A villager from Lotus Village said, "Don't worry, we'll feed your donkey."
The villagers said, "My family has stored half a basket of grass roots, which we will use to feed your donkey later."
After the group had traveled for another two days, a food crisis began to emerge. In three villages, some families ran out of food, and the remaining families would not be able to last more than a few days with their stored grain.
The Chen family has run out of fern root noodles and black flour.
In the evening, the rest time was brought forward because everyone was going to the wilderness to find food at the foot of the mountain. If it was confirmed that it was safe to go up the mountain, they would also go up to find food.
Chen Kai and Xiao Tian also went up the mountain. Since they couldn't think of a solution, they had to go out and help.
Xiao Bao took a small hoe and rummaged through the grass for a while. Finding nothing, he went to look for some low bushes and shrubs. After rummaging around, he finally found a dry Smilax glabra vine. He then followed the vine to the bottom and started digging.
After digging for a very long time, I finally managed to dig up a few pieces of Smilax glabra.
Seeing that the Smilax glabra still had moisture, he was overjoyed; he had finally found some food for his friend.
Chen Kai found two elm trees in the mountains. He dragged his machete and laboriously climbed up one of the elm trees. After taking a good position, he chopped at the trunk. It was a bit strenuous, but he kept chopping.
They can collect elm bark to make elm bark noodles.
Daya was terrified when she discovered that her adorable little uncle had actually climbed up a tree and was struggling to chop it with a wood-chopping knife.
She quickly ran over and took his knife away. How could he possibly play with something so dangerous?
Daya angrily looked around and asked, "Who gave this knife to my uncle?!"
At the same time, a boy's anxious voice came from not far away: "Where's my knife? Where's my wood-chopping knife? Has anyone seen my wood-chopping knife? It was just here. Who took the wrong one? Give it back to me! Brother, please help me find my knife!"
A boy next to her pointed to the knife in Da Ya's hand and said with a strange expression, "It's over there."
Upon seeing it, the boy recognized it as his knife and happily ran over.
"Da Ya, this knife is mine. Can you give it back to me? Thank you."
Da Ya retorted angrily, "Thank me my ass! If you leave the knife lying around again, see how I deal with you!"
The boy took the knife with a bewildered look on his face. What was going on? How had his knife offended her?
After getting the knife, he quickly ran away. Although he didn't know what had happened, he figured it was best to leave first.
Chen Kai, who was being carried down, laughed and said, "Da Ya, don't be angry anymore. Okay, I won't play with the knife anymore. Can you help me call an adult to come and cut down the trunks of these two elm trees?"
Daya patted her uncle's soft hair and said dejectedly, "Fine!"
How come she can't stay angry after her uncle tries to persuade her? She's really defeated by him.
A short while later, Old Chen the eldest and Old Chen the fourth came over carrying axes.
Boss Chen: "Little brother, are we going to cut their branches?"
Chen Kai: "Yes, just cut the branches, don't cut the main trunk. Thank you for your hard work, Big Brother and Fourth Brother."
Old Chen grinned and said, "What's so hard about this? It's just cutting down trees."
When Chen Laoda and Chen Laosi saw the two elm trees, they were reminded of elm seed rice, elm seed porridge, elm seed cakes, and elm seed steamed buns...
They figured their younger brother probably wanted to eat these things too.
Elm bark can be used to make elm bark noodles.
However, you can't tear off the bark from the main trunk of the elm tree. After all, "people need face and trees need bark," and if you tear off the bark from the trunk, the elm tree will die the following year.
Despite the current severe drought, he still hopes that the two elm trees will continue to produce elm seeds next year.
After the tree trunks were cut down, Zhou Zhu ordered people to carry them back first, and then asked his second brother to lead people to peel off the bark from the elm trees.
Elm bark is very thick and difficult to peel, but his second brother was a carpenter and had the tools, making it much easier for him.
After dinner, the Chen family lit several bonfires for lighting and busied themselves processing the elm bark.
The elm bark that can be used to make elm bark noodles does not refer to all tree bark.
The outer layer of elm bark is an old bark that is too hard to eat; even if you wanted to, you couldn't chew it.
Inside, there is a thicker, softer layer of skin; this inner layer is the only useful part.
After peeling off the inner bark, it needs to be dried. However, since the bark has long since died, it saves them the trouble of drying it.
Zhou and his group peeled off the inner skin, and Daya and the others helped cut the peeled inner skin into small pieces.
It's getting late, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow to finish the remaining tasks.
The next morning, as they set off, Zhou and his family moved the stone mortar onto the empty donkey cart and began grinding elm bark as they traveled.
The elm bark pieces we collected last night were meant to be ground into flour using a stone mill, but they didn't have one, so we had to grind them slowly by hand using a stone mortar and pestle.
Chen Laosi was the one grinding the elm bark. He had been grinding for almost half an hour and had only managed to grind off a tiny bit.
"This is really exhausting! The pestle has turned red."
The bark of elm trees turns red when ground. Because it is sticky, it is very troublesome to clean. The pestle turns red as you pound it. After grinding, you have to carefully scrape, clean and collect it.
A man riding in their donkey cart said, "Let me help you grind it a few times, you can rest. Hey, when my family needs to grind tree bark, we can borrow your stone mortar."
Chen Laosi: "Good!"
Old Chen rotated his wrist until his hand ached.
"Old Chen, what kind of tree bark is this? It looks familiar."
“Elm bark, look at it. When you grind this bark into powder, it becomes sticky. You can mix it with other wild vegetables to make wild vegetable dumplings, or you can cook it directly with wild vegetables into a paste, which is also edible.”
My family consulted a doctor, and they said elm bark is not poisonous and can be eaten.
"Elm seeds are edible, so elm bark is definitely not poisonous; we just haven't tried eating it before."
"This stuff is great! I'm out of glutinous flour at home, so I can't even make wild vegetable dumplings."
"My family is the same; we only have enough food for a few meals."
"Let's go find an elm tree during our break."
"Together."
In fact, real elm bark flour is just flour-like, and its main function is not to fill the stomach, but to act as an edible glue to bind the dough. It can easily knead mixed grains with little gluten into dough, roll them into flatbread, and even make rare delicacies such as steamed buns, dumplings, and hand-pulled noodles.
From morning till night, the Chen family took turns grinding elm bark, but they only managed to get two bowls of elm bark flour.
Now their family only eats one meal a day, and food is only distributed at night. The rest of the time they eat grass roots to fill their stomachs.
During the break, Zhou took out the elm bark flour and used a winnowing basket to filter out the impurities.
After elm bark is ground into flour, it cannot be eaten immediately because elm bark contains a lot of fiber and coarse fiber, which is difficult to digest. It needs to be filtered out with a sieve to get fine elm bark flour.
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