"All night?" Yang was surprised. "Wouldn't our room have become a huge oven today?"
Su Qingluan turned around and said, "That's why you have to ask Dad and Mom to sleep at my place and my brother's place. Otherwise, your room won't be open to sleep tonight."
Su Guangfu and Yang's bedrooms are directly connected to the two stoves, so if a fire is lit there, the heat will first reach their bedrooms, then pass through Su Xuanhe's room, and finally reach Su Qingluan.
In winter, Su Qingluan often had to use a hot water bottle to warm the bed because it was not warm enough. However, this was summer, and this "not warm enough" situation turned out to be an advantage.
On the contrary, although the bed in the master bedroom is the warmest in winter, in summer it is often necessary to wait until long after dinner for the heat from the furnace to dissipate before everyone can sleep peacefully in bed in such hot weather.
If the situation requires keeping the fire burning all night like today, then no one can sleep in the master bedroom - unless someone wants to take a sauna in it.
Fortunately, you can sleep outdoors even in the summer.
What's more, it was just the beginning of May and the weather outside was already very warm, but the mosquitoes were not yet rampant. So when Su Guangfu heard that Su Qingluan was going to use the stove all night tonight, he suggested that everyone just sleep in the yard, set up bamboo beds, and sleep more coolly.
However, there was only one bamboo bed in the house, and the two little ones were very eager to try it out.
It just so happened that Su Xuanhe was already nine years old, and Su Xueyan was already five years old. Ever since Su Qingluan traveled through time, she had been consciously cultivating the gender awareness of her two younger siblings, so not to mention others, even they themselves didn't want to sleep on the same mat together.
In the end, a lot was drawn to decide who would sleep on the bamboo bed, and Su Xuanhe won. Although the little girl felt a little aggrieved, after Yang promised that even if her elder sister didn't use the stove tomorrow, she could still sleep on the bamboo bed, the little girl became happy again. She hummed a song and took her mother's hand to go to her elder sister's room.
Su Qingluan asked Su Guangfu to build a simple small stove after dinner, the same kind used to boil medicine before, and placed a small medicine pot on it - the kind specially used for boiling soup.
"What are you doing with this medicine jar?" Su Guangfu was building a stove with earthen bricks while looking at the medicine jar in Su Qingluan's hand.
"This?" Su Qingluan looked at her hand. "Actually, I just use it to boil water. It's just that the shape of this medicine jar is more convenient to use."
The materials of the medicine jar and the casserole are actually exactly the same, except that the medicine jar has a spout for pouring out the medicine juice, which makes it convenient for Su Qingluan to pour out the hot water directly.
Su Qingluan had actually considered using a ladle instead, but when constantly adding hot water to the pot of rice dumplings, it was best if the water remained constantly boiling. Otherwise, if the added water was too cold, the surrounding water temperature would drop, causing the rice dumplings to have inconsistent textures.
This inconsistency in softness and hardness caused by the sudden change in water temperature cannot be improved by extending the cooking time of the rice dumplings, so Su Qingluan can only try to keep the water temperature constant.
When you scoop a ladle of water from a boiling pot and add it to another boiling pot, a lot of water temperature is actually lost - because although the stove is close to the kitchen, it cannot be built at the kitchen door after all, otherwise it will easily ignite flammable materials near the door, such as dried garlic hanging on the wall.
The advantage of the casserole is that it has poor thermal conductivity due to its thick material, so it is relatively slow to heat up during the heating process. However, as long as the food inside is in a boiling state, it can be guaranteed to keep warm even if the pot is removed from the fire, ensuring that it boils for about half a minute.
This period of time is enough for Su Qingluan to add hot water into the pot for cooking rice dumplings.
Su Qingluan’s most important task tonight is to keep adding water to the two zongzi pots to prevent the zongzi and stones from being exposed on the surface of the water, and to ensure that all the zongzi are completely submerged under the water.
It would take at least three hours to keep adding water to both pots boiling. Fortunately, there were night watchmen in this era, and every once in a while there would be night watchmen walking back and forth in the village to tell the time, so Su Qingluan didn't have to worry about overcooking the rice dumplings.
It was late at night, the gong had already struck three o'clock, and everyone was already asleep. Su Qingluan added the last pot of water, extinguished all the fires, and then dragged her somewhat tired body to her brother's room to sleep in her clothes. When she left "Su Ji" yesterday, she had already told Liu Yunniang that she would not be able to go there until the afternoon today, so there was no rush to get up early.
Because Su Qingluan slept very late the day before, she slept like a dead pig in the morning and couldn't get up at all.
However, before going to bed, she left a note for everyone, telling them to try the rice dumplings in the morning, but to remember to put the stones back after taking out the rice dumplings.
Hot water cools down very slowly in the summer, and coupled with the residual heat from the stove, the rice dumplings are still steaming when people take them out of the pot in the morning.
Yang already knew last night that the big pot contained red date dumplings and bean-filled dumplings, while the small pot contained salty dumplings.
Su Qingluan even thoughtfully noted on the note that the single zongzi in the large pot was a red date and wolfberry zongzi, while the two tied together were red bean zongzi. And while the zongzi in the small pot were all individual, to distinguish them from the red date zongzi, she tied a knot at the end of the zongzi leaves after tying them together.
To be on the safe side, and also out of a little curiosity, Yang gave everyone a sweet rice dumpling, and then took out a salty rice dumpling.
The Su family also makes rice dumplings every year, but everyone's enthusiasm for them is always average - because this whole piece of "sticky rice" is a bit difficult to eat and has no taste. It seems that it is even not as good as white rice.
This ball of "white rice" is only delicious when it is dipped in sugar.
So even though Su Qingluan did it herself this time, everyone was not very interested.
She tore open the zongzi leaves, and the sticky glutinous rice left shiny glutinous rice threads on the leaves. Yang placed the zongzi in a bowl, picked up a corner with chopsticks, and dipped it in sugar. "Huh?"
"What's wrong?" Su Guangfu looked over suspiciously, taking a bite of a red date - he never liked things that were too sweet, so he didn't touch white sugar.
But after chewing it twice, Su Guangfu also felt that the taste of the rice dumplings made by Su Qingluan was completely different from before.
"You two!" Yang quickly called out, "Stop playing with the leaves and try this rice dumpling. It's worthy of being made by Daya. It's delicious!"
As he said that, he couldn't help but take two more bites.
The two little guys saw their parents suddenly speed up, looked at each other, and took a bite of the white and glutinous rice dumplings at the same time.
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