Chapter 92 Drying Persimmon Cakes
In the living room, Yang Jinsheng was exhausted. He panted and said, "Mom, is there any food at home? Xiaobai and I didn't eat lunch."
"Yes, Mom left some food for you. I'm going to heat it up for you now." Sun Erni hurried back to the kitchen to heat up the food.
After a while, Jiang Xinbai also quietly retreated from the room, "I'm so hungry."
"Eat quickly, eat quickly, it's just been heated up. Xiaobao has fallen asleep?" Sun Erni handed over a pair of chopsticks.
"Well, I went to sleep after eating."
"This kid just wants to drink milk." Sun Erni said with a smile. The more she looked at her eldest grandson, the more she liked him.
"By the way, what did you bring back this time?" Sun Erni asked, pointing to the bag on the ground.
"Rattan pear, chestnut, persimmon, and walnut. Oh, and I have to ask my third brother if this is a walnut." After swallowing the last bite of rice, Yang Jinsheng stood up and prepared to take a few walnuts to the cannery to ask.
"What does it look like? Let me see it?" Sun Erni asked her youngest son.
"It's in the bag, you can see for yourself! Xiaobai and I have both got our hands black just from making these things." Yang Jinsheng helplessly stretched out his hands to show his mother.
"I thought you were starving, so you ate without washing your hands. Huh? It looks like a walnut! Let me try it..."
"Mom, don't eat it..." Yang Jinsheng stretched out his hand and grabbed it, but his movements were still not as fast as Sun Erni. She chewed the fresh walnuts in her mouth and nodded, "Mm, it's sweet and has a milky flavor. It's delicious."
"Mom, spit it out quickly. We don't know if you ate it." Jiang Xinbai was also frightened. She immediately stepped forward and prepared to pat her mother-in-law on the back to induce her to vomit.
Sun Erni dodged and said with a smile: "It's okay, something so delicious shouldn't be poisonous."
Yang Jinsheng was speechless. What tastes good is not poisonous? Who said that?
Jiang Xinbai hesitated for a moment and asked, "Mom, did you taste it? Is it walnut?"
Sun Erni shook her head and said, "It tastes different from the one your third brother brought. I don't know why, but it's delicious." As she said that, she wanted to stuff the remaining walnut kernels into her mouth. This time, Yang Jinsheng noticed it and snatched it away.
"Mom, please let me live a few more years. You are so old, why do you still do things so irritatingly? What if you get sick from eating?" Yang Jinsheng started glaring at Sun Erni as he spoke. He really made people worry.
Sun Erni felt a little guilty, so she touched her nose and explained, "It shouldn't be poisonous. At most it will just cause diarrhea."
"Forget it, I won't talk to you anymore. I'm going to go find my third brother." After saying that, Yang Jinsheng put a few walnuts in his pocket and ran downstairs.
Jiang Xinbai was relieved to see that her mother-in-law was fine for the time being. She turned around and looked around, and asked curiously, "Mom, why don't I see my eldest brother and his wife? Are they all out playing?"
Sun Erni shook her head after hearing Jiang Xinbai's question. "Your eldest brother and his wife took the two younger ones to change their names and went shopping. As for your second brother, I don't know what he was doing. He was so mysterious and didn't come back for lunch."
"Oh," Jiang Xinbai asked casually, and then followed her mother-in-law to sort out the things in the bag.
"This is chestnut, it looks small but tastes pretty good. It's best to use it to make sugar-roasted chestnuts." Sun Erni said with a smile. In the past, there were people selling sugar-roasted chestnuts on the street, and the children in her family heard it and clamored to buy them. She couldn't resist and bought them half a pound, and it tasted really good.
"That should be the case. I haven't eaten it either." Although Jiang Xinbai had eaten chestnuts before, he usually steamed them with rice or boiled them in water. It was impossible for him to be so luxurious as to stir-fry them with sugar.
"Mom, I'm going to dry these persimmons in the sun to make dried persimmon cakes. Can I do that at home?" If she were at her parents' house, she wouldn't have to ask this question. After all, no one would be able to see them if they were just put in the backyard. But it's not possible here. Not to mention drying persimmon cakes, even if you bought a new pair of underwear, people would know immediately because you have to dry them out in the sun and can't hide them.
"Oh, you want to dry persimmon cakes. Here, let me think about where to dry them." Originally, it would be best to put a dustpan on the first floor, but there are people coming and going here, and you can't say anything if someone takes one. And there are so many children, the persimmon cakes will probably be eaten up before they are dried.
"Or you can just dry the sun outside your room window. There's a hook there, but you're just afraid of it falling down." There was an open space on the side of Jiang Xinbai's room, so there was plenty of sunlight.
"It's okay if it falls down, as long as no one is hit. Okay, let's just leave it there."
"This is the bad thing about building, there's not even a place to dry things." Sun Erni couldn't help but complain. As she spoke, she thought of the small bungalow her eldest son had been allocated. Although it was shared by two families, it also had a yard, which was enough for drying things on a daily basis. If one was more diligent, one could even grow some vegetables or something, which would save money again.
Jiang Xinbai just smiled. Nowadays everyone wants to live in an apartment building. Her mother-in-law was just talking. She would be unhappy if she really had to live in a bungalow.
"Mom, I'll get you some of these rattan pears. Wait until they're soft before eating them." Jiang Xinbai picked out some good-looking ones and pointed at them and said to her mother-in-law.
Sun Erni was also an understanding person. She smiled and agreed, "It's ok to give me the rattan pear, but if you want to share the chestnuts with everyone at home, I'll pay for them."
"Mom, what you said is..."
Sun Erni waved her hand, "You all should eat together, so you can be more clear about the budget."
Jiang Xinbai was very satisfied with her mother-in-law's understanding, and said with a smile: "Mom, I'm going to give two kilograms of these chestnuts to my second sister, and two kilograms to my third brother, and the rest can be kept at home. You can decide on the money." She was a worldly person, and since her mother-in-law said she would give, she would not pretend to be generous and say no. Just like her mother-in-law said, the three brothers were eating together, and they still had to settle the accounts.
"That's it. How do you make persimmon cake? I'll help you." Sun Erni said as she looked at half a bag of persimmons. It was her first time making persimmon cake.
"Okay, let's do it while Xiaobao is sleeping. There is still sunshine." Jiang Xinbai did what he said. He first instructed his mother-in-law to wash the persimmons one by one, and then peel them while leaving the stalks on.
"Mom, why don't you just throw away this skin? There's no place to dry it."
Sun Erni asked curiously, "I was planning to throw it away, what? Do you still need it?"
"I was originally planning to dry the persimmon peels to cover the frost, but I thought better of it." In the past, Jiangxinbai would keep the persimmon peels when drying persimmon cakes. When the persimmons were ready, they would stack the skins on top of the persimmons. After seven or eight days, frost would appear and they would taste better.
"That's unnecessary. There's no place to dry them anyway." Sun Erni loosened her grip and poured the persimmon peels directly into the trash can.
"Mom, bring me the string. I'll hang up the persimmons." Jiang Xinbai made two loops with the string, then put it around the handle of the persimmon and hung them up. The two of them moved quickly and hung up all the persimmons in a short while. Then they carefully hung them by the window to bask in the sun.
"Mom, mom, we're back..." Suddenly, Yang Jinwei's excited voice came from outside the door, causing Sun Erni's hand that was hanging persimmons to tremble, and she almost shook the bunch of persimmons off.
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