It's time to prepare dinner again.
Before leaving, my father told me to eat stewed rice tonight and not drink rice soup. Liang Qiuhua poured all the rice in the rice jar into the rice washing basin.
There will be no rice left tomorrow. Qiuhua doesn’t care about that. Dad will find a way. She also wants to eat a bowl of fragrant rice.
Liang Erhua was the first to arrive home, and the wooden barrel he brought back contained three lively little cat fish.
The reason there were only three was that ever since the little fish and the old man left, his chest had been rumbling, as if there was a little man beating a drum inside. He couldn't concentrate at all, so he had to take the remaining three home.
When Liang Qiuhua heard the "plop" sound, he was overjoyed. He quickly took out the bucket and went to the well to draw a bucket of water.
He went back and got a wooden basin and a kitchen knife.
She took Erhua's wooden barrel and looked inside. Wow! There were three of them! Enough for two bowls of fish soup!
This time, the second brother did not let her down. He said he would catch fish and there would really be some!
Seeing the girl's happy look, Liang Erhua's previous regrets and sadness were all swept away. He bent down, picked up the bucket with both hands, put his mouth to the edge of the bucket and drank it all in one gulp.
"This water is cold, it's going to give me diarrhea!"
Qiuhua said to him with a smile, picked up a fish in one hand, and with the other hand took a kitchen knife and "bang" twice. The fish that was still alive and kicking just now lay quietly and motionless.
She held the fish's tail and used a kitchen knife to sweep it from the tail to the head. Thin fish scales flew everywhere, and one of them bounced onto Qiuhua's mouth.
"Ptui." She spat twice, and the fish scales were spat out along with her saliva.
She took a kitchen knife and gently cut a small hole in the fish's belly, then squeezed it with her hands, and the fish's internal organs were squeezed out all at once.
Erhua rinsed water on her hands and the fish, and they were clean in a moment.
The rice in the iron pot was cooked and emitting a fragrant aroma. Erhua's stomach growled as he smelled the aroma.
"I haven't eaten in a long time. It's so delicious! I drink rice soup every day, and my stomach is sloshing!"
He went behind the stove and moved the burning firewood from one chamber to another, and then stuffed a few more pieces of wood in it.
After finishing, place your hands on the stove to warm the palms and backs of your hands.
"If you can honestly work with Dad and Big Brother and earn work points, we can eat rice every day!"
Qiuhua opened the lid of the pot, poured a little vegetable oil into it, and then cut several slices of shriveled old ginger and threw it in.
After a while, white smoke began to rise from the oil and fine foam floated up. When the foam slowly dispersed, Qiuhua picked up the two little cat fish and put them into the oil pan.
With a sizzling sound, the two small fish released a fragrant aroma. She picked up a spatula and flipped the fish over. This side was already slightly golden brown, and the fish skin peeled off, revealing the white flesh. After frying both sides, Qiuhua ladled two bowls of water into the pot, covered the pot, and began to cook.
There is one slightly larger one left, which I will save for making soup tomorrow.
Xiaohua smelled the fragrance and stood on tiptoe to pick at the stove, staring intently, and asked, "Sister, what's cooking in the pot?"
"Fish soup, for Mom." Qiuhua wiped a handful of noodles from under Xiaohua's nose, threw them on the muddy ground, and wiped her hands with a rag.
"I want to eat fish soup too." Xiaohua said with a pout.
"This is for Mom to eat, why are you grabbing it?" Erhua heard it from behind the stove and said dissatisfiedly.
Xiaohua pouted and stopped talking, tears welling up in her eyes.
Qiuhua smiled and touched his head. The soup in the pot was already boiling. She lifted the lid and said, "Turn to low heat. The soup is boiling."
"Don't cry. I'll give you a small bowl of it when it's cooked, and give the rest to Mom."
Xiaohua laughed again, ran away from the stove, and went into his mother's room.
That evening, Dad and Dahua returned. Dad took a small bag of rice and a large pig bone from his shoulder. Dahua handed Qiuhua the heavy lunch box. She opened it and saw it was filled with cabbage and pork slices! The aroma wafted from the lunch box and into Qiuhua's nose. She swallowed hard. Even though the slices were thin, it was pork after all. It was so fragrant!
She put a steaming rack on the rice pot, put the whole lunch box on it, added some firewood to the stove, and started cooking after returning the pot.
Today's dinner can be said to be comparable to the Chinese New Year. The white fish soup, fresh cabbage and pork slices, plus the fragrant rice, such a sumptuous dinner makes the whole family very happy.
Qiuhua served her mother a large bowl of fish soup and a full bowl of rice, and covered the rice with a lot of cabbage and pork slices. When she brought them into the house, her mother looked much better.
Mum took the bowl. The soup was hot and fragrant. She didn't drink it directly. Instead, she asked, "Have you served me all the fish soup? I can't finish it. Can you and Xiaohua have some too?"
"There's still a big bowl. There's a lot of food today, so it's enough. Mom, you eat it all. Finish it all."
Qiuhua took out a large basin of wet diapers and prepared to wash them after dinner. The more diapers used, the more milk the little girl drank, so she was happy to wash them.
During the meal, the family gave the fish soup to Qiuhua and Xiaohua. Qiuhua took a sip and found it so fresh and fragrant that her eyebrows almost dropped. Then she couldn't bear to drink it anymore, so she pushed the bowl to Xiaohua and took a big bite of a piece of cabbage with rice.
"Dad, do you remember when you were a kid learning blacksmithing in Shanghai and there was an apprentice with you?"
Liang Erhua was thinking about what happened during the day and couldn't help but ask.
"There was an apprentice with me, about the same age as me, from Tangli Village." Liang Genfa recalled the past.
Erhua took a piece of pork and put it in his mouth. A little bit of meat oil stirred between his teeth, making him feel a little unsatisfied. He finished the rice in the bowl, wiped his mouth and said:
"Today I was fishing in the river and met him and his daughter."
"Oh? What a coincidence? It's been decades, and I've only met you once by chance." Dad seemed to be recalling his youth, with a nostalgic look on his face.
He recalled the scene when he was a teenager and was learning from a master. The master and his wife were very strict and often beat them with thin sticks. Despite this, their food was good. The master liked to eat old duck soup, and his wife would stew it on a coal stove for an entire afternoon. The soup was covered with a thick layer of butter. He never drank the soup, as it belonged to the master. His wife would throw the remaining duck bones to them.
The meat of the old duck was tough and woody, but they ate it with great relish, and that was the best part of his memory.
Later, his fellow apprentice couldn't stand the beating from his master and secretly ran back, leaving him alone. I don't know if it was for this reason that his master didn't beat him as often after that.
Liang Genfa became a blacksmith and married a landlady in Shanghai, but eventually returned here, just like his fellow apprentice who had escaped back.
"I remember he said he was carving mahogany last time."
"Carving rosewood? Is this job profitable?" Liang Erhua seemed very interested in this. As long as it was not farming, he was interested in it.
"I don't know if it can make money, but it's not easy to learn!" Dad knew what his second son was thinking, but whatever he learned was like a new toilet that smells good for only three days, so he had to knock it around.
Erhua did not answer and fell into deep thought.
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