Where did you catch those crayfish?
Fu Wan quickly grabbed a bucket from the side and put all the crayfish on the ground into it.
Chen Lingling chuckled, her excitement barely concealed.
"Mom, my brother Zhenxing took me to the fields to catch loaches, but the fields were full of shrimp!"
She recognized it immediately as a miniature version of the lobster her mother had caught, but Ye Zhenxing told her it had little meat and wasn't tasty.
Shen Lingling didn't believe it at all; the lobster her mother made last time was delicious!
She was also stubborn and not afraid of being pinched by lobsters. She held the lobsters by their backs with her little hands and grabbed them one by one into her pocket.
When Fu Wan saw her covered in mud, she didn't know whether to laugh or be angry.
It's natural for children to love to play, but with clothes like this, I don't know how long it will take to wash them today.
After taking Chen Lingling to wash her hands, Fu Wan checked her hands to make sure there were no lobster pinch wounds before she felt relieved.
"Next time something like this happens, call your mom. What if the lobster pinches you and you end up crying with your arms wrapped around your back!"
Getting an injection at this time is not easy. A lobster pinch may seem like a minor injury, but it can easily become infected if not treated properly.
Shen Lingling knew Fu Wan was angry, so she quickly stepped forward to appease her, "Mom, I know I was wrong. I was just thinking that Mom made this lobster for me before, and it was so delicious, but Zhenxing said it wasn't good!"
Seeing her fawning expression, Fu Wan quickly wiped the mud off her face.
Looking at the lively crayfish in the bucket, Fu Wan also felt her mouth water.
These crayfish are different from the small blue lobsters in the sea. Although they have less meat, that's the fun of eating them.
"Come on, Mom will take you to catch one!"
Li Chunhua had already gone out to do something, and Fu Wan found a pair of clean high-top rain boots behind the house and put them on.
There are leeches in this field; if you get bitten, it can be fatal.
Not to mention that the bite wounds would attract a lot of leeches in the water, and Fu Wan got goosebumps just thinking about it.
When she was a child, she stayed at the Ye family's house for a while and even went to the fields with Ye Zhenxing's father to transplant rice seedlings. As a result, she was bitten by leeches, but she thought it was because the snails in the water didn't have shells.
After pulling it open, I realized that my leg had been bitten and was bleeding. After that, I never dared to go to the fields with bare legs again.
As for changing Chen Lingling's clothes, I was too lazy to do it. Since the weather was hot anyway, I decided to wait until she had fun and then go back to take a bath.
Chen Lingling skipped and hopped along with Fu Wan towards the edge of the field. Fu Wan, carrying a bucket, saw many other women carrying buckets as well.
It must be that Fu San's harvest of loaches and eels today has really boosted everyone's enthusiasm.
"Ah Wan, these mantis shrimps aren't very tasty, there's hardly any meat on them!"
The speaker was Aunt Liu, Li Chunhua's good friend and the woman who lived next door to Ye Jianguo.
She knew Fu Wan and watched her grow from a child into a young woman, and now she was a mother.
Fu Wan smiled and said, "Auntie, these mantis shrimp are a good accompaniment to drinks. I'll catch some and cook them for my uncle to try later."
Aunt Liu didn't know how to pair this stuff with alcohol, but she figured Fu Wan's family lived by the sea and would probably find these river creatures novel.
"These mantis shrimp came from the riverbank after the heavy rain a few days ago, and they're everywhere in the fields. If you catch them, you can prevent them from damaging the crops."
Fu Wan looked around and sure enough, red crayfish were everywhere among the newly grown rice seedlings, waving their big pincers and showing off.
"Just be careful when you're picking them, don't trample on the seedlings!"
Fu Wan nodded, "Auntie, I understand."
The rice seedlings are all neatly arranged now. The villagers used to take a bucket of seedlings and plant them one by one along the straight lines. Because they had to bend over to plant the seedlings, they often couldn't straighten their backs after a whole day.
Fu Wan knew how difficult this was for everyone, so she simply had Shen Lingling wait under a shady tree.
Chen Lingling refused to comply. Instead, she ran to the ditch by the field and squatted down to catch shrimp from it.
The field was indeed teeming with shrimp. Fu Wan had only been picking for less than half an hour when her knee-high bucket was already overflowing.
Why do I say "picking up"? Because there were just too many! It was similar to picking lobsters directly at the market in her previous life. She was wearing gloves, so she wasn't afraid of the lobster's claws at all.
"Ring ring, time to go home!"
One bucket of lobsters is enough for me to clean. Lobsters are not difficult to cook or catch, but cleaning them is troublesome.
Fortunately, there are no pesticides or sewage in the fields right now, so they are relatively clean.
Upon hearing Fu Wan's call, Chen Lingling quickly swept the harvest she had piled aside into her pocket.
"Mom, I caught a lot too!"
Shen Lingling proudly showed her pockets to Fu Wan, which were now full of lobsters and several loaches. Fu Wan looked at her covered in mud and felt a throbbing pain in her forehead.
Forget about cleaning the lobsters, I need to get back and clean up the kid's mess first.
When they returned to the Ye family home, Fu Wan poured the lobsters into a large basin, then took a clean set of clothes and led Chen Lingling into the backyard annex.
The Ye family built a square bathroom in the back of the yard. All you had to do was bring the bathwater in, rinse off, and then bring it out.
The bathwater was prepared by Li Chunhua early in the morning and placed in the yard to dry. Fu Wan's bucket was warm enough to wash the little girl.
After finally getting her baby clean, Fu Wan put the clothes she had taken off into the bucket, and the remaining water instantly turned into muddy water.
"Look how dirty these clothes are!"
Chen Lingling had just changed into clean clothes and was smiling happily when she peeked into the bucket and frowned.
"Wow, it's so dirty!"
Fu Wan said irritably, "If you bring this back so dirty again next time, you'll have to wash these clothes yourself!"
Chen Lingling nodded quickly, "Mom, I'll never do it again!"
Fu Wan, who was the best at acting cute, told her to go play by herself, and then washed the clothes twice more before hanging them on the rack.
Seeing that it was already past four o'clock, she quickly cleaned all the crayfish and then started to remove the gills and scrub them clean one by one.
When Li Chunhua returned, she saw Fu Wan sitting at the door scrubbing mantis shrimp, and felt a little embarrassed.
"Wan, get up quickly, I'll tidy up."
Fu Wan smiled and declined, "I can do it. Aunt, are my cousin and the others coming back tonight?"
Fu Wan's cousins all went to work at the village dam. They were provided with lunch, but no one knew what happened in the evening.
"Come back, we'll be back in a little while!"
Li Chunhua then noticed that these mantis shrimps were all small crayfish, and Fu Wan had cleaned them up so that they were pleasing to the eye.
"These mantis shrimps have little meat, they don't last long!"
Fu Wan smiled mysteriously, "This is a real gem! Garlic, spicy, and five-spice flavors—it's incredibly delicious no matter how you make it!"
Li Chunhua was dumbfounded. She knew what garlic was, but what about spicy and five-spice? How could her niece be so capable after all this time?!
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