Seeing Su Xueyan trembling, Su Xuanhe rolled his eyes and said, "What are you doing here? Someone who doesn't know would think there's poison in this dish and you're testing it for poison."
"Oh, you kid also know how to 'test poison'?" Su Qingluan snorted and laughed.
Su Xueyan turned her head and glared at Su Xuanhe: "It's all because you lied to me. I was crying, you stinky brother!"
Yang also glared at Su Xuanhe. "You too, how could you trick your sister into eating onions? It's a good thing the third girl didn't eat much that time, otherwise if she got sick from the spicy food, I'd punish you!"
“…But it’s already been cleaned up…” Su Xuanhe muttered guiltily.
"It's still not easy to deal with!" Su Guangfu said expressionlessly beside him, which made Su Xuanhe shrink his neck in fear again.
Seeing that her sister was still hesitant, Su Qingluan touched her hair and smiled softly, "Just try a little bit and see, it's really not spicy and a little sweet. When has my sister ever lied to you?"
Su Xueyan nodded, picked up the onion shreds, and then picked up some cucumber shreds and put them into her mouth out of concern.
The sesame sauce mixed with various seasonings wrapped around the cucumber and onion shreds, forming a fragrant and slightly salty coating, which made the originally crispy cucumbers and onions a little soft.
The pungent spiciness of onions is completely wrapped up in this rich sauce, and the fragrance of cucumbers not only neutralizes the spicy taste, but also makes the original richness of the sauce even more delicious.
Su Qingluan looked at her sister's face, which had been wrinkled but now slowly relaxed. "How is it?"
"It's so delicious!" Su Xueyan's bright eyes sparkled with surprise. "Sister, eating onions this way doesn't make you spicy or choking anymore!"
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "Take small bites, it won't be too spicy."
Su Xuanhe picked up a piece of offal, leaned in to smell it, and frowned: "Sister, your offal is burnt! Look, it smells burnt!"
"That's not a burnt smell, it's smoked." Su Qingluan explained, "Smoking these offal with the smoke from burning fruit wood will have a special aroma."
In fact, different woods produce slightly different flavors when smoked. Even leaves of plants such as mugwort and tea can be used. However, Su Qingluan had used tea leaves before, and now is not the season for mugwort to mature, so she used fruit wood instead.
It turns out that this effect is quite good.
"This dish is suitable for drinking, what a pity." Yang looked at Su Guangfu who was silently eating noodles and smoked sauce next to her and joked.
Su Qingluan laughed out loud, but she knew why.
Su Guangfu actually liked to have a drink, but in the past, it was only during the slack season. Lately, he'd been busy repairing houses around the village, leaving home early every day, and he hadn't had a drink in a while.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but Su Guangfu is, in a sense, a “weakling” person.
He didn't get drunk after drinking and was a very good drinker. The only problem was that he had to sleep until noon the next day before he could sober up.
So if you are busy with farming or have to go to work the next day, you need to get up early, so you dare not drink too much that night.
Precisely because the work of repairing the house has not been completed yet, we naturally still have to get up early the next day. Today's rare appetizers are delicious, but there is no wine, isn't that a pity?
Su Guangfu was ridiculed by his wife, so of course he didn't say much, but just glanced at Yang. She didn't know if it was Su Qingluan's illusion, but she always felt that there was a bit of resentment in her father's eyes.
After eating and drinking, let’s close the door outside and the fire is burning brightly.
Moreover, Su Guangfu had already removed the partition in the middle leading to the inner room, so that the hot air in the furnace could enter the kang in the house through the flue below.
In the summer, the hearth only needs to be lit when cooking, and with the partitions in place, the kang won't get too hot. But in the winter, the outside stove needs to be kept burning most of the night, so even if there's only residual heat left, it can still keep the kang warm in the second half of the night.
What's more, the outer and inner rooms of the Su family's house are connected, and the three kangs are also connected to each other. In this way, the kang in the main room, which has the strongest fire power and is next to the stove, is like a super large fireplace. With the circulation of air, the heat in the room will flow out in waves, and even in the front hall outside, it will not be too cold.
Of course, the most fundamental reason is that the Su family is no longer in financial difficulty this year and can buy firewood as they please, which naturally makes the furnace burn more vigorously.
In previous years, one would have to carefully calculate even if the fire burned for an extra hour, and the house would naturally not be so warm.
Su Qingluan boiled some hot water in a kettle and made barley tea for everyone. The wheat was the leftover wheat ears that Su Qingluan had picked up on the ridges of the fields during the harvest. She peeled the barley and placed it on the platform outside the kitchen. It dried in just a few days under the autumn sun.
Su Qingluan then used the "iron pot" to roast the wheat, and it became ready-made barley tea.
This barley tea has a burnt aroma and is very refreshing. Drinking a bowl of warm tea after a meal can dispel the rich and greasy taste of the bone soup and warm your body and stomach.
When Su Qingluan came into the house carrying the kettle, Su Xuanhe had already gone to study. And by this time, the youngest, Su Xueyan, would have been sleepy.
But today, contrary to Su Qingluan's expectations, it was not Yang who coaxed Su Xueyan to tell a bedtime story, but Su Guangfu. Compared with Yang's gentle tone, Su Guangfu spoke in a dry voice, which made his daughter very disgusted.
So Su Guangfu had to use his physical advantage and put the little girl on his neck, literally "working like a cow or a horse", so that the little girl could have a good time to "ride a horse".
While Su Guangfu was coaxing his daughter, Yang was not idle. She was drawing something in the flickering light of the lamp oil.
Su Qingluan leaned over to take a look and found that it was a blueprint of cotton gloves.
"Mom, didn't you say that these cotton gloves are already finished? Why do we still need to draw the blueprints?" Su Qingluan saw that her sister seemed to be falling asleep, so she walked over and asked quietly in a low voice.
Yang also lowered her voice. "I had the villagers try out the gloves, but I always felt there was room for improvement." She pointed to her wrists. "For example, here, I'm planning to add a drawstring to keep the cold wind out. I'll also need to put something between the two gloves to prevent one from getting lost..."
Su Qingluan watched Yang muttering to the drawings, and the more she looked, the more surprised she became: her mother was really sensitive to clothing design!
Seeing her eldest daughter staring at her in a daze, Yang waved her hands in front of her eyes in a puzzled manner: "Why are you being so silly? Help me see which of these two colors is more suitable for the lining!"
Su Qingluan came to her senses after hearing this and quickly looked down.
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