Fu Wan agreed and echoed her sentiments.
"Yes, let's eat first, brother. I won't sell those seashells, and they won't run away."
"We'll go get them in the yard after we finish eating. We can open the scallops while we digest, and then we can go back to sleep!"
She slept all day and isn't sleepy at all right now. She could easily open all the scallops in the house, or even several hundred more.
Boss Fu agreed, and he took the two pearls and returned them to Fu Wan and Tom.
Just as Fu Ming picked up a piece of fish with his chopsticks, he remembered something and couldn't help but wink at Ye Xiaocui.
"Mom, thank goodness we didn't sell these scallops to Uncle this afternoon, otherwise we would be kicking ourselves right now!"
Ye Xiaocui couldn't refute this at all, and in the afternoon she was the one who most supported selling the scallops.
But she never expected that there were actually pearls inside those scallops!
Fu Ming was the same; even food couldn't shut him up!
"The remaining scallops haven't been opened yet. If there aren't any pearls later, what are you going to do with all that meat!"
"What can we do? We can just save the scallop meat for tomorrow!"
Stir-fried scallops, steamed scallops, cold scallop salad, scallop meat stew.
Fu Ming didn't believe he couldn't finish eating all these scallops!
Fu Wan laughed as she listened, knowing that Ye Xiaocui would get angry if she continued.
"Alright, alright, stop arguing. Mother was just saying. We didn't sell them."
"Brother's right. The adductor muscles inside these scallops are quite large. We'll set some aside to make soup, and the rest can be dried so Uncle and Brother Lin can take some back with them."
Ye Xiaocui's attention was instantly diverted, and she nodded in agreement.
"Ah Wan is right. These scallops are about the size of eggs. If they were dried into scallops, they would make a delicious soup in winter!"
When you open a scallop, the meat inside actually looks a bit like a fried egg. It's usually a ball of meat wrapped around a skirt.
Normally, when steaming, they would eat it directly. If they were to dry it, the villagers of Fujia Village would generally do it in two ways.
One method is to scoop out the scallop meat directly and dry it together with the skirt and meat. Another method is to separate the skirt from the meat and keep the skirt for later consumption.
The scallop meat is first boiled in water, then washed several times and then sun-dried. After drying, the scallop meat will turn into golden and salty dried scallops, which is what people usually call scallops.
Image of cleaned dried scallops (image removed due to copyright infringement)
Dried scallops keep longer, and adding a little to steamed eggs or soup not only makes them more nutritious but also adds a delicious flavor.
Normally, Ye Xiaocui uses ordinary scallops to dry into scallops, which produce scallops about the size of peanuts. Now, if she were to use the meat from these large scallops to dry into scallops, Ye Xiaocui estimates that the dried scallops would be the size of a beer bottle cap.
Sun-dried scallops, also known as dried scallops.
With scallops hanging in front as part of the after-dinner activity, Fu Wan and the others ate much faster.
Dinner, which usually takes at least half an hour, is now finished in less than fifteen minutes.
Although they ate quickly, everyone still ate quite a bit.
There was hardly any food left from the dinner; the bones and other scraps were all given to Yuanbao and Wangcai's dog gang.
After dinner, Fu Wan led Jack and the others to clean up the dishes, while Fu Ming went with Boss Fu to the backyard to scoop up all the scallops and drag them to the front.
As for Ye Xiaocui, she was responsible for finding the tools to open the scallops, including not only sharp tools such as knives and scissors, but also a basin to hold the scallop meat.
"Ah Wan, what are you going to do with those scallop shells?"
Ye Xiaocui gathered all the items and happened to see Fu Ling and Qin Mingzhu each playing with a clean scallop shell as a mask.
Fu Wan thought for a moment and said, "I'll ask my third uncle if anyone collects scallop shells. These can be made into buttons for clothes or polished into handicrafts, which should be able to earn some money."
"Yes, we can sell them. Can we sell the black butterfly shells we collected?"
"That should work."
"That's great!"
Upon hearing this, Ye Xiaocui was overjoyed.
The scallops and the black-lipped clams I picked up myself weigh at least five or six hundred pounds. Even if each pound is worth one cent, that's still five or six yuan!
That's enough to buy about ten pounds of meat!
"If you calculate it this way, we're actually not at a loss."
“We won’t lose money,” Fu Wan said with a smile. “Mother, don’t worry too much. We have scallops and shells, and Tom and I have our two pearls. Even if the rest don’t yield any pearls, we’ve already made a profit.”
Ye Xiaocui felt relieved upon hearing this. Her daughter was right, and she didn't need to overthink it.
As they were talking, Fu Ming and Boss Fu came over with the scallops they had caught. These scallops were kept in seawater, and fortunately the temperature hadn't been high these past few days, so only a dozen or so of the several hundred kilograms of scallops had died.
Fu Ming couldn't bear to throw away even the dead scallops, so he picked up a knife and opened them one by one to check them thoroughly.
Sure enough, when he checked the last scallop, he actually found a hard object.
Without saying a word, Fu Ming quickly pried out the hard lump, only to be dumbfounded when he saw it.
"Ah Wan, please help me take a look. Why is this black? Could it be a round stone?"
Image of a pearl web found on a black-lipped oyster (image removed due to copyright infringement).
Fu Wan looked up and then fell silent.
"What stone? This is a genuine pearl!"
Moreover, it was a pure black pearl!
Upon hearing this, Fu Ming became instantly excited, disregarding the fishy smell of the dead scallops still on his hands, and immediately held them in his palms to examine them repeatedly.
"Hehe, it really is a black pearl!"
"Wow, I'm amazing! It must be my sincerity that moved the Goddess Mazu to let me get a black one!"
Fu Ming couldn't stop smiling; the black pearl was indeed very beautiful.
The beauty of black pearls is different from the nobility of Fu Wan's golden pearls, and also different from the purity of Tom's white pearls. Black pearls have a very rare sense of mystery. At first glance, they may seem dark and dull, but after being washed and placed together with white pearls, you can feel their magical charm.
It's absolutely captivating!
Image of Black Pearl (image from the internet, please delete if infringing). Besides pure black, there are also black-green, blue-green, etc.
Fu Wan glanced at the scallop shell from which Fu Ming had extracted the pearl, and sure enough, it was a black scallop shell that Fu Ming had picked up on Swallow's Nest Island.
So her hunch was right; there were pearls in those black butterfly shells too!
Fu Ming showed off his black pearl to everyone, even Yuanbao who was eating, taking his rice bowl and dragging him around to admire his black pearl.
However, Yuanbao only had eyes for the fragrant dinner. After sniffing the pearls in Fu Ming's hand and realizing they were inedible, the dog pounced and buried its head in the food bowl.
Fu Ming was speechless at his family member's lack of understanding of romance. Jack and Robert were also very envious when they saw that Fu Ming had opened a pearl.
They were eager to open the scallops immediately, but when they picked up the knife, they didn't know where to start; they didn't know how to open raw scallops.
Fu Laoda and Ye Xiaocui were originally fishermen, and with their experience in opening oysters and abalone last year, they were even more adept at opening scallops.
They put on gloves, picked up scallops, inserted a small knife into the small opening at the tail of the scallop shell, then gripped the handle and wrapped it around the scallop. Once the masseter muscle inside the scallop, which is the scallop meat, was cut open, the scallop in their hands naturally opened as well.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com