Chapter 035 The Chicken Frightened to Death
Wen Jiajia sometimes really felt that she had a bit of a crow's mouth. After dinner, hailstones as big as eggs began to fall.
She was shocked! She was so glad that she had brought Wenchun and Wenchun back early.
Normally, Wen Chun and Wen Xuan should be back at six o'clock, but it's only half past five.
"Aunt, it's icy!"
Wen Xuan was shocked. She held onto the living room door and looked up at the sky. She saw ice cubes as big as her fist falling to the ground. Some of them were intact, while others were broken into several pieces.
Wen Jiajia taught her: "This is called hail."
Wen Xuan asked expectantly, "Hail? Is it edible?"
Wen Jiajia: "...No, hail is very dirty. Eating it will give you diarrhea."
Wen Xuan is very greedy, the greediest one in the family. If you don’t tell her carefully, she will definitely pick up a hailstone and put it in her mouth to try.
If you can't eat it, it's not good!
Wen Xuan was young, but she had her own set of simple values. So she stopped watching the hail and sat back at the table to eat her fried eel.
The local area is close to the sea and has a well-developed water system, so both river and sea products are cheaper than in my hometown.
Although my hometown is also a coastal province, Jinbu Commune is located in a mountainous area, far from the sea, and a river is not very useful. It is OK to catch river fish and shrimps, but it is too much to catch river eels.
You can buy dried kelp and dried shrimp in the county town, but it is difficult to buy fresh seafood.
And this place can do it. The eels were bought by Wen Jiajia when she went to the city.
But this time I bought river eels.
River eels are cheaper than conger eels and are good whether boiled or fried.
Wen Jiajia likes to eat fried food, but this is the first time she has seen this method in her family compound.
How to do it?
After killing and cleaning the eel, remove the main bones and cut the meat into pieces about 10 cm long.
Then marinate it with soy sauce, rice wine, sugar and glutinous rice wine, then coat it with wet starch and deep-fry it in oil.
At this point, it is actually ready to eat. It is also durable and can be stored for two days in this weather.
If you want to continue processing, you can. Turn on the fire in the pot, put the fried eel in, add the boiled meat soup, five-spice powder, sugar, ginger and garlic, and boil together. Finally, drizzle some sesame oil and serve.
Today, Wen Jiajia's mind was on the hail, so she skipped the step of returning the food to the stove.
At this moment, Wen Jiajia was staring eagerly at the vegetable garden in the yard.
"One, two, three..."
Five of the cabbages she planted along the edge of the green onion field were hit by hail, and two of them were completely smashed to pieces.
Wen Jiajia felt extremely distressed, she had no idea how much effort she had wasted growing vegetables.
In order to grow vegetables lushly without using farmyard manure, Wen Jiajia worked very hard. Not only did she go to the mountains to find fertile soil to cover the vegetable fields, she also caught insects every now and then, otherwise the vegetables would not grow so well.
Wen Xuan was concerned about whether the hail was edible, while Wen Chun was worried about her chickens.
Oddly enough, Chun'er usually raises most of the four chickens at home, but they are not killed. Instead, each chicken is in good spirits.
Wen Jiajia thinks this is a benefit for newcomers.
Children of Wenchun's age seem to be better than adults at fishing and winning prizes.
Wen Chun looked at the chicken coop in the corner of the yard with eager eyes. She asked Wen Jiajia, "Aunt, can you bring the chickens to the room?"
Wen Jiajia said firmly, "No."
Don’t even think about it!
The chickens are already big enough to poop big, so how can we let them into the house?
Because the chickens were getting bigger and bigger, she even added a high threshold to the door.
Wen Chun wilted, "Okay."
Wen Jiajia rubbed her head and said, "Don't worry, chickens don't die that easily."
The chicken coop was built with wood and there were two layers of wooden boards on top, so hailstones as big as eggs could not break it.
However, Wen Jiajia's crow-beak skill was activated again. When the wind stopped, the rain stopped, and the dark clouds dispersed and the weather became clear again the next day, the three nephews and nieces of the Wen family discovered that one of the chickens had died.
He was not killed by the hail, but by being frightened to death.
Of course, a few people don’t know about it yet.
It's late at night.
It was pitch black outside. The stars that I could usually see when I looked up were nowhere to be seen today. Even the moon was obscured by layers of dark clouds.
The rain came and went, sometimes falling and sometimes stopping.
Fortunately, the dense thunder stopped, and only a few muffled thunders could be heard occasionally.
The electricity hasn't come back yet. According to Bao Jie, every time it rains heavily, the electricity will be cut off overnight. Even if the rain stops, the electricity will not be on.
So Wen Jiajia showed mercy tonight and allowed the two sisters to sleep with her.
Wen Chun and Wen Xuan were both delighted.
What's crazy is not just sleeping with Wen Jiajia, but they have been eyeing Wen Jiajia's big bed for a long time.
Children are fickle and always think that adult things are the best. For example, when it comes to beds, they think their aunt's bed is the softest, largest and most comfortable.
After taking a bath, Wen Chun and Wen Xuan rolled around on the bed, laughing and kicking each other.
Wen Jiajia brought their small toilet over and placed it behind the door. "You should use the restroom here at night, do you know?"
"I understand!" the two sisters answered in unison.
Wen Jiajia sighed, "You better not pee on my bed, or you won't have meat to eat for the next month."
Raising a child is not an easy task. Children of Wen Chun and Wen Xuan's age always have to go to the toilet at night.
If it were a few decades later, they would still have to wear diapers. Wen Jiajia remembered very clearly that her niece was still wearing diapers at night when she was five years old.
What should Wen Chun and Wen Xuan do if they don't have to urinate? Wen Jiajia can only wake them up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet.
When they were at home, the aunt, nephew and their two children slept together. Whenever Wen Jiajia woke up in a daze in the middle of the night, she would push Wen Chun awake, and after Wen Chun finished defecating, she would push Wen Xuan awake.
But when they got here, sometimes it was Wen Jiajia who got up in the middle of the night to call the two girls to go to the toilet, and sometimes it was Wei Dai.
This kind of work will probably have to wait until they are five years old and the urinary center of the brain is fully developed.
Wen Jiajia thought about the ages of the two girls and felt that they would have to endure the next one or two years.
The candlelight flickered.
Wen Jiajia didn't close the doors and windows tightly, but left a small gap to prevent rain from blowing in while allowing ventilation.
The smell after the rain is very much to Wen Jiajia's olfactory preference. In her previous life, she even bought perfume specially blended after the rain. She felt that no matter how expensive the perfume was, it was not as good as the smell she had now.
It smells like earth and grass.
Wen Jiajia stood by the window, tilted her head towards the seam, took a deep breath, and felt comfortable!
"Auntie, come to bed!"
"Tell stories, tell stories."
The two sisters started to urge, like the devil, and they would not allow it unless they told them a story every night.
"Here you are. Lie down nicely."
She came to the bed carrying the candle on the desk, her figure swaying on the white wall.
I put the candles on the bedside table next to me. After I took off my clothes and got into bed, I blew out the candles with a whoosh. Then I hugged Wen Chun and Wen Xuan and told them the story of Sima Guang smashing the jar...
——
It's been the rainy season recently, and after a night of rain, the water level of the lake near the troops rose significantly, attracting the attention of the logistics team.
Beishan is actually a low-lying area, but Wen Jiajia didn't know that, so she slept quite well last night.
What she didn't know was that while she was sleeping soundly, several families next door were already very worried.
I am afraid of water accumulation and landslide in the North Mountain.
There is a poem that says: Empty mountains after the rain.
After the rain, everything was refreshed, from the high white clouds to the low grass on the ground. Even the gate of the Wen family was washed clean of dust in the rain.
Wen Jiajia woke up early to cook, and the two girls had to be sent to the Yuhong class at 7:30.
The breakfast was simple. There were still a lot of noodles left from last night. Wen Jiajia took them out from the cupboard and ate them directly.
The weather is getting warmer, and Wen Jiajia also feels like eating mixed noodles.
She bought half a pound of peanut butter a while ago, and today she wanted to make noodles with peanut butter.
Breakfast is ready in less than ten minutes.
In these ten minutes, she not only made three servings of noodles, but also cooked a bowl of seaweed egg drop soup.
Wen Jiajia squatted down, opened the cupboard, and took out a pot from inside. She opened the pot again and reached in with a dry spoon to scoop out two spoonfuls of chopped pepper sauce.
"It smells so good!" She smelled it and exclaimed. This was actually the chopped pepper she made.
What is the chopped pepper for? For mixing with noodles.
Logically speaking, it is more suitable for mixed noodles. Wen Jiajia always loved to go to Nanchang all her life just for the noodles. The noodles mixed with peppers and radishes are really delicious, and she doesn't know when she will be able to eat it again in this life.
After scooping, he carefully sealed the pot, then got up and went to the room to call the two children to eat.
"Aunt, we're up and brushing our teeth!" Wen Chun shouted into the room.
I saw them squatting at the roots of the date trees with their butts sticking up, their mouths full of white foam.
“…”
"Do we have to go brush it next to the tree?" Wen Jiajia was speechless. Can't we brush it in such a big laundry sink?
Wen Chun said, "This way I can water the trees while brushing my teeth."
She also said: "This is called cherishing water resources!"
Wen Jiajia was very confused. What a mess. It rained so hard last night, why would you water the trees? Besides, how much water can be used to water the trees?
She didn't argue. Children of this age started to become stubborn. After all, it was just a small matter.
"Okay, let's eat." If you don't eat the noodles, you'll get lumps.
Wen Jiajia's noodles were naturally a large portion. She scooped half a spoonful of chopped pepper sauce onto the noodles, mixed it evenly with chopsticks, then tasted it and nodded with satisfaction.
Upon seeing this, Wen Xuan quickly said, "Auntie, I want some too." She pushed the bowl to the side of the chopped pepper.
“Very spicy.”
"I want spicy food too."
So Wen Jiajia picked up a piece for her with chopsticks and said, "Try it first. If you like it, I'll pick some for you."
Wen Xuan has a good tolerance for spicy food and after trying it, she immediately asked for more.
Wen Jiajia had no choice but to pick some for her.
Since Wen Xuan wanted it, Wen Chun naturally wanted it too.
Wen Jiajia was speechless, and this should be the same.
It was not yet seven o'clock when they finished eating, and Wen Jiajia was leisurely cleaning up the dishes.
Wen Chun finally remembered her chickens and hurried to open the chicken coop door.
The chicks are already chirping and you can hear the fluttering of their wings before you open the door.
"Be good, don't worry, I'll open the door for you." Wen Chun said as he opened the door.
As soon as the door was opened, the chickens rushed out in a hurry like flood water.
Wen Chun quickly closed the fence door of the vegetable garden and ran into the room to get chicken food.
The food that Wen Jiajia sent from her hometown had arrived a long time ago. Not only did it fill up the rice jar, but there were also several bags left in the utility room.
The chick was not too big at that time, so Wen Jiajia gave Wen Chun two handfuls of corn crumbs for her to feed.
Corn crumbs alone are definitely not enough, so the leftover rotten vegetable leaves are also thrown to the chickens every day.
In addition, the chickens can find their own food, so some of them grow faster than chickens of the same age in other households.
Wen Chun grabbed two handfuls of corn crumbs, and the chickens started to cackle around her like spirits.
"Eat, eat." Wen Chun scattered corn crumbs on the bluestone slabs in the yard aisle, and the chickens started pecking at them immediately.
only……
"Huh?"
Wen Chun rubbed his eyes, looked at it carefully again, and then pointed at the chickens with his index finger.
"One, two, three."
Why are there only three?
Wen Chun suddenly became anxious and ran into the house, shouting as he ran: "Oh no, auntie, one of our chickens is gone."
Wen Jiajia immediately poked her head out of the kitchen, widened her eyes and asked, "One is missing?" She looked at the chickens eating corn crumbs, and sure enough, there were only three.
Wen Chun was so anxious that she was about to cry: "Did he run away secretly? Or was he captured and eaten by someone?"
Wen Jiajia said quickly, "No, I counted them yesterday."
She wiped her hands on her apron and hurried out into the yard toward the chicken coop.
Wen Jiajia had a vague guess.
The next second, sure enough!
The chicken died in its coop.
Wen Jiajia covered her chest and felt very sad. If she had known earlier, if she had known earlier...
I should have eaten this chicken earlier!
Now we don’t know how this chicken died. Wen Jiajia is worried that it might be sick.
But the other three chickens were full of energy, so they couldn't be sick, right? So they must have been scared to death by the hail and the heavy rain last night.
It’s okay that rabbits can be frightened to death easily, but I didn’t expect that chickens can be frightened to death so easily as well.
Wen Jiajia took the chicken out with pliers, and Wen Chun burst into tears.
"Aunt, what should I do?" she asked.
Wen Jiajia spread her hands and said, "Auntie, there's nothing we can do. It's dead, not sick. If it's dead, there's nothing we can do."
Wen Chun sobbed, her eyelashes were wet and stuck together, and her sad mood was about to be transmitted to Wen Xuan.
Wen Jiajia thought she would comfort her for a while, but a few seconds later, the girl sobbed and asked, "Auntie, can we eat the chicken now?"
Wen Jiajia: "We need to check if it's broken."
The temperature wasn’t very high last night, so maybe it’s still edible.
Wen Jiajia thought to herself that Wen Chun's mentality changed quickly enough, and she felt that she had to move faster as well, otherwise the chicken would stink.
She ran to boil some water, and luckily the charcoal fire in the stove was still burning.
"Chun'er and Xuanxuan, I won't send you off. Why don't you go to school with Xiaoyi today?" Wen Jiajia asked.
Wen Chun and Wen Xuan nodded. Before leaving, Wen Xuan hugged Wen Jiajia's thigh and said, "Aunt, please leave some chicken wings for me."
Wen Jiajia nodded perfunctorily.
This unlucky child probably eats too much meat on a daily basis, so when eating chicken, he doesn't like chicken legs and prefers to gnaw on chicken wings instead.
The two sisters left and the yard became quiet instantly.
The fire in the stove crackled, steam rose, and the water in the pot began to boil.
You can only know whether a chicken is edible after you open its stomach.
After plucking the feathers, he cut open the chicken's belly with a machete, and Wen Jiajia came closer to sniff it.
Fortunately, it's not broken.
The cock was so stiff that it looked scary.
If it was in her previous life, she would definitely not eat it, but now she is poor, and Wen Jiajia would feel bad if she really threw it away.
Besides, this is a chicken that died of fright. Some families even eat chickens that died of illness.
The chicken is small and the meat is tender.
Wen Jiajia thought about it and decided not to boil it. She planned to use it to make fried chicken.
To make fried chicken, you need to marinate the chicken first.
Wen Jiajia doesn’t have any quick seasonings like Orleans powder or marinated chicken powder. She only uses scallion ginger water, five-spice powder, onion rice wine and salt for marinating.
There wasn't much five-spice powder, so Wen Jiajia sprinkled some carefully, not daring to use too much force. She had pounded this stuff with great difficulty, and it was very expensive.
The chicken was marinated in a pot. Wen Jiajia looked at her watch. It was not yet eight o'clock.
Shen Xunzhen had classes today, so Wen Jiajia did not go to look for her. Instead, she carried a backpack and took her small hoe to the vegetable garden.
It takes a long way to walk from Beishan to the family building area.
It was exactly eight o'clock when Wen Jiajia set out, and it was already eight-fifteen when she arrived at the family building.
There are five family buildings in total, each of which is four stories high. Looking up at the family buildings, I saw that the corridors were densely hung with clothes.
These are the clothes that got wet yesterday. There is no room for them in the sundrying area, so I have to hang them in the corridor to dry.
The family area is very lively. Very lively!
Many children downstairs were running around in the sunbathing area, weaving in and out of clothes.
The aunties upstairs were scolding, and while scolding they were afraid that they would knock their clothes down.
In fact, most, no, most of the military dependents are unemployed.
They could only stay at home, occasionally taking on some matchboxes or making insoles, earning two or three yuan a month or two to supplement the family income.
Don't think that all military families have money.
It's rare to find someone like Wei Dai who can keep his money firmly in his hands before getting married.
One reason is that Wei Dai is the third child in the family and does not need him to be like a "big brother like a father" and earn money to support the family.
Secondly, because Wei's parents were not very reliable, Wei Dai didn't dare to give them money, so it took him several years of military service to save up two thousand yuan.
Thinking of this, Wen Jiajia couldn't help but wonder. She still didn't understand where Wei Dai made his extra money from. Wei Dai must have made some extra money. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to have 2,000!
Most soldiers have a large family after death. Most of the families are not divided, and they have to bear the heavy burden of supporting their wives, children and parents, and some even have to support their brothers and sisters.
At the end of a month, it's considered good if you can save 5 yuan.
"Is this Wei Dai's family?" someone asked when Wen Jiajia approached.
Before Wen Jiajia could answer, someone nearby said, "Yes, Wei Da brought it here after the New Year. You didn't know about it when you went back to your hometown."
Wen Jiajia smiled and greeted everyone one by one.
In fact, the families in the family area also have their own "groups", and they don't like to accept people like Wen Jiajia.
One reason is that her home is far away, in Beishan.
She doesn't go out easily, so who would be willing to travel so far to talk to her?
Then there is her silence.
Yes, she is taciturn. Even though she will say hello to you, she doesn’t like to chat with you. In the eyes of her family members, this makes her seem a bit aloof.
Some of the petty-minded ones would wonder behind Wen Jiajia's back whether she looked down on them.
If Wen Jiajia knew this, she would definitely shout: I am innocent.
God knows she will one day be associated with the word "quiet".
The family members were generally "wild", and sometimes the extent of their conversations was beyond her imagination. The family building was not soundproof, and the couples' noises were loud in the middle of the night, and everyone could hear them. So they talked about obscene things, dirty things... dirty things on top of dirty things, and they could say anything. After Wen Jiajia overheard them once, she never dared to join them again.
If she really listens to it for a few days, Wen Jiajia would be able to write pornographic novels.
If they don't tell dirty jokes, they just chat about family matters. Wen Jiajia is willing to listen, but if you don't tell them some gossip that you are familiar with in front of them, they won't play with you.
Afraid that you will tell others what they say behind your back!
But to say that they dislike Wen Jiajia very much is not the case.
After all, there is no friction. Every time you meet, he will greet you with a smile. How can you dislike him?
Wen Jiajia did the same today. She greeted with a smile and then went up the mountain.
The auntie who had returned from her hometown secretly felt sorry and asked the people around her in a low voice: "Did Wei Dai's parents help him get married?"
"How can that be possible? Do you think so?"
No. She is young, looks energetic, and good-looking. It seems that the man found her himself.
She sighed: "What a pity! I wanted to introduce my niece from my mother's side to Wei Dai."
Wei Dai's appearance is in line with the aesthetic standards of women in this era, and now he is a company commander, so who knows when he will be promoted. Unlike in his hometown, in the army, he is definitely a hot commodity in the marriage market.
"If you ask me, Xiao Wen is a nice person, generous and honest. The sisters from Beishan Bao all say that she is a good person, but she just doesn't like to play with the people from our courtyard..."
As he spoke, Wen Jiajia in front turned a corner and disappeared.
The vegetable garden is located on the back hill of our building and requires climbing a mountain road to reach it.
The mountain road is easy to climb, as people have trampled out steps. Even if the road is slippery after rain, you can still climb up to the vegetable field by grabbing the small trees along the way.
The vegetable field slope was reclaimed into the shape of terraces.
Wen Jiajia came to the vegetable patch on the third step from the top, took out the hoe from the basket, and began to dig out the vegetables that were damaged by the hail.
These vegetables can be made into a dish if you clean them up, but if you just leave them like this, they will go bad in two days.
Wei Dai planted eggplants, beans, and different varieties of cabbage in the fields.
Wen Jiajia didn't know the specific scientific name, so she just called it cabbage.
After cleaning up the vegetable garden, I went to the other side of the uncultivated slope to pick some wild vegetables.
In fact, the families in the family courtyard don’t like to come here to pick vegetables. There are not many here, and you can’t pick enough vegetables for a plate even if you pick for half a day.
They like to go to the mountains outside the army. Although the nearby villagers are not very happy, they will not chase them away.
Just kidding. Because there are troops stationed here, there are still some thefts nearby, but there are no more village tyrants or bullies. Even kidnappers don't dare to come here.
The family members also reciprocated the favor. They had tickets in their hands, and whenever they needed to buy chickens, ducks or eggs, they would buy them privately from the villagers, so that everyone benefited.
The rain last night caused the shepherd's purse to dry up.
The shepherd's purse in my hometown can be eaten in March. It is colder there, so it can only be seen in large quantities in April.
Wen Jiajia picked the tender ones and after half an hour, they were barely enough to cover the bottom of the basket.
That’s almost enough, she thought. She was going to use it to make shepherd’s purse wontons.
The other is Chinese toon. Chinese toon has brownish-red leaves and is a tree vegetable that is delicious when fried in eggs.
It was because Wen Jiajia came early today, otherwise she wouldn't be able to see the Chinese toon trees as they would have been picked clean long ago.
The sound of picking Chinese toon is crisp. After picking those on the ground, she climbs up to pick more.
Because the tree was slippery, Wen Jiajia took a lot of effort to reach the top of the tree.
She grunted and held the tree trunk tightly.
For fear of falling, he raised his feet and took some effort to get himself stuck on the tree branch.
Wen Jiajia let out a breath, wiped the sweat off her face, and reached out to start picking.
There were a lot of Chinese toon trees, enough to make two plates of fried eggs. She was very happy.
only……
She moved, and then moved again.
Wen Jiajia was horrified to find that she couldn't move at the moment.
The tree was slippery and she had no foothold to free herself from the branch.
"Depend on!"
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