Chapter 19 I Knew It Earlier
Mooncakes with mung bean paste and red bean paste are eight cents each, while those with salted egg yolk are ten cents each.
As soon as this price was announced, the people who originally came to see the mooncakes immediately clicked their tongues.
"The five-kernel ones are only five cents each, and they're bigger in size."
"Yes, your mooncakes are so delicious that even children feel they are not enough to fill their teeth..."
"You get what you pay for. If something is expensive, there must be a reason why it is expensive." Su Yujin took a knife and cut the mooncake into small pieces on the plate. "Try our Su's mooncakes, and you will understand why their bigger mooncakes are only five cents."
Naturally, no one would refuse the free food samples when they were brought to your mouth.
The onlookers each took a small piece and put it into their mouths, tasting it carefully.
The texture of the mooncake skin is extremely soft and glutinous, as delicate as the expensive pastries sold in pastry shops. It is much more delicious than those hard mooncake skins that make a slight "crunch" sound when you bite them.
The red bean paste filling is also sweet and delicate, with a bit of graininess occasionally, but it is not abrupt. Instead, the more you chew it, the more fragrant it becomes, and the aftertaste is full.
It can be said that once you put the mooncake in your mouth, even after you swallow it, the taste is still endless and you will want to eat some more to feel satisfied.
Although there are free tastings, everyone lives in the same county and sees each other every day. They are so close that they want to be related to each other, so no one is willing to take advantage of them for free.
So driven by the delicious taste and the craving for food, some people have already opened their wallets and started choosing mooncakes.
"Five red bean pastes and five green bean pastes."
"I want six green beans."
“Ten salted egg yolks!”
“…”
The mooncake stall suddenly became lively.
As soon as lunchtime came, all the mooncakes were sold out.
Ai Cao counted the money he had earned today, and said excitedly, "Miss, we sold 1 tael and 5 qian of silver today, and we made a net profit of 1 tael of silver."
"It's okay." Su Yujin nodded.
It’s not much, but even a mosquito leg is still meat.
Little by little, it adds up to a lot.
And this is just the beginning. Ai Cao and Mother Liu are not yet skilled. If they become skilled, and get help from Shuang Ye, Qing Kui and others, making two or three hundred mooncakes a day will not be a problem at all.
Su Yujin thought so, and told Ai Cao and Mama Liu to buy a few more mooncake molds, go to the street to find a bricklayer, and then temporarily build a larger oven in the backyard of Su's.
After receiving the instructions, Ai Cao and Mother Liu quickly split up and acted separately.
Ai Cao was the one who negotiated for the mooncake molds. In order not to delay the business, he doubled the price, but required that the goods be delivered the next day.
As for the bricklayer, Mother Liu successfully found one on the street and asked him to start working in the afternoon.
By the afternoon of the next day, all the noodles, wontons and cold noodles in Su Ji were sold out. After the shop was cleaned up, Su Yujin led everyone in the shop to make mooncakes.
Wait until the next day and set up a stall in front of Su Ji’s door to sell them.
Because these mooncakes taste so good, even though the price is a bit higher than other shops, the business is still booming.
After all, Mid-Autumn Festival only comes once a year. It's not wrong to eat something delicious on this rare day. Besides, mooncakes are just festival gifts and decorations, and you can't buy too many. It's acceptable to splurge on a few dozen cents a year.
As business was booming, the production of mooncakes increased, and Ai Cao and others became busier.
Seeing that everyone was working hard, Su Yujin asked Mother Liu to buy some fresh ingredients and cook for everyone herself.
Chestnut chicken does not require too many seasonings. Just use scallions and ginger to cook the pot, add soy sauce to enhance the flavor, and simmer over low heat until cooked enough. The chicken pieces will taste tender and soft, and the whole shelled chestnuts will be soft, sweet, and have a long aftertaste.
For the braised fish, we choose grass carp that eats water plants and is relatively clean. The fish is cut evenly and marinated with salt and seasonings. The dough is wrapped with the appropriate thickness. The fried fish has an extremely crispy and fragrant skin, and the soup poured on it at the end is even more fresh, fragrant and rich. By the end of the meal, even the soup in the plate was eaten by Qingkui and others with steamed buns dipped in it.
Lotus leaf steamed pork, marinated pork belly slices, coated with fried glutinous rice powder, wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed in a steamer. When eating, open the lotus leaves, the rich meat aroma, the fresh lotus leaf aroma, and the rich glutinous rice aroma will make you intoxicated. Take a bite, the meat is plump and juicy, tender and fragrant...
Su Yujin even asked a tailor from a cloth shop to come to their home to measure the sizes of Qingkui and the others and make them new winter clothes.
Although the work these days was indeed a little harder than before, they had better food and new clothes to wear. Qingkui and the others were very happy and worked even harder.
Even when chatting before going to bed at night, he would not forget to express his feelings.
"If I had known that I could live such a good life after being sold, I should have asked my aunt to sell me earlier."
The one who spoke was Qingkui.
Her parents passed away early, and because she was the only daughter and had no brothers, she could not inherit the family business. All the houses and fields in the family were given to her eldest uncle's family. But in return, her eldest uncle's family needed to raise her, help her arrange a good marriage, and prepare a dowry for her.
But the way her uncle raised her was not very good. She could never finish the work assigned to her every day, and the three meals a day were the worst. She could only eat one or two white flour buns during the New Year and other festivals.
They even sold her to a human trafficker when they saw that she looked rough due to working all day and it was difficult to find a husband and they couldn't get much dowry.
Before she was sold, she heard from other people in the village that if she was sold, she would have to work as a servant in one of the wealthy families' mansions. She would not have enough food to eat, nor would she have warm clothes to wear. She would have to sleep in a stable at night. She would have to work hard every day, and would be beaten and scolded at any time. Moreover, if the master was unhappy, she might be crippled or killed.
Qingkui was very scared at the time, and often worked harder because of her aunt's words: "If you don't work hard, I will sell you."
Although life at my uncle's house was not easy, they only had to work harder and get scolded more often, but they were not beaten seldom. They ate coarse food and at least they could still eat their fill.
But now, it was obviously very different from what she had imagined.
During the days after being sold, I had enough to eat, warm clothes to wear, the girl was very kind, and my life was truly beautiful.
Qingkui was really glad that she took the initiative to stand up that day and caught the girl's eye.
"Don't think like that. It's mainly because we are lucky to have met the girl. If it were someone else's family, we would definitely not have such a good fortune." Xuerong replied.
Su Ji’s business is good and there are many customers on weekdays. They will naturally chat about some gossip in the county while eating.
(End of this chapter)
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