Chapter 445 Spicy Dried Radish
It is not easy for country people to make money. For them, every dollar is earned through hard work.
Therefore, not many villagers send their children to the military primary school, and most of them are boys.
"I know this." Mrs. Liu smiled and said, "Don't even mention a dollar. As long as I can send them to school, I'd be willing to sell everything I have."
This is true. After staying on the island for so long, Liu Ersao knows one thing very well.
Whether you are a girl or a boy, studying is a way out.
The days of digging in the fields were too hard. Mrs. Liu had come from a poor background and she didn't want her two children to be like her.
Liu Yinyin nodded in agreement: "Second sister-in-law, you are right. As adults, we must always think about the future of our children..."
Just as he was saying this, Gu Cheng and the elder and second brothers Liu came back.
Several people were carrying wooden buckets, their water shoes covered in sand.
Liu Yinyin was afraid that they would freeze, so she shouted, "There's hot water on the stove, hurry up and soak your feet, or they'll freeze."
There are two stoves at home now, one is placed in the kitchen for heating water and cooking.
The other one was bought later and placed in the room for heating.
Normally the triplets use it more. There is no other way, a child's cold is no small matter.
Brother Liu joked: "Why do you have to be so coquettish..."
He just saw it at the beach. In this weather, there were people swimming in the sea.
They are a bunch of big bosses, why would they use foot bath?
Mrs. Liu said angrily, "We are from the countryside, how can we compare with them?"
Not to mention, even after living on the island for so long, Mrs. Liu still hasn’t adapted to the weather.
Brother Liu didn't argue with her and picked up the second of the triplets: "Brother-in-law, the second one looks so much like you."
The father and son were cut from the same cloth.
When Brother Liu held the second child, he felt like he was holding Gu Cheng when he was a child.
The triplets look less and less alike as they grow older. The eldest looks more like Liu Yinyin, while the second looks more like Gu Cheng.
The third child doesn't look like any of them. These kids really grow up.
Gu Cheng smiled: "Really?"
He himself couldn't really see it, and of course Brother Liu was not the only one who said so.
Brother Liu nodded and said, "The more I look at it, the more it looks like him."
A few grown men were drinking tea with the children in the living room.
Liu Yinyin didn't go out either. She was busy washing and cutting vegetables in the kitchen.
Prepare the ingredients in the morning and prepare the New Year’s Eve dinner in the afternoon.
At noon...there was plenty of seafood at home, so Liu Yinyin kneaded the dough and steamed a pot of steamed buns, and will make a big seafood stew later.
Eat a small meal first to fill your stomach and then have a big dinner in the evening.
Mrs. Liu couldn't help but mutter, "We women are destined to work hard."
Men just need to make money, but as women, they just need to have jobs.
After returning home, I still have to cook, wash clothes and take care of the children, so I never have a moment to spare.
This was what happened to Liu Ersao when she was making money at Zheng Qiangwei's house.
Earning money is one thing, but other work still needs to be done. Brother Liu will never get involved in housework.
As time went by, it was inevitable that Mrs. Liu would feel a little unbalanced.
Liu Yinyin's situation is similar, but it's not that Gu Cheng is a male chauvinist and doesn't want to do housework.
He is too busy with work. Sometimes he is on a mission and can't come back for a month or two.
After a busy day, the two women finally prepared the New Year's Eve dinner.
Just as Liu Yinyin said this morning, ten dishes were cooked, eight meat and two vegetarian, and the staple food was white flour steamed buns.
There were also four canned fruits on the dining table.
Liu Yinyin prepared four dishes: dry-pot bullfrog, pickled fish, sweet and sour spareribs, and cumin lamb...
She was generous with the ingredients, and several dishes were delicious and flavourful.
The New Year's Eve dinner was splendid and everyone ate and drank to their heart's content.
In the end, the table was a mess with all kinds of meat bones, fish bones, crab shells, etc.
Liu Yinyin and Liu Ersao were busy all day.
After dinner, they didn't clean up and left all the work to a few men.
There were no entertainment activities during the New Year at this time, and no one even set off firecrackers. Once night fell, the island became very quiet.
After finishing their meal and cleaning up, Brother Liu and Brother Liu II and their family prepared to go back home.
Liu Yinyin handed them the bags she had prepared in advance.
"It's filled with ham and rice cakes. You can take them home and eat them."
Liu Yinyin cut two pounds of ham for each of the elder and second brothers Liu, and Ciba's family packed six for them to try.
The next day, when I got up in the morning, it was snowing outside, and it was snowing quite heavily.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the whole family was trapped at home and unable to go out.
Fortunately, Gu Cheng has had a few days to rest and can help with housework.
After Gu Cheng finished feeding the children, he said to Liu Yinyin, "Shall I go out and buy some food?"
There are still a lot of vegetables at home, but I don’t know when the snow will stop.
If it goes on for several days, there will definitely not be enough food at home. When the island is closed, we won’t be able to buy food even if we want to.
It’s better to stock up more food to be safe.
"Forget it." Liu Yinyin took out a military coat from the cupboard and handed it to him. "There must be a lot of people queuing up at the supply and marketing cooperative right now. By the time it's our turn, I guess there won't be any vegetable leaves left."
"The food at home is still enough if you eat sparingly. There are still two bags of dried vegetables in the cupboard."
Liu Yinyin said, "I need to send a telegram home and tell my mother not to come to the island recently."
Liu Yinyin didn’t know when Jiang Cuihua would come, but she had said before that she would come after the Chinese New Year.
So, I still have to send a telegram back. It won’t be too late to come back when the weather is better.
Gu Cheng nodded: "I'll go."
It was cold, so Liu Yinyin had no mood to make breakfast. She just cooked a pot of porridge and fried some spicy radish.
Steam the leftover steamed buns from last night, add three salted duck eggs, and have it for breakfast.
In the morning, the whole family did not go out.
There were about ten pounds of pork at home, and Liu Yinyin ate it with five pounds of white bread dumplings.
It happened to be snowing outside, so I made some dumplings and froze them outside. I could cook them whenever I wanted to eat them. Otherwise, it would be troublesome to cook every day.
There is plenty of pork at home, so Liu Yinyin soaked some dried mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and will make dumplings with three kinds of fillings later.
Mushroom meat stuffing, bamboo shoot meat stuffing and celery meat stuffing.
No one would go out on a snowy day, so the couple worked for most of the day and made a basket full of dumplings.
The dumplings alone can last at least three or four days.
The heavy snow didn’t stop until the third day of the Lunar New Year. Two days later, a supply ship arrived on the island.
Winter is gone and spring is here. After the heavy snow, the weather gradually warms up.
On the day before the Lantern Festival, Jiang Cuihua came to the island with a lot of bags.
A telegram was sent in advance, but Liu Yinyin was unable to spare the time, so Brother Liu and Sister-in-law Liu went to the train station to pick her up.
This was Jiang Cuihua's request, saying that she had a lot of luggage and couldn't carry it all by herself.
After spending the New Year at home, Jiang Cuihua felt much better.
"I wanted to come earlier, but the weather was bad, so I put it off until now."