Chapter 19 Popsicles
The vegetables in the field suffered from the same pest problem as the rice. Because they were planted early, some vegetables, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, had already borne fruit, but the fruit was withered and droopy. Some tomato plants hadn't even survived, their withered vines covered in pests. Sometimes, Zhao Xuan would squat in the vegetable garden, looking at the cucumbers as small as his fingers and the thin, yellow tomatoes, and he could hardly equate them with the bright, plump vegetables he remembered from the supermarket.
The ugly cucumbers were picked by Zhao Xuan and made into dishes first.
However, although these small fruits are not very attractive, they taste quite good. They are crisp and have a unique vegetable fragrance.
Nothing happened for the next few days, but the dog would make a special detour to bring milk to the sheep every morning when they were herding, rain or shine.
Lu An had refused several times, but this little old man, like a child, never listened to reason. Sometimes Lu An and Zhao Xuan would pretend they weren't there, letting him knock on the door for a long time. After the dog herded the sheep away, the two would open the door again and look outside, and they could still find two bottles of milk in the corner by the door.
So when he came to deliver milk again, Zhao Xuan would give him something in return, like a few eggs or a string of dried fish.
Most of the milk that was delivered was boiled and drunk by them. Zhao Xuan added some sugar to a small portion, poured it into small cups, placed a chopstick on top, and put it in the refrigerator to make popsicles.
Besides goat milk popsicles, Zhao Xuan also specially left some mung bean ice made from mung beans. The mung beans were boiled until they burst open, and some sugar was added. After freezing overnight, the bean paste would settle at the bottom. When you bite into it, you get both ice crystals and mung beans. Having one in the afternoon after finishing work is like having your soul fly to heaven.
The incident happened on that scorching hot afternoon.
That morning, the dog unusually didn't come to bring milk; perhaps something had happened. Zhang Xiaohe also didn't go to the fields. Lu An and Zhao Xuan finished their morning patrol of the fields, and after taking a nap in the afternoon, Lu An put on his straw hat and prepared to go to the village entrance to collect some water hyacinths when the sun had cooled down. Zhao Xuan lay lazily on the bed with the electric fan blowing, and after lying there for a long time, he finally got up reluctantly. First, he boiled some water and washed his hair, and then, while waiting for his hair to dry, he swept the yard.
460 was nowhere to be found, and Lu An hadn't returned yet either, but her vigilance had greatly decreased over the past few months. Because she needed to throw away the dust she had swept, she left the gate open. After sweeping the yard, she didn't close it again, but instead took out a mung bean popsicle, and with a long sigh, she sat on the steps and began to nibble on it.
It is said that one of the signs of old age is that one makes a loud "hey" sound when bending over or standing up. Zhao Xuan felt that this was especially true when she was riding a tricycle or getting up from the fields in the past six months. Could this be a sign that she was getting old?
Thinking of this, she suddenly laughed.
Just then, the dog arrived, still dressed in the same outfit: a vest and shorts, carrying an old backpack, with a wilted taro leaf on his head, and holding two bottles of goat milk in his hand.
He saw Zhao Xuan sitting blankly on the steps by the gate, laughing to himself as he ate a chilling popsicle!
The little boy's eyes widened in surprise.
Just then, Zhao Xuan's gaze swept over. Her smile was still on her face, but she was startled by the sudden appearance of the figure, so her extremely unnatural and subtle expression was distorted on her face.
The two stared at each other for a long while.
Finally, Zhao Xuan broke the silence. She waved the half-eaten mung bean shaved ice in her hand and asked softly, "Do you... want some?"
The little boy shook his head instinctively, but then nodded shyly.
There were two popsicles left in the freezer, one with goat milk and one with red bean paste. Zhao Xuan made two portions of each popsicle, one for herself and one for Lu An. According to the distribution, the red bean paste popsicle was for Lu An and the goat milk popsicle was for her.
Her hand lingered between the two popsicles for a few moments before she finally picked up her portion of goat milk ice.
The two, one big and one small, sat back down on the steps, each with an ice pop, enjoying the evening breeze.
Since there were no molds for making popsicles, Zhao Xuan chose a slightly smaller cup to use as a mold. Popsicles are made by filling the cup halfway and then unmolding it, and they usually present a rough cylindrical shape, which, to a slightly picky eye, can even be considered ugly.
Zhao Xuan remembered that before her serious illness, the ice pops made of various fruit slices in the cold drink shop were sold at a staggering price of over thirty yuan, but they were indeed beautifully arranged in the transparent freezer. There were also various flavors of ice cream. Those industrial flavors like chocolate and vanilla that she used to ignore were now out of her reach.
The dog ate intently, its eyes fixed on the ugly block of ice, a smile playing on its lips. The child, on the other hand, would deliberately slow down whenever it ate something delicious, seemingly wanting to eat an ice pop for three days and three nights straight.
"Sister Xuan," the dog suddenly spoke up while they were eating.
"What?" Zhao Xuan asked without turning her head, her popsicle still had a finger-sized piece of ice stuck to her chopsticks.
"Your house has electricity now?"
"Hmm." Isn't that obvious? Otherwise, where would popsicles come from? But... Zhao Xuan suddenly came to his senses. Every time the Yao family visited, it was during the day, and the lights were off. They really probably didn't know that her house had electricity. After all, in the past few years, people should have gotten used to a world without electricity.
"How does it work?" The dog scanned the small house, looking somewhat bewildered, probably because he had never encountered this kind of knowledge before. "Does this village have electricity on its own?" He was young when the great disease broke out, and he only remembered that every household had electricity back then. You just had to press a switch and the electricity would come on. The refrigerator would cool, the washing machine would wash, and the cell phone could make calls... As for how the electricity came about, he didn't know. And after the power outage in the apocalypse, no one would bother to teach him such useless knowledge as how electricity came about.
“The house doesn’t have its own electricity; you have to run it,” Zhao Xuan gestured with his chopsticks. “It uses running water to convert into electricity, and you have to run the wires and the motor yourself.”
"Then how do we lead it?"
"How to pull it... I don't know. It was your brother Lu An who pulled it. You have to ask him..." She paused, then realized, "Even I don't understand how he pulled it. You probably won't understand either."
The dog didn't have the typical childishness of a child, and surprisingly, he nodded in agreement when she said that: "That's true..."
Finally, the child politely thanked Zhao Xuan and then took the two empty baby bottles home.
Zhao Xuan thought it was just a minor incident, but two days later, when Lu An and Zhao Xuan went to inspect the fields, they saw Yao Yuan leading a sheep and resting in the shadows.
The Yao family was more diligent than the two of them, often arriving in the fields before dawn. By the time Lu An and the others arrived, the Yao family's fields were already mostly tended. Today, Zhao Xuan was on her period and feeling a bit lazy. Lu An had told her not to come, but she was acting strangely during her period. So, even though she was slow, her stubbornness got the better of her and she insisted on coming. This made them arrive later than usual to patrol the fields. Lu An thought the Yao family would have already packed up their hoes and gone home by now, but little did he know that Yao Yuan was still there.
This was the first time they had seen Yao Yuan in nearly two months.
He had gained some weight and become a bit fairer. Upon seeing them, he stood up and waved, "Xiao Lu, Xiao Zhao!"
This name sounds strange, and I haven't heard it in a long time.
Lu An waved to him and politely asked, "Brother Yao, how are you feeling?"
Yao Yuan chuckled sheepishly, "I'm all better now. It wasn't a serious injury, it's nothing to worry about." As he spoke, he picked up a sheep from beside him and tugged it towards them, "Xiao Lu, I'm so sorry, I have something I need your help with... but I won't let you do it for nothing! Consider this sheep a token of my gratitude!"
The sheep Yao Yuan was holding was an adult ewe, but not Ajiao. Zhao Xuan had noticed this when the dog was herding sheep; his family had four sheep, three large and one small, with the large one being a ram and the two being ewes.
This gift was truly extravagant, equivalent to giving away a quarter of the Yao family's wealth.
Yao Yuan wanted to ask Lu An for help in setting up electricity.
For Lu An, setting up power lines was already a piece of cake, but the situation was different in Xiaxi Village where the Yao family lived. First of all, the stream they were currently using to generate electricity was a bit far from Xiaxi Village, so it was obviously impractical to set up the turbine generator on that stream. If the power lines were too long, it would increase the maintenance work later on. Therefore, Lu An simply told Yao Yuan that they needed to find a water source with a large drop, as well as the power poles along the way from their house to the water source. Then, they needed to check whether the electrical circuit of the Yao family's current house was intact. The Yao family's house was obviously several years older than theirs, and the wiring in old houses was the most difficult to figure out. If the wiring was badly damaged, the Yao family would have to find a new house.
The workload here is quite large. Lu An explained everything to Yao Yuan. Yao Yuan listened attentively. The advantage of being a programmer is that you have to take things one step at a time. Once he understood, he nodded and said that he would solve these problems first, and then draw up the drawings for the water source, utility poles, and other things, noting the distances and other data, and then ask Lu An about the next steps.
In the end, Lu An did not accept the sheep, even though Zhao Xuan had been coveting the Yao family's sheep for a long time.
They couldn't even feed all the pigs at home, and there was still a large field of crops. Lu An calculated that if they also had to graze a sheep every day, they wouldn't have any free time, so they decided to go all the way and do a good deed.
After that, Yao Yuan frequently came to see Lu An. Sometimes he would bring a stack of blueprints, and sometimes he would ride a tricycle to take Lu An to Xiaxi Village to survey the terrain. The weather was unbearably hot, so he usually came to see Lu An after the hottest part of the afternoon. He never came empty-handed; he would bring some pickled vegetables that Zhang Xiaohe had made herself, including pickled garlic sprouts, pickled cowpeas, and jars of garlic sauce and tomato sauce.
The Yao family's supplies were far less abundant than theirs, and they had even struggled to afford meat until now. Zhao Xuan had already plundered everything usable in Xiaxi Village, so he was very touched when he received the garlic sauce, as making this sauce required a lot of oil.
Because there was nothing left to use in Xiaxi Village, the Yao family went to a neighboring village that Zhao Xuan had never been to before. The conditions of the abandoned villages were about the same: very few of the modern products left by humans were still usable, but the natural products were plentiful. Yao Yuan said that in the village further away, there were melon fields, sugarcane forests, and lotus ponds. The watermelons would be ripe in another month.
Zhao Xuan was itching to hear all this.
Zhao Xuan was very pleased with Zhang Xiaohe's pickled garlic scapes. The cooked long garlic scapes were carefully torn into four pieces, pickled with chili, vinegar and other seasonings, and were sour, spicy and chewy. They were perfect for eating with thick, cold porridge on an evening when one had no appetite, as they were refreshing and appetizing.
Because of her love for food, she had already stir-fried the garlic scapes she grew with salted meat. And because of this jar of pickled garlic scapes, she replanted some garlic sprouts, thinking that she would pickle some herself when they matured, or at the very least pickle a whole jar of garlic sprouts.
Summer vegetables grow incredibly fast. If you water them in the evening, they'll have grown significantly taller by the morning. Vegetables like cucumbers can mature in just over two months, while smaller leafy greens can be harvested in forty to fifty days.
She and Lu Anben originally planted half an acre of vegetable garden, but they kept expanding it. In fact, they couldn't eat that many vegetables. It just so happened that during the off-season, Zhao Xuan thought that since there was nothing else to do, she might as well dry some vegetables and store them for winter.
Dried chili peppers were the first choice, of course. In Zhao Xuan's eyes, this vegetable was particularly precious, just like tomatoes, it had a princess complex. Sometimes it looked thriving and lush, but after a few days it would wither and become covered in pests, dying before Zhao Xuan even had time to react.
The remaining chilies that barely survived were all small and dry. What surprised Lu An was that the green and red chilies were actually the same variety!
"Green peppers are just unripe red peppers, don't you understand?" In the vegetable garden, as the two of them, wearing straw hats and sticking their butts out, stared at the peppers, Zhao Xuan asked Lu An this question.
Lu An was bewildered; a corner of his worldview had collapsed: "Then why sell them in two piles? And at different prices?"
"Probably to prevent you people from having your worldviews shattered," Zhao Xuan said, plucking a small red chili pepper, putting it in his mouth and biting off a bit of the tip. His expression instantly changed. "You know what, this little thing may be ugly, but it's actually quite spicy!"
Zhao Xuan would sometimes pick the green peppers to stir-fry with meat dishes, and the rest would be used to make dried chili peppers once they turned red.
She's very good at making dried chili peppers. Her grandmother used to make them often when she was little, and she would help her. The memory is still vivid in her mind.
Chili peppers can be made into many foods, such as dried chili peppers, chili powder, and chili sauce. If stored properly, they can often last for more than half a year.
Since the crops don't need any care right now, Lu An took over most of the remaining farm work, giving Zhao Xuan plenty of time to make dried vegetables.
Pick the bright red chili peppers with their caps on, being careful not to break the caps while washing them. Then put the intact peppers into a clean pot to simmer or boil.
Grandma always told me that the pot must be free of oil, otherwise insects would grow. You also need to be careful when boiling the chilies to avoid breaking them. After they cool, you can lay them out on bamboo strips to dry. If the sun is too strong, they'll be dry in a few days. When you squeeze them, they'll crack open like potato chips, releasing a strong, spicy flavor.
Besides dried chili peppers, Zhao Xuan also dried some green beans and bok choy. There are many ways to preserve vegetables—drying, pickling, and soaking—each with its own delicious flavor, but Zhao Xuan still prefers drying vegetables. They can be stored for a long time, taste good, and are safe. She doesn't often make soaked foods; it seems that middle-aged mothers are more skilled at that. Zhao Xuan worries that she might make mistakes in some steps, turning the food into something toxic, like accidentally causing blindness from excessive methanol during brewing.
Therefore, dried food is better, as you can easily tell whether it has spoiled or not.
When there is work to do, people usually ignore other things around them. For example, when Zhao Xuan filled another barrel of kerosene with dried chili peppers, she did not notice that Lu An had left home to survey the terrain with Yao Yuan.
Only on occasional sleepless nights would Lu An mention the Yao family getting electricity. He said the houses in Xiaxi Village were all too dilapidated, and the small building the Yao family lived in was the best they could be, but many of the wires were still old. Also, Yao Yuan had found a water source relatively close to their house, located above a fishpond. The flow wasn't very strong, and it might even dry up in winter, so Yao Yuan and Gougou spent a long time clearing that water source. Next came determining where to install the power lines and checking for aging wires in the house. Lu An couldn't be present for everything, so he taught Yao Yuan some things, and sometimes Gougou would listen, though whether he understood was unknown.
The chirping of insects was loud and powerful on a summer night. Lu An tightened the screen window, then climbed into bed and carefully closed the mosquito net. A gentle breeze blew in, carrying damp moisture.
Even in the heat, the nights in the countryside are quite cool. If the house is well-ventilated, you don't even need a fan, and you might even need a thin blanket at night.
Zhao Xuan loved summer days like this. After taking a bath and shedding the stickiness, she lay on the cool bamboo mat, feeling like a freshly washed and dried towel, cool and comfortable inside and out. Just then, Lu An climbed into the mosquito net and gently fanned her with a palm-leaf fan.
Zhao Xuan asked, "You didn't tell Brother Yao and the others that we were hiding a turbine generator, did you?"
Lu An shook his head: "I remember there's still one left in that shop in Taiping Town. They should go to town to get it."
Zhao Xuan immediately perked up: "They're going to Taiping Town, should we go too?"
"You want to go?"
"I'll take some plastic sheeting, winter clothes, quilts, and stuff like that... We need to put up a shed for the vegetable garden in winter, otherwise the vegetables will freeze to death."
"That's fine, it'll be safer if we go together."
“Lu’an, let me tell you, I’m really good at riding tricycles now. This time I can ride a big tricycle. I’ll bring a piece of oilcloth with me. You see, we’re almost out of paper. If we can find some paper, we’ll have a lot more to carry.”
Lu An smiled and said, "Are you planning to move the entire Taiping Town out of its way?"
"If you can get your hands on a big pickup truck, I can move the whole place out of there."
"Then I guess I can't do it."
Zhao Xuan chuckled: "How can a man say he can't do it?!"
"Why don't you try me out and see if I'm okay?"
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