Chapter 18: Scrambled Eggs with Toona Shoots
These are a few old Chinese toon trees. New branches have grown next to them, and on them grow the treasure wild vegetable of this season - toon buds.
Clusters of red toon buds are shiny, and you can smell their unique fragrance when you get close.
This is the same as Houttuynia cordata. People who like it love it very much, but people who don’t like it can’t eat it at all.
There is no rush to pick the toon buds; the most urgent thing is to find a pine tree.
But with these toon trees here, it’s not difficult to find pine trees.
Toona sinensis likes sunlight, while pine trees like shade but mostly grow in dry land.
Walking north along the Chinese toon trees, I saw a small patch of pine trees after just five minutes. The seven or eight large ones looked to be more than thirty or forty years old and could be harvested for oil, but most of them were small trees only a dozen years old.
Although the quantity did not meet expectations, it was enough for a short period of time.
The weather has been getting warmer recently, which is a good time to cut oil.
Zhao Yeqing first used a hatchet to carefully cut off the dark brown old bark on the outside. She moved slowly, trying not to damage the wood layer inside.
Cutting pine oil will not harm the trees themselves. As long as you don't grab the pine oil from a tree every year, it won't be a big problem.
Scrape off a circle of about 25 cm wide from the outer layer of old bark, chisel and hammer a vertical groove in the middle, make a slit at the bottom of the groove, and insert the plastic sheet.
Two holes are made in the tree trunk under the plastic sheet, two wooden sticks are inserted, and the bamboo tube is placed on the wooden sticks to catch the pine oil.
With the vertical groove above as the midpoint, carve a groove on each side to form a V shape, and a tree is now ready.
One pine cutter she had seen could cut nearly three hundred trees a day.
Zhao Yeqing was busy until three o'clock in the afternoon, a full three hours, before he finished working on the eight trees.
She could hardly lift her arms.
After checking each bamboo tube one by one to make sure it was placed steadily, Zhao Yeqing discovered that there was already some oil in the bamboo tube of the first tree. He was so surprised that his eyes widened slightly and the corners of his mouth rose.
Although she had seen other pine cutters cutting oil, it was still magical because she cut it herself.
We have to get home before it gets dark.
Don't forget to pick a handful of toon buds on the way.
The buds of the Chinese toon tree can only be eaten for a short period of time each year. After a few days, the young leaves will become old.
The tung buds from old tung trees have a strong aroma and bright color, and can be considered top quality.
Zhao Yeqing walked and pulled weeds all the way, and it was already past four in the afternoon when he returned home.
When I opened the door, I found the musk deer walking slowly in the yard. If you look closely, you can still see something unnatural about its feet.
Zhao Yeqing let out a soft "ah".
"Little thing, you can walk now~"
Lin Musk was no longer afraid of Zhao Yeqing and even took a few steps towards her when she saw her come back.
Zhao Yeqing grabbed a handful of red prickly ash from his backpack and handed it over.
The musk deer moved its nose and used her hand to roll all the thorn bubbles on the palm of its hand into its mouth.
Zhao Yeqing touched its head and said, "When your leg is healed, I will let you go home."
Now that the tools are put away, it's time to cook.
Steam the rice first. Since she eats alone and can’t use electricity, she always steams rice in a bowl. She plans to steam two bowls today.
Before frying, the toon buds need to be blanched in water to remove the nitrite and oxalic acid in them. The red toon buds will turn green after blanching.
Beat two eggs from the morning, add the chopped toon buds, add some salt and mix well.
Heat a large amount of oil in a pan, beat the eggs into the oil when it is hot, and fry the egg crisps with a sizzling sound. When both sides are fried until crispy, you can serve.
There are still a lot of bamboo shoots left from yesterday. I peeled off the shells of all of them and cut half of them to make soup.
She planned to make the rest into pickled bamboo shoots later.
After a dish and a soup were served, Zhao Yeqing took out his mobile phone and opened a variety show he had downloaded earlier, watching it while eating.
The unique aroma of the toon buds will whet your appetite. When you take a bite, you will find the tender egg inside wrapped with the crispy toon buds, and the crispy egg fried on the outside, which makes the taste rich and progressive.
When eating, what could be more joyful than having delicious food and a variety show to go with it?
After finishing two bowls of rice and drinking a bowl of spring bamboo shoot soup, Zhao Yeqing burped in satisfaction and exited the variety show.
Watch it sparingly, it will be gone when you finish it.
After cleaning up the dishes, I went to water the two vegetable plots outside. If I was in a hurry to go out in the morning, I could water them after the sun went down. However, tomatoes are delicate and do not adapt to watering at night, so they are easily frozen. But it is okay to do it occasionally.
The bamboo shoots that I just peeled need to be handled properly now, otherwise they will oxidize tomorrow.
She especially likes to eat sour bamboo shoots. Adding a handful of sour bamboo shoots to fried meat and fried rice is so delicious that it makes people salivate.
When I was a child, I watched a cartoon about cooking. The protagonist made a pot of sour plum fried rice for an official who had no appetite. The official was so greedy that she pestered her grandmother to make it for her.
There were no sour plums at home, so grandma took out some pickled bamboo shoots and said, "Use this instead, and she will buy us sour plums when we get down the mountain."
Her grandmother made her sour bamboo shoots fried rice, but she never treated her perfunctorily. A few days later, she went down the mountain to buy her plums to make fried rice, but she still thought the original sour bamboo shoots fried rice tasted better.
Sour bamboo shoots are very easy to make. After washing the bamboo shoots, cut off the old ones near the roots. Break the bamboo shoots into two halves and then cut them in the middle to make large pieces.
Find a glass jar, wash it clean, make sure there is not a drop of oil in it, put the bamboo shoots in, fill it with spring water and you're done.
The sour bamboo shoots made with mountain spring water are the most fragrant.
Cover the glass jar and place it next to the jar of fern.
The hotter the weather, the faster the sour bamboo shoots ferment. At the current temperature, they can be eaten in more than a month. If you want a stronger flavor, you can soak them for a whole year.
Clean the kitchen, chop up the bamboo shoots and egg shells and throw them into the compost bin.
I glanced at the time, it was half past six.
She planned to go to bed now and get up in the middle of the night to look after the vegetable garden.
In this way, I managed the vegetable garden in the morning and afternoon, slept in the evening, and got up in the middle of the night. Five days passed.
A wild boar came once during the journey, but before it got close to the vegetable garden, it was scared away by Zhao Yeqing knocking on the stainless steel basin.
As soon as the sun rose that day, Zhao Yeqing packed up his things, grabbed a small piece of bread and prepared to go out to get the pine oil back.
The musk deer was already able to jump up and down in the yard. Seeing that there was nothing wrong with the musk deer, she opened the gate and wanted to let it out.
In fact, Lin Musk had recovered well in the past two days and could have jumped out by himself, but he probably felt that Zhao Yeqing was not a threat so he did not leave.
Now seeing her open the door, Lin Musk looked at her and then jumped out.
When Zhao Yeqing saw the musk deer turned its head back before entering the woods, he felt that it was really smart. He waved at it at the door and watched the musk deer enter the woods before locking the gate and leaving.
The sky is a little gray today, it might rain.
Zhao Yeqing quickened her pace and when she reached the toon tree, she plucked all the few toon buds on it. This should be the last toon buds she would eat this year.
The bamboo tubes on each pine tree were filled to the brim with pine oil, some of which even flowed out.
One of the branches supporting the bamboo tube broke because it couldn't bear the weight, and the bamboo tube fell to the ground. Fortunately, the temperature was low in the morning and the pine oil had solidified into a white solid, so it could still be picked up.
After putting all the pine oil into a bucket, she estimated that it weighed more than thirty pounds, and was preparing to go home satisfied.
Suddenly I noticed that the pine tree that had knocked over the bamboo tube had just had its thick trunk of a cypress tree next to it completely destroyed.
A big hole was dug out in the tree trunk.
Zhao Yeqing grabbed the bucket and ran home without hesitation.
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