Zhou Chenyu and Zhou Wanqiu picked plums quickly, and in less than an hour, their baskets were already full.
Chen Tongsheng's original intention was for them to pick the fruit and then go home on their own, but they felt bad about it. After carrying the heavy baskets to the fruit tree house at the bottom of the mountain, they went back up the mountain to help weed.
The three of them worked together for almost an hour, clearing away the weeds from the hillside and revealing rows of neat orange trees.
After they finished, they sat down to rest halfway up the mountain, looking at the lush pine forest on the opposite hillside. Crows soared and circled in the blue sky, cawing loudly. A gentle breeze blew from the valley not far away, rustling the leaves.
Chen Tongsheng patted his bottom and sat up. "It's getting late. It will take you half an hour to walk back now, and you'll definitely miss lunch at home. Why don't you eat here before you go?"
Zhou Chenyu was too tired to walk, and she would have been more than happy to stay for dinner, but she still glanced at Zhou Wanqiu and asked for her opinion, "Do you want to stay?"
Zhou Wanqiu was delighted to be able to spend a little more time with the person she admired, and silently agreed.
Upon arriving at the fruit tree hut, Chen Tongsheng immediately washed some rice and placed the rice cooker on the stove to cook. He usually ate alone, simply frying meat in a pan and sprinkling a few green vegetables on top for a meal.
Now that there are two more girls, I'm thinking that I should at least cook some good dishes and make them more refined.
Zhou Chenyu and Zhou Wanqiu sat by the basin washing wild vegetables, watching Chen Tongsheng frantically working in the kitchen, a scene reminiscent of their own early cooking days. She couldn't help but laugh, "Last time I praised his roast chicken, but I didn't realize it was his specialty. I was too quick to praise him."
Looking at him like this, Zhou Wanqiu smiled and quietly admired him, "Sister Chenyu, don't you think he's very cute?"
cute?
In her eyes, cooking is a life skill that both men and women should be able to do.
However, in most families of this era, the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker, and it seems quite common for men not to know how to cook.
Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and even if Chen Tongsheng blew up the kitchen, Zhou Wanqiu would still find it adorable.
Zhou Chenyu swallowed back the words of complaint that were about to come out, and instead hinted to her, "He needs help the most right now. If you go and help him, you might leave a good impression."
"Oh, okay." Zhou Wanqiu stood up blankly, rubbed her hands dry, and then realized, "Sister Chenyu, the vegetables are almost washed, shall we go and help?"
Zhou Chenyu raised her delicate eyebrows and teased her, "With the two of you together, would it be appropriate for me to go over there?"
Zhou Wanqiu finally understood the implied meaning of those words, and embarrassed, she retreated, coaxing and pleading with Zhou Chenyu to go to the kitchen together.
Resources are scarce in the mountains. Apart from bamboo shoots and wild vegetables that can be found locally, other things are things that are easy to store, such as dried fish and cured meat.
For convenience, they stewed all the vegetables in one pot. First, they blanched the freshly picked bamboo shoots in boiling water, then added oil to the pot again and mixed the bamboo shoots and cured meat together to make it very fragrant.
All three of them can handle spicy food, so they added a few more dried chilies. After simmering the cured meat over high heat until tender and flavorful, they also threw in the cleaned wild vegetables to cook together.
After picking fruit, weeding, and walking a long way through the mountains, they were so hungry they were almost blind. They put the iron pot on a wooden stand, and the three of them, each holding a large bowl of white rice, sat around the steaming pot, finally getting a hot meal.
The fresh bamboo shoots and wild vegetables still taste as fragrant as ever, but because they are stewed with cured meat, you can also taste a bit of the smoky, burnt flavor from the firewood when you eat them.
The cured pork was left over from last winter. The fatty parts had been dried out, and the whole piece was dry and dehydrated old meat. If you stir-fry this kind of cured pork directly, it will be tough and dry. But after adding spring water and simmering it, the meat will be tender and mushy, and the texture will be somewhat like well-cooked beef brisket.
They all underestimated their appetites, and the pot of food was quickly emptied, but there was still a lot of white rice in the bowls. So they used the remaining sauce to drizzle on the rice. The plump, round white rice grains were coated with the sauce, and the aroma of fresh bamboo shoots and cured meat permeated the rice. Zhou Chenyu even had the illusion of eating rice from a wooden bucket.
After they finished eating and rested for a while, they put the two baskets of plums onto a cart and carried them all the way out of the mountain road back to Zhoujia Village.
"Grandma, I'm back!" Zhou Chenyu carried Li Zi into the yard, and Huang Dou wagged its tail and rushed up to greet her. "Huang Dou, don't block my way."
"Oh my, isn't it heavy?" Li Xiuju saw the full basket of plums and quickly put down what she was doing to help unload the basket. She asked carefully, "Why are you picking so many plums? What will the student do after you've picked them all?"
Zhou Chenyu, thirsty, downed a bowl of tea, wiped the tea stains from her lips, and knew that Li Xiuju would overthink it. She smiled breathlessly and said, "Brother Chen has a plum orchard on the mountaintop. The plums in this basket are less than one-thousandth of the total. Don't worry! Try it, it's very sweet."
"Really?" Li Xiuju looked surprised, her worries lessened considerably. She took a plum, tasted it, and nodded in amazement. "Mmm, it's crisp and sweet, delicious. Here, have one too."
Li Xiuju washed a few plums for Zhou Chenyu and offered them to her. Zhou Chenyu clutched her stomach and shook her head. "Wanqiu and I ate a lot of plums when we were picking them. We even ate at the fruit tree house before we came back. I really can't eat anymore. You eat them."
Li Xiuju earnestly advised, "Tongsheng has treated you so well, bringing you fruit and cooking for you. When he has some free time, you must invite him to your home for a meal; that would be the right thing to do."
"Yes! I understand." Zhou Chenyu scratched his ear, looking at a basket of plums. "These plums probably weigh about twenty pounds. If the three of us eat one pound a day, it will take us seven or eight days. Even if we can eat that many, the plums will all spoil by then. Grandma, what are we going to do with so many plums?"
“Yes.” Li Xiuju reached into the basket, scooped out the plums, and looked at them. “We can’t eat this many ourselves. Why don’t we pick out some of the good ones and send them to Shuqing and Hongmei, and then make plum wine from some of them? We can keep the rest for ourselves. What do you think?”
Zhou Chenyu put his arm around Li Xiuju's arm and said with a light smile, "As expected of an old lady who has eaten more salt than I have eaten rice, you solved my problem in just a few moments."
"Oh dear, my little aunt, you're all sweaty, why don't you go wash up?" Li Xiuju shoved Zhou Chenyu, who grabbed her arm tightly and said playfully, "I won't let go, I'm going to stink you up, I'm going to make you smelly."
Li Xiuju couldn't resist her, and could only laugh helplessly as she was shaken.
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