Chapter 31 Pickled Cabbage
The next day, Deng Minghao and Li Ruolan got up as soon as the alarm rang. Li Ruolan felt a little unhappy when she saw Deng Minghao, who had slept so late the previous night, worked most of the night, and was still full of energy today.
It was obviously Deng Minghao who was doing the hard work, so why did she become the one who felt uncomfortable?
They had just woken up in the morning and were not too hungry, so they cooked some corn and sweet potatoes, plus an egg for each of them.
After eating, I went to work.
The corn has been harvested, and the next step is to husk the corn, dry it, and then thresh it.
This job is neither easy nor tiring, but it is really tiring. However, the hard work is usually done by male laborers, while the female educated youth and women mostly shell the corn manually.
Li Ruolan quite liked this atmosphere. They sat together in groups of three or five, working non-stop and chatting.
"I'm telling you..."
"Why is that? I have something to ask..."
"What do you mean by that? Listen to me..."
During the seven or eight days of shelling corn, Li Ruolan heard a lot of gossip, such as who's child was not his father's biological child and who's father was not good enough.
Also, my mother had a falling out with her husband, and then she got together with my daughter's father-in-law, and they still live together now.
Whose man is beaten by his wife every day, whose mother-in-law and daughter-in-law quarrel every day, whose daughter-in-law can't give birth to a son...
Li Ruolan felt her worldview collapse after hearing this. People say country people are conservative, but what they did was not conservative at all.
In the evening, Li Ruolan would tell Deng Minghao the gossip she heard that day, and Deng Minghao would sometimes exchange gossip with her about what he heard that day.
People say that life in the countryside is hard and boring, but the two of them didn't feel bored at all. Being here was like being in a melon field. It was so wonderful.
Although everyone liked to gossip, it did not interfere with the work at hand. This continued for half a month, with men, women, young and old all working together, and finally all the corn kernels were peeled.
After the corn was bagged, the team leader asked the tractor driver to drive over, load the corn onto the tractor, and then send it to the grain station.
After the corn was harvested, the work was easy for a few days. Then the weather got colder and colder, and when frost began to fall, the production team became busy again, harvesting sweet potatoes.
Harvesting sweet potatoes is a very tiring job, whether it is bending over to dig the sweet potatoes or transporting the sweet potatoes from the field, it is very tiring.
However, there is one advantage to harvesting sweet potatoes. After the big fruits are harvested, many small ones will be left in the fields. Villagers can come and dig these up, and the people in the production team will not care.
So after the adults had dug clean one acre of land, they went to work on another acre of land. As soon as they left, many children came over carrying hoes and baskets and started digging the sweet potatoes.
Sometimes when they get off work, they will dig with the children.
These are all food, and they are free, so of course we should dig as much as we can.
Li Ruolan and Deng Minghao couldn't act so different, and sometimes they would go and dig a little, just for show.
After harvesting sweet potatoes, it’s time to harvest cabbage. Winter here lasts very long, so in addition to pickling sauerkraut, we also need to store a lot of cabbage, which is the only vegetable we can eat in winter.
There were more than 20 people at the educated youth site, and they all exchanged money to buy and store 4,000 to 5,000 kilograms of cabbage. Although this amount of cabbage was a lot, it was really not much for more than 20 people to eat for several months.
Li Ruolan and Deng Minghao also bought a lot, almost four or five hundred kilograms. Since everyone else had bought it, they didn't want to be too different.
Anyway, there are plenty of chickens, ducks and geese in the space, so at worst we can just feed them.
But when it came to pickling pickles, Li Ruolan and Deng Minghao looked at each other in silence. Neither of them had ever pickled pickles before, and didn't know how to do it.
"Why don't we go ask Aunt Guihua?" This was the only external help Li Ruolan could think of.
Aunt Cuihua and Aunt Wang Er both said that Aunt Guihua's pickled cabbage was the most delicious and the best pickled cabbage in their Shengli Brigade. Li Ruolan also wanted to try it and see what it tasted like.
"Okay, then you go. I heard that Aunt Guihua's daughter just gave birth to a baby, and now is the time for her to recuperate after the baby is born. You can bring some brown sugar." Deng Minghao said.
Thinking that Aunt Guihua had helped her a lot, Li Ruolan packed half a pound of brown sugar and went to Aunt Guihua to become her apprentice.
When Aunt Guihua saw Li Ruolan coming to see her, carrying something, she hurriedly asked Li Ruolan if something had happened.
"No, every household has started to pickle vegetables. Deng Zhiqing and I are both from other places and have never pickled vegetables before. We don't know how to do it.
So I came to you to become your disciple, and this is the gift for you." Li Ruolan handed the half pound of brown sugar in her hand to Aunt Guihua.
"What are you talking about? Why don't you tell me and let me pickle it for you? What else do you want to take? Take it back quickly." Aunt Guihua quickly refused.
But when she found out that Li Ruolan was carrying half a pound of brown sugar, she couldn't say the words of refusal.
It’s about to snow and the weather is freezing cold. If you don’t take good care of yourself during the confinement period, you will definitely suffer from postpartum disease in the future.
Aunt Guihua and her husband loved their daughter very much, so they saved all the eggs laid by the chickens for her during this period. They also wanted to get some brown sugar to nourish their daughter.
However, the brown sugar ticket was a precious thing, and the old couple didn't have one. They just borrowed half a pound of brown sugar from here and there, thinking that they would give it to their daughter when they were not busy in the next two days.
At this time, Li Ruolan came over with half a pound of brown sugar. Aunt Guihua couldn't bring herself to ask for it and refused it.
Li Ruolan smiled and put half a pound of brown sugar into Aunt Guihua's arms: "You must accept this apprenticeship gift. If you don't, I won't let you teach me."
Aunt Guihua said nothing, took the brown sugar, and said, "From now on, I will make all your pickled vegetables. I will pickle them for you every year."
"That's great. I heard that you are really good at pickling sauerkraut. Then I can eat delicious pickled sauerkraut without doing anything." Li Ruolan nodded with satisfaction.
Aunt Guihua not only went home with Li Ruolan to pickle sauerkraut for her, but also gave Li Ruolan a lot of fermented beans and soybean paste that she had previously dried.
Li Ruolan has never eaten soybean paste and doesn't know what it tastes like, but she and Deng Minghao both like it very much. It is fried with peppers and onions, and served with steamed buns, which is especially delicious with rice.
Li Ruolan was not polite either. She held a large basin of fermented beans in one hand and a large basin of fermented soybean paste in the other, and returned home smilingly with Aunt Guihua, the foreign aid.
With the help of Aunt Guihua, Li Ruolan, Deng Minghao and others quickly pickled the vegetables. Aunt Guihua also gave them a lot of precautions.
As she was talking, Qin Wan also heard the sound and came over. She also pulled Aunt Guihua to pickle sauerkraut for her. Knowing that Li Ruolan had given Aunt Guihua half a pound of brown sugar, she also went to get half a pound for Aunt Guihua.
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