When she got home, she exclaimed, "Oh my god, it's almost 7 o'clock!" She quickly went to pick up her child, poured the daylilies into a basin, and carried half a basket of tea leaves to the old house.
"Xiao Bao, Mommy's back. Come home with Mommy," Chen Hong called out as she entered the old house.
Yu Yang came over and asked, "Mom, you went up the mountain?"
"Yes, I just came to pick you up after coming down the mountain. Where's your grandpa?"
“They’re inside. Why don’t you eat here tonight?” Mr. Yu replied after hearing Chen Hong and her mother speak.
"I won't eat here, it'll get dark soon. These are tea leaves I picked on the mountain, I think they taste really good, so I'm giving you some. You can roast them when you have time to keep them for drinking. I think your roasted tea tastes better than store-bought tea."
“You’ve gone deep into the mountains. I’ve heard from the villagers that there are good tea trees in the mountains. But now the forest is too dense, it’s not safe in the mountains, and no one goes in anymore. You’re really brave to go so far!” Yu’s father said to Chen Hong.
“I was young and walked fast, so I didn’t think it was very far before I found the tea trees. I heard from Yu Hai that you used to process tea, so I brought them over for you to process yourself. These should yield about two pounds of tea, right?”
Chen Hong didn't dare say that she went there specifically for the good stuff in the mountains.
"But that's not all. When it's cooked properly, it can yield more than three jin (1.5 kg). I learned how to do it when I was young, when I went to Rizhao with people from the county to learn from them. Back then, I was still in the production team! Take some back with you after you've cooked it."
"Keep the roasted ones for yourself. We still have half a betel leaf at home. Let's each take half. We'll roast them tonight, otherwise they'll spoil. It would be a shame if we could find some and pick them this morning."
"Then take the child home. We still need to roast tea leaves tonight."
Chen Hong took the child home, first took a piece of meat from the freezer and put it in water to thaw, then washed her hands, cooked rice, and went back to the room to let the child wash his hands and watch TV.
Chen Hong went back to the kitchen and took out the oyster mushrooms and daylilies she had picked that day. She first soaked the daylilies in lightly salted water for 15 minutes, then picked the mushrooms, tore them into small pieces, and soaked them in lightly salted water as well. She prepared the side ingredients: ginger, garlic, scallions, and chili peppers.
Prepare the seasoning: light soy sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, sugar, salt, and toasted white sesame seeds. Remove the daylily buds from the water, removing the stems and cores. Blanch them in boiling water, then rinse them in cold water, squeeze out the excess water, and arrange them on a plate.
Heat oil in a pan, put the chopped garlic, scallions, and chili peppers into a mixing bowl, pour in the hot oil and fry until fragrant. Pour the sauce over the daylily and mix well. The first cold daylily salad of the year is ready.
Then, stir-fried sliced meat with mushrooms and rice were served together. The mother and son started eating with the two dishes. "Son, it's late today, Mom didn't make soup. Have some water!" Chen Hong said, pouring her son a glass of water.
"Mom has already cooked a lot of dishes. If you make soup, we won't be able to finish it all." Chen Hong was very happy with her son's thoughtfulness.
I almost forgot to collect the eggs again today, and I only fed the chickens and ducks once. After dinner, Chen Hong went to the backyard to collect the eggs. The water trough was dry, and the chicken feed was all gone.
Although the chickens and ducks weren't fed well, I still managed to collect 14 chicken eggs and 6 duck eggs, which is the most I've collected in a while. I don't know if it's because I fed them promptly yesterday or because of the water in my spatial storage.
It was already dark, and under the lamplight, we couldn't see any changes in the vegetable garden. We'll have to observe it again tomorrow.
After putting her son to sleep, Chen Hong finished cleaning the house and began her nighttime chores. Upon closer inspection, Chen Hong discovered that her small space still had basic food preservation capabilities.
The mushrooms, orchids, daylilies, tea leaves, and several small trees that I brought in today are all very fresh. They are exactly the same as when I put them in, with no changes.
Chen Hong was a little worried that the plants planted in the space might not grow. If that happened, the space would only be used as a mobile cold storage warehouse!
Chen Hong found a stack of large bamboo sieves in the storeroom and put them into her spatial storage. She also took two large water tanks, a bucket, and a shovel and put them into her spatial storage. She then went back to the main room and moved out a small pile of mushrooms.
While watching TV, I sorted through the mushrooms, throwing weeds and leaves into the trash can and placing the clean mushrooms on a bamboo sieve. After sorting one pile, I took out another, filled the sieve, stored it in my spatial storage, and then changed the sieve again to place the sorted mushrooms on it.
It took an hour to clean all the mushrooms. After that, the mushrooms filled four large bamboo sieves. They were all stored away, and I'll move them to the roof to dry tomorrow morning before my son wakes up.
Seeing that my son was sleeping soundly, I quickly went into my space to get to work. First, I dug two holes for the old tea tree and planted it. Then, I planted blueberries, honeysuckle, and polygonatum ten meters apart. I planted orchids near the riverbank close to the tea tree. This area will be designated as a shrub and dwarf planting area in the future.
I planted chestnut trees on the riverbank behind the tea plantations, so their different heights would prevent them from interfering with each other's growth. Later, I'll plant the collected fruit trees and flowers along the riverbank. After planting, I watered them all with water from the stream, and now I'm just waiting to see the results tomorrow.
I put the tea leaves into the water tank, went into the kitchen and washed the large iron pot twice, making sure there wasn't a drop of oil left in it. Then I found a new bamboo cooking brush in the kitchen cabinet, lit the wood-fired stove to heat the bottom of the pot. I knew that tea should be stir-fried over a low flame, not with hard wood, but with fine wood to burn evenly over a low flame.
Chen Hong reached out and carefully felt the temperature of the pot. She estimated it to be around 30 degrees Celsius, hot enough to start frying the tea leaves. She scooped up several handfuls of fresh leaves and tossed them into the pot, roughly ten pounds, to practice frying one batch first. Chen Hong's hands flew as she scooped the tea leaves, grabbing, turning, sprinkling, kneading, and tossing them.
Touching the warm tea leaves brought back a familiar feeling, as if it were muscle memory. Chen Hong instinctively and quickly stir-fried the tea leaves, watching them wither, take shape, and change color. With Chen Hong's lightning-fast hand speed, a pot of tea leaves was finally stir-fried, and accompanied by the aroma of tea, the emerald green tea leaves came out of the pot.
Finally, the tea leaves were laid out to dry on a bamboo tray. Chen Hong picked up a few leaves, smelled them, and then chewed them. They smelled wonderful. Although they were summer tea, their quality was comparable to teas that cost thousands of yuan in supermarkets.
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