Chapter 212: Dividing Zongzi
There are sweet and salty rice dumplings. The sweet ones are made with reeds filled with glutinous rice, candied dates, peanuts, and sugar, or they can be simply plain and eaten after being cooked.
The salty ones are stuffed with pork, and there are also the ones with salted egg yolk.
Xia Juanjuan packed some of both.
The salted duck eggs were pickled two months ago. I pickled about forty or fifty of them, enough to fill two clay pots. This time I took out twenty of them to make rice dumplings.
If you put one egg yolk in one zongzi, you can make twenty of them.
The egg white is saltier and not as delicious as the oily yolk, but it can’t be wasted, so I just chop it up and mix it in, which just happens to save you from having to add salt.
The other is the pork belly with fat and lean meat. It is marinated first, then the pork skin is smeared with soy sauce and steamed for a while before wrapping the dumplings. The fat spreads through the glutinous rice and after it is cooked, it is very delicious. This one also wraps about ten dumplings.
The sweet ones are filled with sugar-soaked dates, peanuts, etc., and there are about thirty of them in a pack.
Lin Yuru felt so distressed just by looking at the huge bowl of glutinous rice being used.
"You packed so much at once, how can we finish it at home? It will go bad soon."
Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "We can't eat much at home, but if we give some away, we won't be able to eat much at home."
As for Shen Wanxue and Yang Qiushi, they should give at least one of each, sweet and salty, right? That means each of them should get four or five.
However, Xia Juanjuan did not give them all at once, as it would be too eye-catching if they could not finish them all at once.
Therefore, we reserved their portions, put them in the space, and sent two to them the next day.
And there is Yan Haotian.
Yan Haotian's secondment period is almost over, and he has to return to the southern military region. He was busy with handover and other matters during this period, so he did not come back during the Duanwu period.
Xia Shuangshan rode Xia Juanjuan's bicycle to deliver the rice dumplings to the county town. He had delivered more than ten of them.
When the busy farming season began, Xia Shuangshan also helped Xia Juanjuan with her work points, so he moved here temporarily. Xia Juanjuan and Lin Yuru took care of all the meals.
Li Jie and Zhou Qiuhe had three children at home. Dongbao was over two years old and could eat. Zhou Qiuhe was pregnant again, so she sent five or six children over.
There are also dozens of villages with relatively good relationships.
Xia Juanjuan also sent two or three to Secretary Zhao's family, Aunt Wu's family, and each family so that they could have a taste.
Li Zhan's retired comrades who came from far away to help with the wheat harvesting in the fields had a hearty lunch for one of them, and when they returned in the evening, they each had three or four snacks stuffed into the cloth bags they brought with them.
By this calculation, there are only a dozen or so left at home, right?
Lin Yuru couldn't help but laugh and said, "Oh, if you don't count it, you won't know. Once you count it, it's true. Sixty is not too many!"
Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "Isn't that right?"
Xia Juanjuan cooked the remaining dozen or so for three meals. Xiaowen, Xiaowu and Beibei didn't eat much, so they shared two. Lin Yuru, Xia Shuangshan and Xia Juanjuan each had one.
Yanyan, Yeye and Yaoyao are more than six months old and can sit up steadily. But it is too early to eat zongzi, so they can only watch the adults and brothers and sisters eat it, which makes them anxious.
If it weren't for the slow speed of postal parcels, she would have planned to send some to Li Zhan. But now she had no choice but to give up.
However, the gifts were for her own family, but when sending to Secretary Zhao's home or Aunt Wu's, Xia Juanjuan did not send any meat, but only some bags filled with dates and some filled with salted egg yolks.
Li Jie only dared to send one meat dumpling, one with three salted egg yolks, and two sweet ones.
Life in Qingshui Village was actually much better than in other communes, and work points were worth quite a bit, but people couldn't afford meat on a regular basis, and they only dared to buy a pound or half a pound of meat during festivals.
The piece of meat that Xia Juanjuan wrapped in the rice dumpling was quite large. It would be fine if her family ate it, but if Xia Juanjuan gave it to other people, they must be good people who would not be jealous of her family's life. But if she accidentally let it slip and other families in the village heard it, that would be troublesome.
Despite this, Xia Juanjuan's gift of rice dumplings still caused quite a stir in the village.
As a result, Li Qiang, Wang Guixiang and Liu Lan were unhappy because they didn’t get to eat the rice dumplings.
Although they are still using Lizhan's monthly allowance of five yuan, Xia Juanjuan sent rice dumplings to outsiders without even asking her own second brother and mother-in-law. It's so infuriating!
Wang Guixiang urged Liu Lan to go and ask for it.
Liu Lan is now living under someone else's roof, and has to live under the supervision of her second son and his wife.
But she is not stupid.
Xia Juanjuan has been stubborn, vicious and sinister since she got married. Last time, someone 'pushed' her to the ground when no one was around, and she had back pain for several days!
Now, Li Zhan is not at home, so she has to go to Xia Juanjuan to make trouble for a rice dumpling?
Not to mention that Xia Juanjuan might splash slop on her directly, even if she really came, how could she eat it?
Anyone who does such a thankless task is a fool.
Therefore, Liu Lan quickly blocked the question and said, "How can I, a mother-in-law, ask my daughter-in-law for rice dumplings with a stern face? If things get awkward, you all know that your fourth brother is a man who forgets his mother after marrying a wife. What if Zhan'er is unhappy and stops giving me the five yuan monthly allowance? Do you think it's worth it just for a rice dumpling?"
Wang Guixiang and Li Qiang were also coveting the zongzi after hearing this - they heard from the villagers that Xia Juanjuan's zongzi had a whole salted duck egg inside it! There were also zongzi filled with candied dates and peanuts, which were all filled with sugar for free, and were so sweet and delicious! - but they were also really afraid of provoking Li Zhan again and losing the five yuan monthly income.
Five yuan! How many rice dumplings can I buy with that?
Therefore, neither of them dared to force Liu Lan to go anymore.
Wang Guixiang's son and daughter, Li Sheng and Li Jiaojiao, both cried and made a fuss and refused to obey.
Lisheng is ten years old this year, and Li Jiaojiao is eight years old. It is time for them to go to school, but Li Qiang and Wang Guixiang were stingy with the money, so they didn't send them.
The two had been badly behaved since childhood, and now they didn't go to school to learn any moral principles, so they became little bullies that other children in the village were afraid of. Over time, other children would run away when they saw them and would not play with them.
Li Sheng was so angry that he threw the bowl on the table: "No! I must eat zongzi today! I want to eat zongzi!"
Li Jiaojiao also squatted on the ground and cried: "Uncle San's Yingying and Huanhuan both ate two zongzi! One with meat and one with egg yolk! Why can't I have any!"
Wang Guixiang was also angry. She heard that six were given to Zhou Qiuhe's family!
They are all brothers and sisters-in-law, why should they be given to the third brother's family and not to hers?