145, snacks
145, snacks
When the sun sets and the afterglow casts its rays over their yard, dinner is already ready.
The staple food they ate that day was noodles. They were hand-rolled noodles, boiled in clean water, and then scooped into a bowl. A large spoonful of snail soup was then poured on top. A large fried egg was placed on each bowl, and a handful of chopped green onions were sprinkled on top.
The soup base was the snail soup that Lu Mingfei had cooked in the afternoon. He had mixed the noodles in advance, and Ruyi had rolled them out when she came back.
The rich and fragrant soup base is paired with hand-rolled noodles. The soup is rich and fragrant, and the noodles are chewy.
"This soup smells so good." As the noodles arrived, Xu Yueniang held the bowl and sniffed it, then scooped a spoonful of soup into her mouth. She couldn't help but nod and said, "This soup is fresh and sweet, better than any soup I've ever had before."
"Yeah, it's delicious. The soup is very fresh and sweet." Liu Sanniang took a sip of the noodle soup and couldn't help but nodded in agreement.
"Hey, Mingfei, how did you cook this soup?" Liu Sanniang asked her eldest son.
"Well, the soup residue is here." Lu Mingfei pointed to the large plate of bones and snails on the table and told everyone the method of making soup without reservation.
Knowing that their eldest son/adopted son was making fresh food today, Lu Youtian and Lu Qingfeng both returned to the city early, just in time for dinner at home.
Lu Qingfeng and Xu Yueniang both came to the Lu family courtyard to have dinner.
But compared to the noodles, Lu Qingfeng liked the fried snails better. After eating two, he couldn't help but nod and said, "This fried snails is delicious. I didn't know that something without two taels of meat could be so delicious. This dish is great to eat with wine."
"Yes, this dish is a great side dish for drinking. We have some wine today, so let's have a drink." Lu Youtian also likes this fried snail dish. Although there is not much meat in it, it tastes so good, especially when you take a sip of the soup, it makes you more and more addicted and you can't stop eating it.
Lu Mingrui, Lu Mingcong, and Zhang Xiaobao also loved fried snails. They had only eaten a few each earlier. But when they arrived at the dinner table and saw two large plates of fried snails, they began to devour them like crazy, not even paying attention to the noodles in their bowls.
"Two drinks are enough for both of you. Don't drink too much." Xu Yue Niang reminded her husband not to drink too much.
"Don't worry, we both have a good alcohol tolerance." Lu Qingfeng gave his wife a look.
Xu Yue Niang glared at the man and stopped talking about not allowing men to drink.
"You three should eat the noodles first, and then eat this later, otherwise the noodles will become clumpy." Lu Mingfei noticed that the three boys next to him were only busy eating snails and not noodles, so he reminded the three boys to eat the noodles quickly.
Upon hearing this, Liu Sanniang and Xu Yueniang saw that the three boys were sucking on the snails which had only two taels of meat and had no time to eat the noodles, so they quickly reminded their sons to eat the noodles quickly.
"Xiaobao." Zhang Qi glanced at his younger brother and called him.
When Zhang Xiaobao heard his brother calling him, he looked at his brother and quickly grabbed the chopsticks to eat the noodles.
The two boys, Lu Mingcong and Lu Mingrui, were also coaxed by their mother into eating noodles.
Their family is now mainly engaged in the food business, so when they tasted such delicious food, Lu Youtian thought about whether this dish could be used to make money, so he asked his eldest son beside him: "Mingfei, do you think this fried snail business is viable?"
"Of course, we can." Lu Mingfei thought for a moment and said, "But this fried snail dish isn't suitable for our stall, nor is it suitable for serving during dinner in your restaurant, godfather."
"We both mainly sell staple foods, and both are generously portioned. The customers who come to our stall and your restaurant, godfather, are all here to fill their stomachs. Our business is already pretty good, but during meal times, there are so many customers that seating is pretty tight. If we serve a side dish and someone sits down to drink, they'll take up part of the table, and it'll take a long time for the next customer to sit down and eat."
"Godfather, you guys should also know that customers who drink tend to drink for quite a while. We won't make much money from selling a few snacks, and we'll have to spare some staff to entertain these customers. If we don't make much money, it will affect our original business, so it's not worth it."
"However, if we want to do this fried snail business, we can fry a pot of it in the afternoon and sell it in front of your shop, godfather, to customers who buy food and go home to drink. As for the shop, we won't entertain these customers who drink, we will just sell a dish to go with the wine."
"Then we can have a pot of braised pork in the afternoon and sell it with fried snails. We can only serve takeout and not dine in. Then we won't have so much work to do."
While Liu Sanniang was still thinking about this, Xu Yueniang said to her, "That's fine. You can make the braised meat in our backyard this afternoon. You don't have to come back here to make it. After it's done, just arrange for someone to sell it outside the door."
"You're also braising meat and selling things in the afternoon. Isn't that too tiring?" Lu Youtian knew that he couldn't help with the family affairs now, so he was worried that his wife would be too tired to handle so many things alone.
"No, we won't do that. We don't rest in the afternoon anyway and do nothing. Braising a pot of meat and frying a pot of snails are just side jobs." Liu Sanniang is not afraid of hard work. As long as there is money to be made, she is not afraid of hard work.
Normally, after closing their stall in the morning, they would go to the pancake shop in the afternoon to make meat sauce and pork paste. If they braised the meat again and fried a pot of snails in the afternoon and sold them at the door, it would just be a side job.
But Liu Sanniang was thinking about a question: "I was just wondering, where do the snails we sell come from?"
"This is easy. There are plenty of these things in the fields. If we want to sell them, just tell Chunping and ask him to collect them for us in the village." Lu Youtian said.
After her husband reminded her, Liu Sanniang remembered that snails were not only found in streams, but also in fields. "Yes, I remember now. There are a lot of them in the fields."
"The adults in the village have to farm and do their regular work, so they probably don't have time to look for these little things. We can ask Uncle Chunping to ask the children in the village, or the children in the nearby villages to look for them in the fields. I think those children are willing to look for them in order to earn some pocket money." Lu Mingfei helped to come up with ideas.
"This is a good idea. The children in the village don't have much income. If there is a way to make money, I'm afraid all the old people and children in the village will be willing to do it." Lu Youtian nodded, thinking that the idea given by his eldest son was very feasible.
The two families then discussed the price of the fried snails and what would be an appropriate price for the purchased snails.
Hearing the adults talking, Lu Mingfei thought of a sales method. "We can also fry these snails and sell them wholesale to small taverns or vendors. This way, we don't have to sell them ourselves."
"Isn't the price we give them too low? If they buy from us, they might as well sell it themselves." Lu Youtian felt that the owner of the tavern might not be willing to pay them for these things with only two taels of meat. On the other hand, he felt that the price was too low and they would not make any money if they sold them.
"If they can cook snails with this flavor, it would be fine. I'm just afraid they can't cook them with this flavor." It's not that Lu Mingfei is confident, but he thinks there are probably not many chefs in Kyoto who can cook snails with a better flavor than his.
After all, over the years, no restaurant chef has been able to make the same taste as their braised food. Otherwise, their braised food would not have been so popular on South Street for so many years.
"Haha, that's true. What Mingfei said makes sense." Lu Youtian nodded in agreement.
"We can send some goods to those taverns later and let their shop owners try them. If they are willing to buy from us, we will sell them. If not, forget it, we can sell them ourselves." Lu Mingfei didn't think there was anything wrong with actively promoting their products. "We can also promote our braised food and pork jerky. I think the customers in the taverns will like them."
"Mingfei still has a way." Lu Qingfeng looked at his eldest son with eyes full of love and pride.
Both families thought this business was viable.
Liu Sanniang thought about it and discussed with Xu Yueniang: "Let's do this business together. I'm afraid I can't handle it alone."
"That won't do. The braised food business is yours to begin with. How can you share it with me?" Xu Yueniang disagreed with Liu Sanniang's words and added, "We've already been taking advantage of you with the meat sauce and pork business. How can you divide the braised food business among us?"
"You can run this business on your own. If you want to use our kitchen, just use our kitchen. You don't have to calculate the cost so clearly with us. If there are not enough people at that time, you can just hire two more people to do the work. You just need to be in charge and you don't have to work so hard." Xu Yueniang didn't let Liu Sanniang ask for help because she knew that the recipe for braised food was the source and guarantee of the Lu family's current profits. If the recipe was leaked accidentally, it would affect the business of the braised food stall.
"Yeah, don't think about giving us a share of everything. If that's the case, the best-selling item in our pancake shop right now is clay pot rice, and Mingfei didn't even ask us for the recipe." Lu Qingfeng also said.
The couple both knew why Liu Sanniang and Lu Youtian wanted to give their family a share of whatever business they did. It was simply because they thought they were borrowing their yard to do business, so they wanted to give them half of the business.
But Lu Qingfeng and Xu Yueniang weren't greedy people. They both knew that their family was now benefiting from their adopted son's influence. Not only was the pancake shop's business booming, but they and the Lu family had also bought land outside the city to raise chickens, ducks, and pigs. Once the workshop was built in two months, they would expand their meat sauce and sausage business. This business alone would be enough to make them a lot of money in the future.
Not to mention the duck down jacket business that my adopted son mentioned, this business is definitely more profitable.
Lu Qingfeng and Xu Yueniang were both very ambitious people. They knew that their family had already benefited a lot, so they didn't want to take a share of the profits from the Lu family's snack business. That would seem too greedy.
So no matter what the two of them said, they were unwilling to share the business of selling snacks.
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