After Shen Yun left, Meng Zhao opened the cloth bundle on the table and asked Madam Gu to come and look at it.
When Gu saw the bag full of fabric, she couldn't take her eyes off it and exclaimed in surprise, "Zhaozhao, why did you buy so much fabric?"
“There are many people in our family, including my father and mother, so I bought two pieces of fabric for each of us.” Meng Zhao picked out two pieces of fabric from a pile and handed them to Gu Shi.
"Mother, this is for you. You can make an outer garment from it. It's light and breathable." As she spoke, she held the fabric up to Gu Shi's body.
Madam Gu reached out and touched the fabric; it was soft and fine, and clearly expensive. "Zhaozhao, you can buy it for yourself. You don't need to buy it for me. I can still wear my clothes."
“I thought these two colors would suit you, so I bought them. Your mother’s clothes are wearable, but they’re all too thick and make you sweat easily.”
Meng Zhao added, "Moreover, when we set up our stall to do business, if we're sweating profusely from the heat, our customers probably won't like it and will think it's unclean."
Madam Gu held the fabric in her hand and touched it several times, then handed the lilac-colored piece to Meng Zhao, saying, "I'll keep one for myself. This color is too youthful for me to wear. I'll make you a dress with this."
She pushed Gu's hand back and said coquettishly, "You're still young, what's there to be old about? This color suits you. If you dress up a little, people will probably think we're sisters. Who would guess you're my mother?"
Seeing her daughter-in-law clinging to her arm and acting coquettishly, Madam Gu had no choice but to put the fabric away. On the surface, she felt that Meng Zhao had spent too much, but in her heart she was extremely happy.
Then Meng Zhao picked out a few more pieces of fabric and handed them to Gu Shi, "Mother, these are for my parents. You are very skilled, so please make some for them too. I will pay you for your work."
Upon hearing this, Madam Gu frowned and said angrily, "You child, your in-laws have helped our family so much, and all you're doing is making two sets of clothes. Why are you talking about money?"
"Okay, then I won't talk to you about money, and you don't need to be polite with me. We're all family, and money is meant to be spent. You don't need to be polite with me, and you don't need to be too frugal."
Madam Gu smiled helplessly, reached out and tapped Meng Zhao's forehead with her finger, her eyes full of affection, "You, Mother knows."
To make work easier, Gu usually divided all her hair into sections and coiled them together on top of her head, securing them with only a wooden hairpin.
Meng Zhao took out the silk flowers that the fabric shop had given her, picked out a crabapple blossom design, and put it in Gu Shi's hair.
Gu stood stiffly, and after Meng Zhaozhan finished, she felt a little embarrassed. "Zhaozhan, am I being too conspicuous?"
When the family was struggling financially, Gu Shi pawned all her jewelry one by one. Now, she simply wraps her hair in a cloth or secures it with a wooden hairpin every day and hasn't worn any decent hair ornaments in a long time.
"It looks beautiful. Mom, you are especially suited to this light and elegant color. It makes you look so classy."
Meng Zhao was telling the truth; the Gu family, who could give birth to such good-looking children, must have excellent genes.
Previously, she looked somewhat unhealthy due to poor diet, but now that she runs a food business, she eats much better food every day, and her face has become fuller, which has brought out the advantages of her facial features. With a little dressing up, she looks elegant and poised.
Since there was no mirror at home, Meng Zhao could only fill a basin with water and let Gu Shi see for herself.
Madam Gu was also very pleased. The silk flower headdress was extremely realistic, made of very thin silk fabric, and the craftsmanship was extremely complicated. She had made some herself when she worked in a tailor shop and knew that these were not cheap.
"Zhaozhao, don't buy these for your mother next time. I don't need them usually. Buy more for yourself. You're young, and these beautiful silk flowers are perfect for you."
"Mother, these weren't bought. The servant saw that I bought a lot, so he let me pick a few at random as a gift. I just picked one for each of them."
"It was a gift! It seems that the young man is an honest one; these silk flowers aren't cheap in the shop."
Meng Zhao leaned on Gu Shi's shoulder and said, "No matter how expensive it is, if Mother likes it, I will buy it for Mother more often in the future."
Seeing that Madam Gu was about to speak again, Meng Zhao quickly grabbed the silk flowers for Shen Qingyu and ran out.
Gu could only sigh and laugh from behind.
Taking advantage of this lull in her schedule, Madam Gu decided to finish making the clothes as soon as possible.
To Gu's surprise, Meng Zhao was usually very skillful. The buns she made were all the same size with even pleats, and the radish flowers she carved with a knife were also lifelike.
Even with the simplest task of washing vegetables, while most people just rinse them casually, she set rules for using different washing methods for different vegetables, all to ensure they were cleaner.
Who would have thought that someone so skillful and meticulous in cooking would be so clumsy when it comes to needlework? Forget about embroidery, they couldn't even align the stitches properly.
Ask her to cut out the fabric with the lines drawn on it, but even that was a mess of cutting.
Meng Zhao, who had been enthusiastically planning to make her own clothes, was devastated. From childhood to adulthood, she had always excelled at everything, whether it was studying or working, but unexpectedly, she failed here.
Fortunately, the Shen family kept praising her. Even though she sewed the thread crookedly and cut the fabric badly, they still took turns praising her and giving her plenty of emotional support, which prevented Meng Zhao from being too discouraged.
But these fabrics were all bought with money. No matter how much she was praised, Meng Zhao was still aware of the situation. After helping for a while but making things worse, she went back to making food.
First, I took out the crispy green plums that Meng Zhao had pickled a few days ago. There was only one small jar, which was the ones left over from the first time I met Shen Yun.
Meng Zhao soaked the plums in water for ten minutes, removed the stems, washed them clean, and then placed them on a rack to dry. He then used a knife to pound them until they cracked, and wrapped each plum in salt to pickle them.
After four hours, rinse off the salt with clean water, and then soak the plums in clean water for another four hours. This step is to remove the bitterness of the plums.
After soaking, remove the plums and let them dry. Take a clean container, layer the plums and sugar, and shake the container to ensure that each plum is coated with sugar. This step is to reduce the sourness of the plums and increase their sweetness.
Eight hours later, the dissolved sugar water was poured out. This sugar water was bitter and unusable.
Continue to wrap the green plums with layers of white sugar and plums and marinate for eight hours. Pour the second batch of melted sugar water into a pot, heat it until it becomes thick, let it cool, and then soak it together with the green plums in a container for twelve hours. The crispy green plums are now ready.
The process is tedious and requires a lot of sugar and salt, but once the finished product is ready, you'll find it's all worth it.
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