zhuang to kill another pig tomorrow?"
It doesn't matter if there is less offal. Miao Wan said that pork can also be braised, and it will definitely be more expensive than offal.
If you can earn more than one string of silver every day, that would be more than forty taels of silver a month.
After a rough calculation, Yu became a little breathless. In the past, the Zhang family only earned this much in a year from slaughtering pigs. After deducting the miscellaneous expenses for the household, it was good enough if they could have twenty taels left.
Madam Zhang didn't let the money get to her head. She patted Miao Wan's hand and said, "This extra money isn't pure profit. It doesn't even include the cost of seasoning and meat. Wan, how much do you think the seasoning will cost today?"
Miao Wan felt a little relieved when she saw Madam Zhang suppressing her family's excitement. Otherwise, she would have been in a bad mood to pour cold water on them.
"At the beginning, the ingredients for the marinade had to be sufficient. I threw in five taels of silver worth of seasonings right away. Later, my mother bought some spices and seasonings and added them to perfect the recipe. It took about another two taels of silver before the marinade was ready.
I weighed it today. I've braised it seven times so far, and the seasoning is a bit bland. I need to keep adding more seasoning. I can continue to braise it for a long time, but the brine needs to be seasoned once every six months, which costs at least five taels of silver each time."
She didn't say that she spent fifteen taels of silver on the spices at first. In fact, Western merchants sold spices cheaply in the northwest. The amount Geng bought with five taels of silver was almost the same as the amount in the sachet.
That's how spices are, the further inland you go, the more expensive they are. When they met the Western Region merchants, they had just left Beijing not long ago and had to bribe the soldiers who were escorting them, so they spent so much money.
But even though it’s cheap, not everyone can afford it. A pot of braising liquid requires half a pound of seasoning, half of which is spices.
Although because there are a lot of things being braised, the gelatin in the marinade will make the food more flavorful and you don't need to add ingredients frequently, but in order to ensure that the taste remains unchanged, you have to add salt, soy sauce, etc. sporadically every time, and add some spices when adding water.
The Zhang family finally calmed down a bit. Zhang Dazhuang, who was the fastest at calculating, spoke up, "Including what we ate, that's two taels of silver for the braised food, minus five qian of silver for the seasoning, plus the cost of firewood and meat, we can make about one guan, four hundred wen."
This does not include the ten taels of silver a year for spices. Just from this calculation, you can see that the Qiao family wants a 20% profit, but they are really just trying to make money from the seasonings. They don't make any profit at all, and it's not even enough.
Madam Zhang also understood this and said immediately, "Although we've sold a lot these past two days, it's just for the novelty of the new product. We may not be able to make this much every day going forward. But no matter what, it's not appropriate for the Qiao family to provide all the seasonings. We can't interfere with the spices in the marinade, and the other oils, salt, sauces, and vinegar should all be sold by the Zhang family. We can't let the Qiao family provide them."
The family calculated that even if they calculated 60% of the two taels of silver, there would still be one string and two hundred coins. Firewood and meat would be a maximum of one hundred coins, and if they added another one hundred coins for oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, they could still make a net profit of one tael.
At least you can earn more than 100 taels of silver in a year. No matter what little thoughts you have, no one will disagree with this number.
Butcher Zhang, the head of the family, immediately made the decision, "Then let's kill another pig tomorrow and see how it sells. If it sells well, we can kill a pig every day. If it doesn't sell well, we can just kill an extra pig when we send meat to the market."
By then, the braised pork can be priced the same as pig's trotters, and even if you sell a pig every two days, you can still make a lot of money.
"Then thank you for your hard work, Awan. When the stew is ready, you can ask Dazhuang to go to the tile market with Erzhuang and buy all the necessary things." said Madam Zhang.
Miao Wan felt that there was no problem. Now the marinade was basically ready, and the other work was assigned to the Zhang family. She only needed to control the taste of the marinade.
But when she heard about going to Wa City, she was a little excited. "Mom, can I go to Wa City with my brother tomorrow? I haven't been out of the house since I came to Xining Town. I also want to see if there are any good things that we can use at home."
Seeing her mother-in-law hesitate, Yu quickly agreed, looking at Miao Wan's belly. "What's wrong with that? I was the one who accompanied my third sister-in-law when she went out last time. Why don't we just accompany Awan to Tile City tomorrow?"
This is what Mrs. Zhang is hesitating about. The Qiao family wants to dig a well and repair the house, and now everyone in the family is busy. She has to take her child to stay at the Qiao family with Geng's mother and daughter. If she lets Miao Wan, a pregnant woman, go out without anyone to take care of her, Geng will probably be worried.
Hearing her eldest daughter-in-law say this and seeing that Geng had no objection, Madam Zhang agreed.
When she returned to the Qiao family, Miao Wan was a little excited. As a money-making person, she could finally go out after staying at home for so long. When she thought about discovering more business opportunities in Wa City, she couldn't help but feel excited.
Seeing Qiao Rui's face full of envy, Miao Wan pinched her little cheeks which had begun to turn red in the past two days, "Tomorrow my sister-in-law will buy some goat milk and make you some curds. When our house is renovated, the three of us will go to the tile market together."
After coaxing Qiao Rui and letting her go to sleep first, Miao Wan continued to go to the kitchen to make Schizonepeta aromatica essential oil.
This is a good thing. Maybe it can be used to get back the money Geng spent.
If she hadn't been busy these past two days and it took a lot of time to extract the essence without machines, she would have extracted the essence from that basket of hyssop long ago.
Instruments for extracting essential oils also existed in ancient times. The simplest one, for example, was an oval gourd-shaped instrument used to make rose water. It had to be made of copper and cost an estimated 10 to 20 taels of silver. Even if one emptied one's family savings, one could not afford it.
Now they can only use the simplest distillation method. They put a water-absorbing cotton towel on the ceramic pot, cover it with a layer of oilcloth, put the hyssop into the water and boil it. When the towel is soaked, wring it dry in a porcelain bowl. The liquid wrung out will gradually separate into water and oil.
The separated oil is the essential oil extracted from Schizonepeta tenuifolia. It has a strong aroma and smells like a slightly spicy mint. It evaporates faster than the mixed essential oil.
The water above can be used to soak pig pancreas, and the result is fragrant pancreas. Schizonepeta itself has anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects, so washing your face and hands with fragrant pancreas is good for your skin.
She had just boiled some schizonepeta water when Geng, who was keeping the fire burning for her, saw her pounding her waist and her eyes turned red. "Awan, you suffered a lot in the Jingyang Marquis's mansion, and you haven't had a good life in our family either. From now on, you have the final say in the Qiao family. If Ruichen dares to do you wrong, your father-in-law and I will beat him to death."
Huh? Miao Wan looked up in confusion. Aren’t good days coming soon?
Although her belly was getting more and more active, if her mother-in-law hadn't suddenly mentioned it, she would have almost forgotten that she had a husband.
No, why did the feeling of being moved come so suddenly?
The author has something to say:
Aromatherapy essential oils are generally pure plant essential oils and are a type of essential oil.
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