Chapter 13

Captain Zhao’s House.

Lin Xixi tentatively said to Sister Yang: “Sister-in-law, why did I hear that Captain Yan’s wife

didn’t go to visit relatives?” Sister Yang’s family was full of people and things to do, and she was busy. Hearing this, she asked curiously with a basin in her hand: “If she didn’t visit relatives, then what did she do?”

Lin Xixi helped her and lowered her voice: “I heard that...she eloped to find a strange man.”

Sister Yang almost overturned the basin in her hand.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” She scolded Lin Xixi, “It’s bad for people’s reputation!”

Lin Xixi said: “I also heard it from others.”

“Which gossiper is talking nonsense?”

“I don’t know, when I was buying vegetables, two sisters were walking in front and talking, and I just heard it, and I don’t know who it was. I haven’t even recognized the face.” Lin Xixi evaded.

Sister Yang glared: "Xiao Qiao just came back yesterday. I saw that Xiao Yan was fine. It didn't look like they had a quarrel. Xiao Qiao, you look so happy today. This is impossible! Don't make up nonsense!"

"But..."

"But what? With Xiao Qiao's temper, if she really ran away and Xiao Yan chased her back, she wouldn't be able to see anyone for ten days or half a month, and her face would be as dark as a widow. I don't think so." Captain Yan's

wife looked relaxed, as if she had just come back from visiting relatives. Sister Yang didn't believe that she ran away with a wild man.

"Shut up. If your uncle hears you making up stories about others, he will beat you with his shoe soles!"

Lin Xixi really had no evidence, so she could only shut up in anger.

Walking into the yard, there was another large basin of clothes. Her aunt was reluctant to let her wash with soap, and insisted on using a mallet, which was very tiring.

In the days without washing machines, life was really too hard.

Lin Xixi had originally wanted to establish an image of being hardworking and virtuous, and was ready to become the second wife of the promising Yan Lei as soon as possible, but now Qiao Wei was not dead.

She pursed her lips.

No one could ruin her road to wealth.

Even if Qiao Wei was reborn, she was just a young woman in her early twenties. How could she fight with her?

Qiao Wei rested for a while, rubbed her sore arms, pounded her old waist, sat down at the desk, and opened the drawer.

When she took out the money in the morning, she saw that there were a lot of opened letters in the drawer in a mess.

She picked up a random stack and unfolded it. It turned out to be a letter from a technician to Qiao Weiwei.

After reading it for a while, Qiao Wei's teeth almost fell out. He

kept saying something like "ski" and "husband". Although it cannot be said that he was jealous, it is true that college students of this era have some cultural foundation, but he is definitely like a peacock spreading its tail.

And he spreads it very hard.

Qiao Wei's mouth twitched.

But the original owner Qiao Weiwei just fell for it. The memories of these letters are so vivid, much clearer and stronger than the memories of Yan Lei.

It was like a spring that moistened the stagnant life of the original owner, making her think that she had found her soul mate and fell madly in love.

Qiao Wei remembered that these letters were stacked up before, neatly stacked and tied with rubber bands.

Now that they were scattered like this, it goes without saying that Yan Lei must have opened and read them all. The mess in the drawer showed his anger at the time.

Qiao Wei shuffled through the letters, taking out the letter paper and envelopes. After making sure that nothing was left out, she lifted the cover of the coal stove under the eaves outside.

When the lid was on, the coal briquettes inside burned very slowly, in an "unextinguished" state, consuming very little.

As soon as the lid was opened, a large amount of oxygen rushed in, and the flames rose immediately. It was much more useful than the earthen stove that had to burn firewood on the spot.

Qiao Wei threw the letters in, and immediately the flames rolled up, engulfing the papers and words.

Yan Xiang stood aside: "Do you want to boil water?"

This reminded Qiao Wei. Drinking boiled water is very troublesome, you have to boil the water first and then let it cool. When she woke up in the morning, there were several jars of boiled water on the table, more than last night, so Yan Lei must have boiled water early in the morning and let it dry before leaving.

She went to get a pot of water and put it on the stove, carefully reminding Yan Xiang: "Don't touch it, the stove and the kettle are very hot, don't burn them."

Yan Xiang agreed obediently.

Qiao Wei returned to the study and glanced at Yan Xiang who was playing outside. This kind of house with a yard is great. Once the gate is closed, the children can play in the yard while the adults can see outside through the window. There is no danger and no need to worry about getting lost.

Qiao Wei took out a stack of blank letter paper from the drawer, the kind with military inscriptions. She poked her cheek with a pen and thought for a while, then started to draw.

She sorted out some things she needed to consider in her new life.

When she finished drawing, she looked out the window.

It was so quiet, with only cicadas chirping in the distance, but no roar of cars.

Yan Xiang was a very quiet child. When he squatted on the ground to play, he didn't mutter to himself like other children. He just quietly moved a bunch of small stones around on the stone floor.

Time flows slowly, as if nothing needs to be rushed.

Perhaps this is how life should be in this era -

a few black-tiled houses, a child in the yard.

The clothes on the clothesline flutter in the wind.

She is still young and healthy.

At this moment, Qiao Wei feels extremely satisfied with her life - she is not busy running around for a few coins, nor is she suffering from illness day and night. She counts the nurses' footsteps in the corridor late at night and estimates when her life will end.

Yan Xiang looked up at the sun, stood up and ran to the window, standing on tiptoe to hold onto the windowsill: "Mom, what are we having for lunch?"

"Oh? What time is it?" Qiao Wei walked to the living room and looked at the Sanwu brand clock on the table, "It's past eleven."

The water outside was boiling, bubbling. Qiao Wei used a rag to pad her hands and carried the kettle under the small table to dry it, and then used a wooden stool to block it to prevent the child from running and getting burned.

The iron stove was covered and the fire was simmering. Qiao Wei rolled up her sleeves and tied on an apron to prepare to cook.

The rice cooker was a small round aluminum pot. After washing the rice, since there was no scale or measuring cup on the rice cooker, Qiao Wei used the well-known Chinese finger technique - the water should only be above one knuckle.

She learned this from a talk show abroad. After all, she had been using an electric rice cooker at home since she could remember.

The rice cooker was made on a cast iron stove.

The vegetables were washed in a large aluminum basin in the pool of the hand-pressure well.

Two low walls were built with bricks next to the well platform to make a table. The cutting board was moved over and placed on top, which was just right. It was used for this purpose.

At that time, transportation was not well developed and logistics was not convenient. The vegetables sold in the agricultural and trade market were all produced and sold locally. The appearance was not as good as in later times, but they were especially fresh. The washed vegetables were picked up from the basin and thrown on the chopping board to be cut directly.

One third of the meat bought today was cut.

After taking the dishes to the kitchen, they began to encounter even more inconveniences - the earthen stove in the kitchen burned wood.

In addition to food, oil, and daily necessities, the army's welfare benefits also include "fuel", which is distributed in a ratio of firewood and coal every month.

Because she remembered, Qiao Wei knew how to operate it in theory, but in practice she was particularly unfamiliar with it. She

managed to ignite the firewood in a hurry.

Yan Xiang was a little surprised why his mother had such a hard time starting a fire today. After the fire was lit, he went over and pulled the bellows without Qiao Wei's instruction.

The little baby was only a little taller than the bellows. Adults only need to flex and stretch their arms to pull the bellows, but Yan Xiang had to hold the handle and push in and pull out with the strength of his body.

"Hey yo", "Hey yo".

So cute.

You know what, this bellows thing is really useful. The little man lit up the fire in no time. It

was Qiao Wei's first time using this stove iron pot, and her hands were a little rusty, but she still managed to stir-fry a dish smoothly.

She put the food on the small kitchen table and covered it with a gauze, and then found that cleaning the pot was a hassle.

First of all, the pot was quite large, and then it was a two-handled pot, without the long handle that Qiao Wei was used to holding.

The next thing was that there was no modern faucet or basin.

Qiao Wei looked down and saw a bucket with a lid next to the stove. She lifted the lid and found clean water inside, and a ladle.

She had to use the ladle to scoop the water into the pot. There was a short, rough, round-headed broom hanging from a nail on the wall next to the stove. It was a brush for scrubbing the pot.

Qiao Wei used a rag to pad her hands, pinched one of the pot ears, tilted the iron pot, and quickly scrubbed it with the brush. She

used two more pieces of cloth to pad the pot, lifted the pot, and poured the water into another bucket. So it makes sense to have so many buckets at home. The clean water bucket and the swill bucket, none can be missing!

Qiao Wei scooped two more scoops of water into the pot, waited for it to boil, and then beat an egg and mashed it into egg drop soup.

The soup tasted too bland with just the egg. In fact, it would be nice if there was pickled mustard. Qiao Wei used to like to put pickled mustard in the egg drop soup, and then she didn’t even need to add salt. It was a simple soup that could be made in a very short time.

When her mother passed away, she told her to eat well. Qiao Wei used to order takeout, but she stopped ordering after she became a single person, and often cooked by herself.

Life goes by too fast, and it still needs a little bit of life.

There was no pickled mustard, but there was pickled mustard in the jar, and Qiao Wei could just pick up a few slices and throw them into the pot as a substitute.

Soon, a pot of simple quick soup was ready.

In another world, she only made this kind of quick soup when she was busy, and she would make soup seriously when she had time. But under the current material conditions, an egg drop soup is a very serious soup. After all, eggs also need tickets.

Because I spent a little too much time on the earthen stove, and forgot that I was not using an electric rice cooker, I took the rice off the stove a little late. It tasted a little hard, but it was still successful.

Qiao Wei has adapted to the kitchen of this era.

There are always some middle-aged netizens on the Internet saying that the current dishes are not as delicious as the dishes in the past, and many people question whether it is a memory filter. But Qiao Wei can now prove that it is really not a memory filter.

In the era without pollution, green vegetables are indeed more "vegetable" than in later generations.

Yan Xiang took two bites and exclaimed, "It's delicious!"

Qiao Wei asked with a smile, "Was it not delicious before?"

Because in the memory, the original owner had high requirements for food, so her cooking skills should be okay.

"It's delicious." Yan Xiang said, "But today's is especially fragrant."

He added, "It's better than Aunt Yang and Sister Lin's."

When he said this, Qiao Wei thought of the meal she had last night. For some reason, the taste was really...

She lowered her head and took two more bites, and suddenly realized it!

"It's the oil." She said, "I put a lot of oil."

More than the original owner, more than Sister Yang, and more than Lin Xixi.

No wonder.

Although Lin Xixi is a reborn heroine, if you calculate the time, she probably traveled back in time in the early 1990s.

A poor middle-aged woman who couldn't survive because her whole family was laid off and had to borrow money from relatives to make ends meet was not willing to put in the cooking oil even if she wanted to cook.

Thinking about it this way, it is not incomprehensible that Lin Xixi wanted to hug Yan Lei after she was reborn because she had predicted Yan Lei's future.

However, there was only one thigh, and it was already hugged by Qiao Wei.

How can you give it up to others?