Chapter 43
It doesn't matter, fortunately she still has a workshop.
After packing the things, she went out with a big bag on her back and a small bag in her hand. She deliberately walked a distance to a less crowded alley, walked under the shade of a tree, and put the things into the workshop while no one was paying attention.
After walking for a while, Gu Ran felt his face covered with sweat.
It is already extremely hot in Minzhou in May.
The cicadas in the trees were chirping non-stop, while pedestrians on the road were hurrying, choosing shady places to avoid the sun.
Gu Ran felt that he would get heatstroke if he continued walking, so he chose to cool down in the shade of a tree for a while. At the same time, he decided to take advantage of this opportunity to buy three months' worth of food.
Considering that I had to store the rice in the workshop after buying it, I went to two rice stores and bought half a stone of rice from each store, which made up exactly one stone.
What Gu Ran bought was ordinary rice produced locally.
Fujian has a hot climate, and rice is generally grown twice a year. In some areas, it is grown three times a year. It is said that the three farming methods strongly promoted by the imperial court were adopted. The rice production is high, and it is also one of the areas that pays the most grain in the Dasheng Dynasty.
The local people generally eat rice, which is just right, as Gu Ran is also used to eating rice.
A dan of rice is not expensive, only eighty coins.
In addition, Gu Ran also bought 20 jin of ground flour for 60 wen, 20 jin of dry rice noodles for 56 wen, 10 jin of vermicelli for 35 wen, 5 jin of soybean oil for 150 wen, 5 jin of salt for 50 wen, a small jar of vinegar for 20 wen, a can of green sauce for 12 wen, a small enameled bottle of fish sauce for 26 wen, and a jin of sugar for 40 wen.
The rice and grain store in Yongchang County also sells dried goods. I saw a bag of dried seaweed for 20 cents, kelp for 30 cents, and dried kelp for 15 cents, so I immediately bought a bag of each.
This purchase cost nearly half a tael of silver.
One tael of silver was gone just like that.
But, she hasn’t bought the iron pot, kitchen knife or anything like that yet!
The kitchen of my small house was filled with clay pots and not a single piece of ironware. I guess all the ironware had been taken away.
She went to the blacksmith shop to ask, and found that it was not as expensive as she had imagined, but a small pot cost five hundred coins, a kitchen knife cost fifty coins, and a shovel and spoon cost thirty coins.
It’s essential cooking utensils, what else can you do but buy them!
As a result, the two taels and two hundred coins he had in his pocket were quickly spent, leaving less than five hundred coins.
I can’t think about snacks for the time being.
But I haven’t bought any meat, vegetables or fruits yet!
Gu Ran saw it when she got off the dock just now. There were many fishermen there who sent a lot of river fish. She had been craving meat for a long time and she was determined to eat meat today.
After putting the things into the workshop, Gu Ran was about to go back to the market at the dock to buy some fresh meat. When he passed by the pharmacy, he suddenly remembered that he had not yet prepared some dried wormwood and white grass to repel mosquitoes and insects!
When living in Fujian, you can't forget to buy these essential herbs.
So he changed his mind and went into the pharmacy.
Because there was a tent, there was no need to prepare too much dried mugwort and white grass. Gu Ran remembered the miasma in Dayu Forest, and bought a lot of Atractylodes macrocephala, Scutellaria baicalensis, Schizonepeta tenuifolia and Saposhnikovia divaricata. The remaining half a liang was reduced by half, leaving only two hundred coins.
"Madam, would you like to buy some honeysuckle and forsythia to boil in water?" the shop assistant asked. "It's been so hot these days. Drinking some of this water will help you cool down and beat the heat!"
Gu Ran smiled and said it was not necessary, then returned to the dock with the remaining two hundred coins.
When he saw pork and mutton selling for dozens of coins per pound in the market, he did not dare to spend money easily. Instead, he bought a bamboo tube of ice water for two coins and drank it while watching.
Until I saw someone selling river seafood. Fist-sized river clams were one cent each, small shrimps wrapped in lotus leaves were two cents a handful, and there were also fish.
A fish weighing three pounds costs only twenty cents.
Fujian has many rivers and seas, so river fish are naturally cheap.
Only then did he cheer himself up and pick up four clams, two handfuls of shrimps, and four fish.
These are river fish sold by fishermen. People who come from far away dare not buy them, for fear that they will not be fresh enough when they take them home. But it doesn’t matter to Gu Ran. There is plenty of ice in her workshop, so she can just take them in and refrigerate them.
After buying shrimps and crabs, she naturally also needed some ginger and scallions to remove the fishy smell. Then she saw someone selling eggs, one penny each, so she bought a basket of thirty eggs in one go.
Only then did he feel satisfied and took the last seventy cents, found a small boat back to Donglin Township, and took it back to Xiaxi Village.
After returning home, she put things in order first: rice, grain, oil, salt, pots and other things were placed in the kitchen, fish and shrimps together with ice cubes taken out from space grid No. 10 were put in a wooden basin, and river clams were soaked in salt water. These were her meat dishes for today and tomorrow!
Looking at the packed kitchen, Gu Ran finally put all his tents, summer quilts and clothes into the side room.
Hang up the tent and burn some mugwort at night, and you won't have to worry about mosquitoes.
As for the clothes and shoes, take out the ones that need to be changed tonight and put the ones that are not worn in the box that has been washed and dried in the sun. As for the handkerchiefs, sewing kits and other things, just put them directly in the bamboo basket on the dressing table.
While it was still light, Gu Ran immediately prepared dinner for the night: rice, steamed fish, fried dried shrimps and clam and seaweed soup.
Because she was used to cooking with an iron pot and the food would be used immediately, Gu Ran started the pot first. She originally planned to use hot oil, but soybean oil was much more expensive than salt - because Fujian was close to the sea and was rich in sea salt, so she used salt to start the pot.
After cleaning the pot, boil water first, then pour out the boiled water, then put it on the stove to dry, put a spoonful of salt into the pot, stir-fry over low heat, and constantly turn the iron pan to cover every inch of the inner wall of the pot with salt. When the color of the fried salt turns yellow, you can turn off the heat, discard the salt, and clean the pot again with warm water before using it.
Once the pot is boiling, it’s natural to cook rice first.
This is easy. Rinse the rice clean, pour it into a small jar, add water, and cook it on the stove in the kitchen.
Next, we deal with the clams first. Since there are only two stoves in the kitchen, efficiency is important. We can cook soup while cooking rice. While the soup is ready, we can take the time to process other ingredients. Once the soup is ready, we can start cooking directly. This is quick and convenient.
After soaking the seaweed, wash it, drain it, add shredded ginger and green onion, put it into a ceramic pot and cook it first.
Pry open the shells of the four river clams kept in salt water, take out the meat, clean it, remove the internal organs, slice the clam meat, wait for the seaweed soup to boil, put the clam meat in, cook for a while, then add salt and chopped green onions.
Next, we will prepare tonight’s main dish, river fish.
Because I bought four fish, I will steam one tonight, and after cleaning the other three, I will smear them with garlic and ginger powder, and then set up a hanger at the other end of the patio to dry them, so that I can eat fish anytime.
After the seaweed and clam soup is cooked, put the small pot on it, pour some water, put down a pair of bamboo chopsticks, then put the processed fish into a porcelain plate, place it on the bamboo chopsticks, cover the pot, and you can steam the fish over high heat.
When the fish's eyes pop out, the fish is cooked. Take it out of the pot, pour out the water in the pot, heat oil, add shredded ginger and pesto, and a drop of fish sauce. After the juice is prepared, sprinkle the chopped green onion on the fish first, and then pour the hot juice from the head to the tail of the fish. The steamed fish is ready.
Finally, there is fried shrimp as a side dish.
Because the seasoning is limited, Gu Ran plans to stir-fry it.
The shrimps were washed early in the morning and marinated with onion and sugar. At this time, heat the oil in a pan, add shredded ginger, pour the marinated shrimps into the pan, stir-fry over high heat until the shrimps turn red and the shells become hard and crispy, then they are ready to be served.
One person, a jar of rice, a bowl of soup, a fish, and a bowl of shrimps.
The rice is soft and sticky, the soup is sweet, the fish is delicious, and the fried shrimp is fragrant.
A bowl of food tonight is enough.
Because the weather was hot, Gu Ran specially put some ice cubes in a wooden bucket and placed it aside during the meal.
After eating his first decent dinner, Gu Ran rested for a while to cool his stomach. Then he got up, cleaned up the table, and took it to the kitchen to wash it.
When we came out of the kitchen, it was getting dark.
Taking advantage of the last bit of daylight, Gu Ran poured the rice washing water that he had just reserved into the basin containing the red tangerines, and then poured the remaining rice water into two earthen basins placed aside.
Something must have been planted in that earthen pot, but whatever it was, because no one took care of it, it had wilted and dried up, and the pot was filled with dry and cracked soil.
After Gu Ran poured the rice water in, he used a fire poker to break up the cracked soil. After the rice water and soil were mixed together, he took out the onion that had not been cut off and the piece of ginger that was left, and planted them in two pots.
Onions and ginger are both easy-to-grow side dishes. As long as they are given enough nutrients, they will grow naturally.
The most important thing is that there is another crop after each one is harvested, and if you apply fertilizer later, the crops can continue to grow.
When they grow more in the future, you can harvest onions and ginger at any time and cook them yourself without spending money to buy them. This is a great way to save money, nice!
After planting the onions and ginger, Gu Ran took out the fish that had just been dried, cleared a rack for drying clothes, strung the three fish with rice ropes, and hung them up.
The day's work is finally over.
Gu Ran boiled another pot of water and took a bath with cold water.
It goes without saying that when you are a cultivator, you can use the Cleansing Technique and the Cleansing Talisman to keep yourself clean, but in your first life, Gu Ran was from the south, so he had to bathe every day.
What's more, I went to Donglin Township and then to the county town today. After a round trip, I came back covered in dust and sweat.
It goes without saying that there were no conditions when I was in exile, but now that I have the conditions, of course I want to wash myself clean and feel comfortable.
But it would be a bit useless for her to keep burning firewood every day like this.
When Gu Ran returned to the room, he decided that he would have to collect more firewood to store in the future.
After burning the mugwort and pulling up the tent, Gu Ran crawled into the tent and entered the workshop.
In the workshop, next to the [Score 107, Level 2] in the upper right corner, unread update messages kept popping up, reminding her: Do you want to upgrade?
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