Chapter 505 When people are idle, they are prone to gossip
There are a total of 17 people in the Zhou family, including the old and young, not counting the grandfather who lives with his uncle. They need to set up two tables to accommodate everyone when eating.
Seventeen people were crowded into a concave-shaped house.
There are three main rooms, two side rooms on each side, and excluding the main room and the kitchen, there are actually five rooms that can be lived in.
Zhou's father and his wife shared a room with two beds. Their eldest granddaughter Zhou Xiaoqian and second granddaughter Zhou Xiaoru shared a room with them. There was another room for Zhou's grandfather and Zhou Huaian, who lived in the main house.
The three brothers of Mr. Zhou took turns to support him, and each family lived in the house for four months at a time, which was exactly the end of the year.
The remaining three rooms were just enough for each of the three brothers to occupy.
Later, when Zhou Huaian and Yang Chunyan got married, they built a room for Zhou Huaian with earthen bricks next to the house where Zhou Huaijun and his wife lived.
Now, except for Zhou Huaian and his wife who just got married, the other three brothers and their children are crowded in one room.
Zhou's parents, along with their son and daughter-in-law, saved up 500 yuan by living frugally, preparing to pull the millstone and make earthen bricks after the autumn harvest. They built three thatched houses for each of their sons and separated them into different houses to avoid having adults and children squeeze into one room.
Who would have thought that the money saved by living frugally would be squandered by the prodigal son Zhou Huaian in a blink of an eye.
Yang Chunyan was glad that she came back in time. Ma Changgui failed to buy the cattle, and the Zhou family had money to build a brick house. Zhou Huaian and she would no longer live a miserable life like in their previous life.
There is strength in numbers. It took Zhou's father and his sons only an hour to clean up the beef and put it into baskets. A pile of beef bones was placed on the ground.
After finishing his work, Zhou's father patted his old waist, washed his hands, took out a half-foot long pipe from his pipe, lit the tobacco leaf and started smoking it with a "crunch, crunch" sound. The tobacco leaf in the pipe flickered with the crunch sound.
Boss Zhou looked at the meat and sighed, "There's just too much hair and not enough meat. Even after cleaning a big yellow cow, there's only this much meat."
Zhou Huaian put the skinned rabbit into the basket and whispered, "Brother, Third Uncle has gallstones. They are only the size of soybeans, but they are in so much pain. How can a plague cow grow meat when there are so many things stuck in its gallbladder and bile duct?"
Zhou's father, who was smoking nearby, raised his hand and slapped him on the back of the head. "You are so cunning. If it weren't for Chunyan today, I would have kicked you out. Hurry up and clean up your head!"
Zhou Huaian looked at the young wife who was cleaning beef offal with grievance, and seeing her working hard, he resigned himself to his fate and went to boil rosin and clean the beef head.
The Zhou family's children are no longer surprised by Zhou Huaian being beaten. Perhaps they would find it strange if one day Zhou Huaian didn't get beaten anymore.
Zhou Huaijun went to the main room to get a steelyard and walked to the kitchen door. "Mom, let's go to town to sell beef. Does the family need to buy anything?"
Zhou's mother picked up a dozen freshly cooked potatoes, placed them on vegetable leaves and put them in the vegetable basket. She also mixed the chopped beef liver with some chili powder and put it in an enamel jar, then put it in the vegetable basket and handed it to him:
"Weigh a few pounds of salt, buy a bottle of painkillers, and buy two tiger bone ointments for your old man. If you have cockscomb oil, buy one." Then he took out some more money and gave it to him, "Take it and use it to make up for the disease."
Cockscomb oil is a thin layer of mesh fat wrapped around the outside of pig lungs. The edge of the oil resembles a cockscomb, hence the name cockscomb oil. In fact, it has nothing to do with chickens.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that lard has the effects of nourishing the body, moisturizing dryness, and detoxifying. It can treat symptoms such as dryness of internal organs, constipation, dry cough, and chapped skin.
Because the oil yield of cockscomb oil is lower, its price is several times cheaper than lard, so the country people think it is worthwhile to eat it.
Before refining the oil, you must first cut off the lymph nodes on it, soak it in clean water, and change the water several times. The oil that comes out will be as white as lard and have a strong aroma!
"Hey!" Zhou Huaijun took the vegetable basket, took the beam scale and went out, and asked Zhou Huairong to pick up the basket and walk out the door together.
After a while, Zhou's mother came out with a basket filled with hot boiled potatoes. "Go wash your hands. There will be cold beef liver for lunch. Wait for the eldest and second son to come back and we will eat."
"Let's eat cold beef liver!" Several children swarmed into the main room, dragged the round straw stools placed at the foot of the wall, put them in front of the low table at the door of the main room, and crowded together to eat like little pigs fighting for food.
"Jia Ming, keep an eye on your younger siblings and don't let them snatch the food." Mother Zhou said, picking up her three-year-old granddaughter Zhou Xiaolin, "Sit next to grandma and eat."
Zhou Jiaming glanced at his younger brother Zhou Jialiang who was holding a thick pile of beef liver, "Put a few pieces back, don't eat alone."
"Oh!" Zhou Jialiang reluctantly put a few pieces back.
Father Zhou saw that the children had started eating, so he said to them, "Don't wash it, clean up after you finish eating."
He took out the leaf tobacco from the pipe, extinguished it and put it into the pipe, turned the copper pipe over, knocked the pipe against the leg of a stool, put away the pipe, and walked towards the main room with his hands behind his back.
When Zhou's mother saw him come in, she said, "I left a piece of beef liver for the old man, and I plan to cut some more meat and send it to him when he comes back from herding sheep."
After hearing this, Zhou's father thought for a moment and said, "Send some of the beef liver, offal and bones to the eldest brother and the third brother, and bring the old man over to eat together in the evening. The old man likes to eat dumplings, so you chop some for him."
"Okay." Seeing that Zhou Xiaolin had finished the beef liver in her hand, Zhou's mother fed her half a bowl of porridge and gave her a peeled potato, "Yaoyao, eat a potato."
"Oh!" The little girl held the potato and started to eat it.
Yang Chunyan and her four sisters-in-law put the cleaned beef offal into a basin and poured two buckets of water to soak it.
Zhou Huaian drew a bucket of water from the well and poured it into the basin. Everyone washed their hands and went to the main room.
On the paint-mottled eight-immortals table were two scoops of steaming potatoes and two ceramic bowls of thin sweet potato porridge.
A bowl of dried chili noodles mixed with beef liver, a bowl of dipping sauce made with chopped green pepper, a pot of cold coriander, and a pot of stir-fried salted vegetables.
The Zhou family has a large population, and the food distributed by the team is never enough to eat every year.
Zhou's father, along with several of his sons and daughters-in-law, reclaimed more than ten acres of wasteland at the foot of the mountain, and planted coarse grains such as potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes, which they ate in between meals, eating diet meals every day and barely filling their stomachs.
Everyone is looking forward to the household contract responsibility system this year, cultivating the land under their own name with all their heart, and eating a bowl of white rice without adding any miscellaneous grains after the autumn harvest.
Yang Chunyan sat on a long bench, picked up a potato as big as a child's fist, peeled it, broke it in half, put some coriander and chopped chili in the middle, closed it and took a bite. It tasted spicy and refreshing.
Eat a bite of stir-fried cowpea, a mouthful of porridge, and three potatoes, and your stomach will be full.
"Chunyan, why don't you eat beef liver?" Zhou's mother put two slices of beef liver in her bowl. "When mom cooked it, she added peppercorns, cinnamon, and some soy sauce. It's almost like stewed food."
"Thanks, Mom." Yang Chunyan picked up a piece of beef liver and ate it. Maybe it was because she hadn't eaten meat for a long time, but she thought it tasted quite good.
After eating, the older children ran to the yard to look at the cow bones. Zhou Xiaolin leaned in her mother's arms, drowsy.
Father Zhou said to Zhou Huaishan, "Huaishan, after dinner, go and pull out the weeds in the rice fields."
Mother Zhou, holding the child, looked up at Zhou Huaian and said, "Idle people are always gossipy. Huaian should go with us."
"Do you still want me to go? Go water the corn in the morning and put... " Zhou Huaian looked at his old man's gloomy face and swallowed the words that were about to come out of his mouth.
Father Zhou looked at him sternly and said, "Go out and shut your mouth tightly. Don't talk nonsense."
Zhou Huaian glanced at him and said guiltily: "I know, I'm not stupid!"
After Zhou Huaishan finished his porridge, he saw Zhou Huaian still peeling potatoes slowly, and shook his head and said, "Old man, I'm leaving first. Let the youngest and the eldest sister-in-law come with me."
Mother Zhou took two potatoes from the basket and stuffed them into Zhou Huaian's hands. She looked at him with a bad face and said, "You should leave quickly too. Don't waste time here."
She knew in her heart that she, the youngest child, could not be left idle. If she was idle, she would either be lazy or cause trouble.
Straw stools are round stools made of ropes twisted from rice straw. Some families also sew a mat woven with thin bamboo strips on the stool surface.
(End of this chapter)
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