Chapter 16: Your conditions were good then

Since we are building a mud stove, the most needed thing is yellow mud.

But here in the countryside, there isn't much else, and yellow mud is definitely everywhere.

Zhou's mother used a shovel to dig a lot of vegetables from the vegetable garden and piled them into a small hill. She also shoveled out a round hole in the middle and Chen Xiang added water into it.

Father Zhou instructed: "Add some more water."

Chen Xiang nodded in response and brought some more water.

"Dad, is this enough?"

"That's enough."

Zhou's mother mixed the yellow mud and water together and asked, "Daigui, do you think we should add some straw?"

"Add a little more, so it's more solid."

"I'll go find some straw."

Chen Xiang volunteered to get some straw.

She trotted all the way, and not far to the east of the fenced yard were large fields with scattered straw on the ground. After a whole winter of frost and snow, the straw was strong and resistant to burning.

Chen Xiang picked up a lot and brought back many.

Cut the straw into pieces and put them in the mud.

Then I watched Zhou's mother mixing the mud and straw together with one shovel after another.

Father Zhou couldn't do such heavy work, but he couldn't sit still, so he pushed the tricycle out and did some simple cleaning.

Father Zhou touched the handlebars and sighed, "This tricycle has been used by the Zhou family for more than 20 years. It was the gift I prepared when I married your mother-in-law. The earth used to build the three houses in our home was also pulled back by this tricycle. It has done a lot for the Zhou family!"

Zhou's mother took a breath and glared at her husband: "Why are you saying these things in front of the children?"

Chen Xiang liked what she heard and said with a smile: "In that era, you could use a tricycle as a betrothal gift, which shows that you were in good condition at that time!"

Father Zhou grinned, with a hint of pride on his face: "Of course!"

"At that time, I was the only one in the village working in a brick factory, and it was a state-owned enterprise. Others could not get in no matter how hard they tried."

Zhou's father didn't say the following words.

But the bitterness has already appeared on the face of this middle-aged man.

If he had not gone to work in the brick factory, life might have been difficult, but it would not have been as up and down as it is now, dragging down his originally wealthy and kind family.

Life is like this sometimes. After being given supreme glory, one will be pushed into a quagmire. Not only that, but everything around him will sink a little bit with him, and be entangled in the quagmire, unable to extricate himself.

Chen Xiang pursed her lips, pointed at the yellow mud on the ground, and asked, "Dad, is it okay for you to take a look at the mud?"

She spoke to distract Zhou's father from his sadness about the past.

Upon hearing this, Zhou's father walked over, bent down, grabbed a handful of yellow mud, and smashed it hard on the ground. The mud broke into a pancake shape.

The man nodded: "Okay."

After the mud is mixed, the next step is to build a stove on the tricycle.

With Zhou's father as the main worker, and Zhou's mother and Chen Xiang helping out, after a few moves, the base of the stove had taken shape.

Chen Xiang had never played with this thing before, and was a little curious. She sniffed it and asked, "Dad, how big should it be?"

Father Zhou thought for a moment and said, "At least it should be big enough to hold a dozen sweet potatoes!"

Chen Xiang frowned and pondered for a moment, and suddenly the sound of the sugar-roasted chestnuts sold on the street in her previous life came to her mind. There was a large iron pot on the stove, and half of it was filled with sand.

Then put the chestnuts in the pot and stir-fry them with the sand.

Only this kind of sugar-roasted chestnuts is authentic.

She thought about it for a long time, told Zhou's father about it, and finally proposed her own idea: "If you put a big pot on the stove, fill it with sand, and bury the sweet potatoes in it, the boiling sand will steam the sweet potatoes."

"It will make you look better this way, Dad, what do you think?"

Father Zhou squatted beside the yellow mud pile, his hands were covered with mud. After listening, his brows were furrowed, and he was obviously thinking about the method Chen Xiang mentioned.

Zhou's mother, who was standing by, smiled and kept saying hello.

She reached out and touched her husband's shoulder, saying, "What Xiaoxiang said is a good idea. When we were young, we also buried potatoes in the stove hole and roasted them slowly over the remaining fire. Have you forgotten?"

Father Zhou looked up at his wife and said, "How can we compare? This is something we are going to sell."

"No matter whether it sells or not, let's try it first. Anyway, there is a broken pot right there at home!" Zhou's mother pointed behind them.

Chen Xiang looked back and in the direction of her finger, and found that there was indeed an iron pot upside down on the sauce jar placed against the wall.

The iron pot has been rusted by rain for many years, but it is still intact overall.

It has always been used by the Zhou family as a lid for a sauce jar.

Zhou's mother walked over, picked up the iron pot and placed it at their feet. She knocked on the edge of the pot, and a clear metallic sound came out: "A piece of it has been knocked off here. It's perfect for frying sand."

Father Zhou raised his head, glanced at his daughter-in-law, and asked, "Xiaoxiang, would you like to try it?"

Chen Xiang nodded vigorously.

“Try it!”

The family of three wasted no time and started getting ready again.

Zhou's father continued to be responsible for building the mud stove, and it could be used normally after the mud dried naturally. Chen Xiang and Zhou's mother went to the back of the house and dug up a large bag of sand.

Just pick up a few bricks and put them together to make a simple stove.

The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law put the iron pot on the stand and used a stone to grind away the rust on the inside. When everything was ready, they poured clean sand into the pot.

When the iron pot was one-third filled with sand, Zhou's mother paused and said, "Let's put this in first. Too much will heat up slowly."

Chen Xiang nodded: "Then I'll bring some sweet potatoes over."