The next day, Xu Lai went to the street and bought pork belly, and also went to the supermarket to buy some dried plum vegetables. She had been saying she was going to make braised pork belly, but she always forgot. She must have been annoyed by someone.
On the way back, she ran into an acquaintance who offered her some dates. Xu Lai stopped the car and looked at the person's house. Oh wow, there was a big date tree, laden with dates.
She was Xu Lai's elementary school classmate and was now staying at home taking care of her child. Xu Lai exchanged a few pleasantries with her and was just about to leave when her old classmate handed her a bag of dates, saying, "Take these home and eat them. There are plenty at home."
Xu Lai smiled and said thank you, then handed the children some apples and bananas she had just bought that day.
She drove all the way home and it was just past 8:30. She took all the vegetables to the kitchen and put the fruit on the table in the main room.
Grandma rummaged through the bag and asked, "Did you buy dates today?"
Xu Lai shook her head: "No, I ran into an elementary school classmate on my way back, and she gave me a bag."
She took a handful, rinsed it with water, took a bite, and found it crisp and sweet—very delicious.
She handed the rest to her grandmother, intending to take the aiyu fruit out to dry in the sun, but her grandmother said, "It's already been taken out."
She turned back and lay down on the recliner to rest. There wasn't much to do in the morning, and in two more days, it would be time to harvest the rice.
Xu Lai asked, "Will we still need to harvest manually this time?"
Grandma thought for a moment and said, "Hiring workers would cost so much money, and we'd have to thresh the rice ourselves, so it's better to hire a combine harvester."
Xu Lai immediately decided, "Then we'll hire a harvester."
But what she didn't know was that her grandparents also planted several small fields. Those fields were too small for harvesters to get in, so they had to be harvested manually.
I'm going to make braised pork belly with preserved mustard greens for lunch. Wash the pork belly, put it in a pot of cold water, add scallions, ginger, garlic, and cooking wine, and cook until chopsticks can be inserted easily. Then take it out.
Use paper towels to absorb the moisture from the surface of the meat, poke holes in the surface with a toothpick, and then apply dark soy sauce. This step is for coloring.
Pour oil into a pan, place the skin side down, and fry until golden brown. Then soak in cold water for ten minutes.
Wash the dried mustard greens, chop them, and stir-fry them in a pan without oil until the moisture evaporates.
Put the preserved mustard greens back into the pot, add light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, and oyster sauce to season it simply. Slice the pork belly and place it on the bottom of a plate, then spread the preserved mustard greens on top, press them down firmly, and steam for one hour.
Xu Lai made two dishes and put them in the pot to steam. Then she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Cooking in the summer is so hot that you feel like you've just been pulled out of the water.
Grandma was tending the fire when Xu Lai saw that the fire was big enough, so she said, "Grandma, go inside and stay here. It's too hot in here."
Grandma got up and reminded her to check the fire from time to time so that she wouldn't forget to add firewood and cause the fire to go out.
Xu Lai also made a stir-fried loofah with eggs and a seaweed and egg drop soup.
The braised pork was ready, and she called Xia Ning, "Didn't you say you wanted to eat braised pork? It's ready, come and get it quickly."
After hanging up the phone, Xia Ning rode away on her electric bike, calling out, "Grandma, please keep an eye on the food in the pot for me; I forgot to turn off the heat."
Xia Ning also brought over a bag of dates. Xu Lai opened it and took a look. They were all plump and looked very good.
She asked, "Where did these dates come from? Someone just gave me a bag of them today."
Xia Ning said, "I didn't even know about the jujube tree behind my house. My grandma said the jujubes on the tree were ready to eat, so I picked some and brought them over."
Xu Lai turned the braised pork with preserved mustard greens upside down into the bowl Xia Ning brought, gave her a bag to put it in, and said, "Be careful, don't burn yourself."
Xia Ning nodded: "I'm leaving now."
Xu Lai placed the other bowl on a plate, then brought it to the table and called her grandparents to eat.
She didn't really like eating fatty meat, but braised pork always had some fat, so she picked off the fatty pieces, and Grandpa brought his bowl over and said, "Give it to me."
Xu Lai put it directly into her grandfather's bowl. When she was little, if there was any food she didn't like, her grandfather would let her put it in his bowl without any disgust.
After finishing her meal, she lay back in her chair, holding her phone in her left hand and a plate of washed dates on her right. Xu Lai would occasionally pick up a date and put it in her mouth. It took her about half an hour to finish the plate of dates.
Xu Lai couldn't help but burp. She had only washed a small portion, and with the bag Xia Ning had brought, there was still a lot left to eat.
She then searched online for solutions to problems with dates and finally decided to make candied dates.
First, make a ring around the surface of the dates so that they can absorb the flavor when cooking. Add water to the pot to cover the dates, bring to a boil and cook for a few minutes to remove the astringent taste.
Add rock sugar to a pot and melt it. Add jujubes and skim off any foam while cooking. Once the water has evaporated, turn the heat to low and cook until the jujubes become translucent.
Turn off the heat and let it cool. It can be stored in the refrigerator. Xu Lai took half of the winter dates and made some to taste.
She took a bite right after it came out of the pot, and found it to be soft and tender, no longer the crisp and raw texture it had been before.
She carried it to her grandparents' room, where they were taking a nap. The fan was whirring on the roof, and the room wasn't hot, but it wasn't cool either.
Xu Lai found the air conditioner remote and turned it on to 20 degrees Celsius. That's how the elderly are; they don't like to turn on the air conditioner unless it's extremely hot, thinking that a fan is more energy-efficient.
Xu Lai didn't care about all that. Anyway, she paid the electricity bill, and the air conditioner was basically "resting" all year round. What was wrong with working a little harder during the two summer months?
Grandma woke up quickly. Xu Lai was sitting in a chair playing on her phone. When she saw that Grandma was awake, she said, "Grandma, try some of my candied dates later. They're pretty good."
Grandma got up to use the bathroom, and when she came back, she saw the air conditioner was on, so she turned it off. Xu Lai didn't turn it back on either. It was almost 3:30, and she was going out in a little while.
A little after five o'clock, she went to the vegetable garden to pick peanuts, completely covered up. Her grandfather had arrived at 4:30 and had been picking for a while.
She also grows quite a lot of peanuts at home. She called Xia Ning over to film a video and then asked her to help with the work.
Xia Ning finished shooting the footage and was about to slip away when Xu Lai stopped her: "Since you're already here, do some work before you leave."
Xia Ning's smile was more like a grimace. "So that's what your real purpose was."
The three of them didn't finish pulling up all the peanuts until almost 5:40.
But after harvesting the peanuts, they still had to be picked off one by one. Xu Lai took a basket, filled it to the brim, and Grandpa carried it home. He made four trips back and forth to load the peanuts before finally getting them home.
Looking at the yard full of peanuts, she felt a slight pain in her fingers. With so many peanuts, how long would it take to harvest them all?
Did her grandparents work this hard when she wasn't home? She came back late this year and missed planting peanuts, but she's determined not to let them plant so many next year.
Just as she was worrying, Zhao Qingyun came in with more than a dozen peanut plants. "I started picking them up from the roadside and carried them all the way into the house."
Xu Lai laughed on the spot, "Wait, why is this dustpan leaking as it moves?"
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