Chapter 277: 265: You reap what you sow
Zhou Huaian took out the watch with a smile. It had a tan leather strap and a silver case, but the hands and dial inside were golden, and it also had a calendar. "Yan'er, come here and let me put it on for you."
Yang Chunyan picked up another one and saw that it looked similar to hers, but needed to be adjusted upwards. "Why don't you buy an automatic one?"
"I like clockwork. Next time you want to twist my ears, just twist your watch!"
Yang Chunyan grabbed his ears and said, "I've never twisted your ears before, and you still say I twisted your ears. Then I'll twist one for you to see!"
"Be gentle, honey!" Zhou Huaian hurriedly held her hand and said with a smile, "Honey, I was just joking!"
"That's more like it!"
"Come and try it on. Does it look good?" Zhou Huaian smiled and took her hand, put the watch on her, looked at it from left to right and admired it for a while. "It looks good. When I make money, I'll make you a big gold bracelet. It will definitely look better."
Yang Chunyan also thought it was pretty and looked at him with a smile, "Then I'll wait for you to make money to make a gold bracelet for me!"
Looking at her smiling face, Zhou Huaian held her in his arms and kissed her.
…
In the main room, Zhou's father held his watch to his ear, the ticking sound ringing in his ears, "I never dreamed that there would be a day when our family could afford a watch and a radio."
Mother Zhou looked at the watch on her wrist lovingly, "She bought several at a time!"
"Talk to Chunyan and ask her to be more careful with her money. The youngest is a typical rat who doesn't leave any food overnight. He feels comfortable only when he has spent all the money!"
"Do you think the youngest brother would dare to buy these things if Chunyan didn't agree? As the saying goes, a good son is not as good as a good daughter-in-law, and we got a good daughter-in-law!"
"Don't say this in front of Huifang and the others. It will make them feel disappointed."
"I'm not saying Huifang and the others are unfilial. They are filial, but they don't have as many ways to make money as the youngest. The kids are growing up, and there will be many more places to spend money in the future!"
"Alas!" Zhou's father sighed, "The youngest family can only have one child in the future. After the family is divided, each family will live in a yard. The baby won't even have a companion. What should we do?"
"Old man," Zhou's mother pulled him aside and said in a low voice, "I heard that Lai's second daughter-in-law went out to give birth to a son."
"How do you know it's a boy? The baby is in the belly, how can you tell whether it's a boy or a girl?"
"When I went to look for the date, I heard them say that the Lai family had asked a fortune teller to tell her that she was pregnant with a son!" Zhou's mother hesitated for a moment, "I just wanted to ask him to help tell Yumei's pregnancy..."
Zhou's father said disdainfully: "Bullshit! Sir, you are not the Goddess of Fertility, how can you tell whether it is a boy or a girl?
Don't learn these nonsense from those ignorant women!"
"Yumei said her mother-in-law had consulted several people and they said she was expecting a son. I'm worried that if she gives birth to a girl, Yumei will be upset."
Father Zhou said in a deep voice: "You reap what you sow! If a girl is born, and the He family dares to make Yumei angry, I will bring her home."
"We shouldn't have married her to Jianjun in the first place. He is the only son in the He family. If Yumei gave birth to a girl, the He family would be extinct, right?"
After hearing this, Zhou's father frowned and thought for a while, "If that's the case, we can only learn from the Lai family and go out and hide when we get pregnant to have an extra child!"
Mother Zhou felt that this was the only way. "Yumei will be full-term in two months. We will have enough time to make plans after she gives birth!"
"Well! Take some time to go see Yumei and tell her that the youngest brother bought a tractor, so that the He family won't think we are still poor!"
"I think Yumei should make her own money!" Zhou's mother took off her watch and put it under her pillow. "Qiuyue said that Chunyan's ice jelly can be sold for ten cents a bowl in the city. The He family's yard faces the street, so next year I will let Yumei set up a small stall and sell some ice jelly and food."
"Okay, then you can let Chunyan teach her."
…
Early the next morning, Yang Chunyan and her sisters-in-law began to pick sweet potatoes and make sweet potato vermicelli.
Pick out those big sweet potatoes with smooth surfaces, not eaten by insects, and with heads that have not been exposed and turned green by the sun, put them into baskets, carry them to the ditch, and pour them into the water.
The sisters-in-law all rolled up their trouser legs and stood in the ditch, holding the straw bundles that had been prepared long ago, and rubbed the remaining mud on the sweet potatoes vigorously, and cut off the ends and the surface roots.
They were reluctant to throw away the two cut ends, so they put them all in a basket, washed them, took them home, dried them, cooked them, and then fed them to the pigs.
The four of them worked all morning to clean the pile of sweet potatoes and carry them home. At this time, all the baskets and bamboo baskets in the house were put to use, and even a drying mat was brought out and the sweet potatoes were poured on it.
Yang Chunyan went to the kitchen to get a chopping board and a wooden board and placed them on the small square table. The four sisters-in-law sat at the table and cut the peeled sweet potatoes into small pieces.
After filling three baskets, Zhang Xiuxiang said, "Sister-in-law, you and Chunyan can cut the sweet potatoes here. Qiuyue and I are stronger, so we will go and grind the mill."
Zhao Huifang smiled and said, "With so many sweet potatoes, grinding and filtering the pulp is very laborious. This year we have to do it all by ourselves, so take it easy!"
"Uh-huh!"
The two carried the sweet potatoes to the stone mill in the backyard and began to grind them into pulp, adding water to the mill as they went along. The finer the sweet potato pulp is ground, the better, so that the starch particles in the sweet potatoes can be fully released and the flour yield can be increased.
Yang Chunyan and her partner cut all the sweet potatoes that needed to be ground into pulp today and sent them to the backyard, and then carried the ground sweet potato pulp to the front yard.
The two men brought out a wooden ladder, hung the hanging cloth on the beam on the eaves, placed a wooden barrel as big as a bathtub under the hanging cloth, added water to the sweet potato pulp to dilute it before starting to filter, so that the dregs and starch could be separated.
Zhao Huifang held the handle on the hanging cloth and kept swinging it back and forth. Yang Chunyan added sweet potato pulp into the hanging cloth and stirred it with a wooden stick from time to time so that the sweet potato starch could leak out quickly.
After filtering several buckets of sweet potato pulp, the wooden barrel was full. Yang Chunyan hurriedly scooped the sweet potato pulp into the barrel and then poured it into the large water tank.
She rubbed her sore arms, thinking that it was no wonder that people in the future would not be willing to make handmade vermicelli even if they had a grinder. It was precisely because making handmade vermicelli was too tiring that it took the four of them two days to grind and filter the slurry.
Zhang Xiuxiang and Li Qiuyue came over with the last two loads of sweet potato pulp, "Chunyan, have you finished filtering it for the first time?"
"There's only one more bucket left to filter."
To make vermicelli, the sweet potato pulp has to be filtered twice. After the filtered pulp is allowed to settle, the clear water and the oil powder on the surface of the starch are scooped out. The starch on the bottom layer is taken out and filtered, broken into small pieces and dried before making the starch paste and vermicelli.
When it comes to making vermicelli, Zhou Huairong and Zhou Huaijun are the best. Yang Chunyan and her sisters-in-law only need to make the starch and leave the rest to them. They just need to help out when the time comes.
She remembered that when making vermicelli, she first mixed starch with warm water to make a batter, and then gradually added starch to it and kneaded the dough. The kneaded dough had to be sticky before it started to leak flour.
The right temperature is also very important when making vermicelli. Lighting the fire is also a technical job, and it is usually done by Zhou's mother.
After the water in the pot boils, put the dough into an iron colander and squeeze and beat it hard.
When draining vermicelli, the fire should not be too high; if the pot is too large, the vermicelli will cook too quickly; and it should not be too small either, if the pot is too small, the vermicelli will easily stick together and clump together.
The vermicelli slowly leaks out from the small hole of the iron ladle. If the vermicelli comes out too quickly and breaks, it means the dough is too thin and needs to be mixed with dry starch to make the dough tough enough. If it is difficult to roll or the speed is too slow and the thickness is uneven, it means the slurry is too dry and more wet starch should be added...
After the vermicelli is cooked in the boiling water pot, it is taken out and placed in a large wooden barrel filled with cold water next to the stove to cool down. It is then cut into appropriate lengths with scissors, placed in a large wooden basin, and cooled again with cold water.
Keep shaking the vermicelli in the basin until it becomes loose, then arrange it into bundles and string them onto bamboo poles to dry.
(End of this chapter)
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