Magistrate Tang left without having lunch, leaving the village chief, clan head, and elders of Lin Village feeling very disappointed.
Only Liu breathed a huge sigh of relief!
The sweet potatoes at home were saved!
Liu was really distressed about her family's food supplies. One day a county magistrate would come, the next day an eunuch from the palace would come, and a dozen or so people would eat their fill. Several baskets of sweet potatoes wouldn't be enough for those big men! And when they left, they would take several baskets with them!
Although their family received rewards from the emperor that were many times more than what they gave away, they were carrying the emperor's edict. If they failed to meet the emperor's expectations, would the thing around their necks still be safely on their necks?
Besides, who would complain about having too much grain? They're only afraid of not having enough to eat. And their grain was all saved through her careful budgeting; her family ate wild vegetables every day, and now they had to give their saved grain to others? How could Liu Shi be willing to do that?
Village Chief Lin went to see off Magistrate Tang. The clan elders and clan heads left earnest instructions for Yue Jiuyue's family to take good care of the sweet potatoes. After receiving repeated assurances from Yue Jiuyue's family, they left one by one, supported by their children and grandchildren.
Yue Jiuyue breathed a sigh of relief.
—Finally, I can go back to my cold bed!
No, she had to add more firewood to the stove and she needed to sleep in a warm bed.
Yue Jiuyue returned to her room, threw a few pieces of wood into the stove, and then eagerly crawled into the quilt she had been longing for.
The fire hasn't been lit yet, it's a bit cold...
"Mom, what are we going to do with these dried sweet potatoes? Are we going to grind them into flour and make porridge? Or are we going to make cornbread?"
Yue Jiuyue had just crawled into bed, and before she could even warm the bed with her righteous energy, Liu Shi came and knocked on the door.
"Go grind the flour first, and I'll teach you when you come back."
Yue Jiuyue dismissed Liu Shi with a single sentence.
It was only because of Magistrate Tang's arrival today that Liu suddenly remembered that her family had a lot of dried sweet potatoes, which were cut from the sweet potatoes that were damaged when digging them up.
Those sweet potatoes that were dug up badly would become hard and dry on the cut surface over time. Even if you boiled them in water, they would still be hard. They were good for chewing.
Yue Jiuyue discovered it. She didn't want to get involved, but it concerned whether her teeth could stay with her until she was old, and whether she would drink thin soup or eat dry food in the years to come. So she couldn't help but say something, and then she saved up two cloth bags of dried sweet potatoes.
This shows just how terrible the three Lin brothers' sweet potato digging skills were back then!
Sweet potato flour, like corn flour, can be made into steamed buns, dumplings, and so on, but Yue Jiuyue is most familiar with making pancakes.
That's right, there were no pancakes in this era, let alone the tools for making pancakes—grindboard, scraper, pancake rake, and oil pan.
The griddle is made of cast iron and is round. The griddle used in ordinary households is about 70 centimeters in diameter, slightly convex in the center, with three legs. It is supported by bricks and heated by firewood underneath, on which pancakes can be made.
A pancake rake is a handheld tool used to spread cornmeal batter. It is a wooden board with an arched top and a flat bottom, and has a short handle for both scooping and pressing. After scooping the batter onto a hot griddle with a spoon, the rake is used to spread it thinly on the griddle surface.
The scraper, similar to a pancake rake, has no short handle. After the batter is spread on the griddle, it is used to scrape the surface of the newly formed pancake repeatedly with even force. The thickness of the pancake is related to the number of scrapings.
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