Chapter 35: The Cellar
There is still a lot of mutton in the bowl.
Gu Cheng was surprised and asked, "Why don't you eat anymore?"
Liu Yinyin smiled at him and said vaguely, "You don't know that pregnant women can't eat too much meat. They have to control their weight, otherwise the fetus will be too big and difficult to deliver."
Of course, not many people have this idea these days, and most families can’t afford meat, so they don’t have to worry about this.
Gu is a grown man and he really doesn't know that there are such things to pay attention to when women give birth.
Liu Yinyin picked up a piece of mutton for him, smiling: "You are a great contributor to our family, eat more, or it will taste bad by tomorrow."
Gu Cheng had a big appetite. He finished two kilograms of mutton and the radishes, but he still had two corn cakes left.
"Save it for tomorrow morning." He was really full now.
The couple enjoyed the meal very much.
The next morning, Gu Cheng had nothing to do, so he harvested the pumpkins at home.
When the house was first being renovated, Liu Yinyin planted a lot of pumpkins around the yard.
By now the pumpkin vines have gradually dried up, and it's time to harvest the pumpkins.
The pumpkins are piled among the sundries right after they are picked. They are durable and get sweeter as they age, so there is no need to rush to eat them.
However, her family has a lot of pumpkins. The pumpkins produced here are all long gourd-shaped, with yellow skin and very large in size.
There were pumpkins piled up on the ground among the sundries. There were twelve large pumpkins. The lightest one weighed five or six kilograms, and the largest one was estimated to be more than ten kilograms.
There are more than twenty small pumpkins, which looks like a lot.
Every household in the village grows some pumpkins. It is not a rare thing, so there is no need to give it away. You can only keep it and eat it slowly.
In the afternoon, Liu Mingyuan came to find Gu Cheng, and the two went for a walk in the mountains together.
Taking his brother-in-law with him, Gu Cheng did not dare to go far, and the two of them just wandered around the nearby mountains.
It wasn't a complete loss, either. When he came back, Gu Cheng was holding two wild rabbits.
Liu Mingyuan also did not go home empty-handed, and went home happily carrying a pheasant.
There is no room left at home for rabbits, and the two pheasants I brought home yesterday are still in the chicken coop.
Some time ago, Gu Cheng brought five chicks back from Auntie Pang's house to raise.
The pigsty is now divided into two rooms, one side is for six laying hens, and the other side is for five confinement chicks.
The five little chicks will be killed and eaten after Liu Yinyin is in confinement after giving birth. There is no harm in keeping them.
But we definitely can’t keep those two pheasants forever. It wouldn’t be good if others saw them. But we just ate lamb yesterday.
It’s not a good idea to kill the chicken and eat it right away today. We can only raise it for a few days before eating it.
As for rabbits, there is no rule in the village that prohibits raising rabbits.
Moreover, Gu Cheng said that there was a female rabbit with a bulging belly, which meant she was pregnant, so she could not be killed at this time.
Oh!
Liu Yinyin never thought that one day she would worry about having no place to raise chickens and rabbits.
Since Gu Cheng had nothing to do, he built a pen with adobe bricks to raise rabbits.
Later, the mother rabbit gave birth to babies, and there were a few more little rabbits in the house.
Even if you can’t buy pork in the future, you won’t have to worry about having no meat to eat.
Anyway...Liu Yinyin has enough food to raise rabbits.
After finishing the housework, Gu Cheng also started to go to work.
Because he was in the county town, he didn't come back at noon and ate in the factory cafeteria.
The people in the village were busy harvesting sweet potatoes. After a week of hard work, they finally harvested all the sweet potatoes.
This also means the end of the village's autumn harvest this year.
Due to the water shortage some time ago, the village's grain harvest this year has decreased by 10% to 20% compared to last year.
But the villagers were still in high spirits. They were all waiting for the distribution of food. They had been busy for half a year, looking forward to this.
Although the autumn harvest is over, there is still life in the fields.
During dinner that night, Liu Yinyin smiled and said to Gu Cheng, "The village has issued a notice that food will be distributed after work tomorrow."
After saying that, Liu Yinyin picked up a piece of braised pork and ate it. The steel plant is a big factory and the food is pretty good. I heard that they have braised pork once a week and some minced meat on weekdays.
These days, Gu Cheng would bring back some pickled vegetables every day after get off work.
Distributing food is a great joyous event, and Gu Cheng was naturally happy: "It just so happens that I have a day off tomorrow, and it's time to dig the cellar. I'll ask a few more people to come and help tomorrow."
He only had one day to rest, so he hired more people and tried to finish digging the cellar by tomorrow.
Liu Yinyin didn't say anything this time.
It’s time to dig a cellar, otherwise we’ll have no place to store the food at home.
Everyone in the village has difficulties. You don't have to pay someone to help you, but you have to provide them with a meal.
Liu Yinyin muttered, "Let's kill a pheasant tomorrow."
It just so happened that the two pheasants I hadn’t had time to eat yet.
When you ask someone for help, you should always prepare some delicious food to entertain them.
Gu Cheng also added: "I will go to the river to put down a cage later to see if I can catch some fish."
There are chicken and fish, it's quite presentable.
Gu Cheng works in a steel factory and is the deputy director. Everyone in the village is happy to be friends with him.
The next day, in addition to Liu Mingcheng and his two brothers, five other people from the village were invited to help.
Including Gu Cheng, all nine men are strong.
After breakfast, a few people started digging in the yard.
Jiang Cuihua knew that her daughter's family was digging a cellar today, so she came over to help her prepare lunch. She also brought a basket of vegetables, a handful of sweet potato vermicelli, and several large bowls.
The meat dishes prepared by Liu Yinyin included a pheasant, half a bucket of miscellaneous fish, and ten eggs.
There are even more vegetarian dishes, such as eggplant, leek, loofah, cabbage, pumpkin and potato.
"Chicken stewed with mushrooms, small fish with garlic sprouts, and scrambled eggs with leeks. Mom, are these three dishes enough?" It was the first time for Liu Yinyin to entertain so many people, and she felt a little unsure.
"That's enough, that's enough! How can there not be enough of so many delicious dishes?" Jiang Cuihua was dazzled.
The pheasant alone weighed three or four pounds. This was a sumptuous meal. Other families in the village could not afford to entertain so many delicious dishes.
Liu Yinyin smiled and continued counting on her fingers: "Make five more vegetarian dishes, cabbage stewed with vermicelli, eggplant and beans, garlic loofah, stir-fried pumpkin, and stir-fried leeks."
Jiang Cuihua nodded: "There are exactly eight dishes, which is enough."
There are so many people eating, it would look ugly if we don’t cook more dishes.
The staple food is cornmeal steamed buns.
There were a lot of dishes and enough steamed buns. At noon, everyone was eating with oil dripping from their mouths. Liu Yinyin was generous with the ingredients when cooking, and even the vegetables were better than those cooked by ordinary people.
By the end of the meal, even the vegetable juice had been eaten cleanly by a group of people using the steamed buns to dip into the soup.
After having a full meal, the men worked harder in the afternoon.
The cellar was ready by about six o'clock.
After the cellar was dug, Gu Cheng took out a pack of cigarettes and distributed them to everyone. Everyone who came got two cigarettes.
When they left, everyone had a smile on their face.