Chapter 42
Every noon, Shen An and Shen Ning would quietly pick the leaves of the fairy tree when no one was around. After having lunch at Chen's house, Sang Luo's first priority was to make sour jujube cake.
Because of the two pieces of Hu bing, the children behind the thatched hut were so excited that they were particularly curious about Sang Luo, the sister-in-law who would actually buy Hu bing for them.
Of course, although they were curious and wanted to get close to the children, they were actually shy and timid, and no one really dared to come close.
Of course, it's not just the two new kids who are in the same situation. It can be said that except for Shen An and Shen Ning, there's also Chen Ershan who has eaten the cake and gone to dig mud. The rest are similar, especially Shen Jin.
Shen Jin still couldn't forget the fragrance of the Hu Bing. When he saw Sang Luo coming back, he was as excited as if grass had grown on his body. He looked over there again and again, but he saw that his eldest cousin's wife didn't even look at him and went straight into the thatched hut.
Shen Jin's foot moved a lot... well, it moved very little, and it was almost the same as if it was still in the same place.
But who is Shen An? He saw through his little thoughts at a glance, and grabbed Shen Jin's collar to make him take the half step back.
"What do you want to do? Just work quietly or go back to your home. Anyway, you are not allowed to come over there. My sister-in-law walked ten miles to the county before dawn. She is very tired now and needs to rest. You are not allowed to disturb her."
In fact, Shen An knew very well that the sister-in-law would deal with those sour dates this afternoon.
How can sour jujube be made delicious? Shen An thought about it several times but couldn't imagine it.
But that was the recipe from his eldest sister-in-law's house, and he couldn't let Shen Jin, a fool, break in and see it, so Shen An kept an extra close eye on him.
Shen Jin continued to dig out stones in an awkward manner. He actually didn't have the courage to go.
He just wanted to show his loyalty and make his sister-in-law familiar with him, so as to change the bad impression he had left on her.
If he doesn't want to go, then don't go. When his sister-in-law looked at him with a stern face, she was very fierce and he didn't dare to go.
Sang Luo was indeed making sour jujube cakes. As there were many people outside, she did not come out. She just washed and dried the two large round winnowing baskets that were prepared for drying the sour jujube cakes, and then fetched two buckets of water and brought them into the house. Then she closed the door of the thatched hut and carried out all the subsequent processes inside.
It is not difficult to make sour jujube cake. When living in the mountains, this is a snack that Sang Luo would make for herself every year when the sour jujubes were ripe. She would make a lot, dry them, and seal them in boxes. This snack is nutritious, clean and delicious, and the ingredients are absolutely reliable. It is a snack that Sang Luo likes very much.
Now that she has moved to another place, Sang Luo is very familiar with making sour jujube cake. She washes, boils, peels the dates, rubs the dates to remove the cores, and then melts the maltose and kneads it in batches. The sour jujube cake is ready. It does not require much skill, but it takes time.
Take the winnowing basket that has been washed and dried in the morning, spread it out, pick up the dough in balls with your hands and put them on the winnowing basket. While it is still wet and soft, smooth it out with your hands, and it will smoothly spread into a small round cake shape.
Two winnowing baskets were filled with fruit. After Sang Luo put away the peels and cores, she opened the door and went out.
There was no drying rack, as their family had even used benches to support the bed boards. However, there were quite a few trees on the hillside, so Sang Luo picked two trees that had exactly three branches that could serve as natural drying racks. She moved a large rock over and tried to see if she could step on it firmly and reach it. Then she went back to the house and brought out two winnowing baskets and put them on the rack. After drying them for three days, the sour jujube cake was ready.
Lu Dalang and Shi Erlang, who had just returned from fetching mud, only saw Sang Luo move a winnowing basket to the tree branch to dry something, but they had no idea what it was.
The two of them knew their limits and did not delve into the details. They thought that it was probably some unsold ferns or something like that. Every year their wives would dry some ferns and store them in the winter and they would soak them in water and it would become a delicious dish.
After finishing these tasks, Sang Luo freed up an empty backpack, rolled up her trouser legs, sprinkled some snake repellent powder on them, and went into the mountains fully equipped.
Since she found the sour jujubes, she was no longer in a hurry to borrow a hoe from the Chen family to dig konjac. There were more than a dozen people, big and small, in front of and behind the house. The sour jujubes could be processed in the house, but the konjac was not so convenient. There were only a few days left, so she might as well wait until the house was built before doing anything.
After calling Chen An and Shen Ning to give them some instructions and saying hello to Shi Erlang and the others, Sang Luo went into the mountain.
They took the same road as yesterday, but walked deeper. Sang Luo took out the jujube peels wrapped in lotus leaves from the backpack, chose a place with soft soil covered with fallen leaves, dug a shallow hole with a stone axe, and buried the fruit.
As for the fruit core, the sour jujube core is originally a traditional Chinese medicinal material. There are several preparation methods, one of which is drying it in the sun, but it is obviously not suitable to dry it at home. Even if people secretly look at the finished sour jujube cake, they can't recognize what it is made of. But you can tell what the sour jujube core is at a glance.
Who in the village hasn't eaten sour jujube? In Sangluo, sour jujube has another name called five-eyed fruit, and the characteristics of the fruit core are not too obvious.
So I didn't deal with the mulberry branches. I just planned to wash them and let them cool down at night. I would put them in a cloth bag tomorrow and take them to the county pharmacy to see if they would accept them.
Today I went into the mountains to pick sour jujubes, a gift from nature. It would be wise to stock up as much as possible while the fruits are ripe.
Because it took some time to make the sour jujube cake, by the time Sang Luo picked up a basket of sour jujubes and went out, it was already time for dinner. The originally bustling thatched cottage had become quiet. Only the brother and sister Shen An and Shen Ning were still working outside the house waiting for her.
When they saw Sang Luo coming back, the brother and sister breathed a sigh of relief, put down their stone hoes and went to greet her.
"Sister-in-law, did you go very far?"
After all, they had gone into the mountains. Seeing that it was getting dark and the person had not returned yet, the brother and sister were worried.
Sang Luo smiled and said, "It's OK, just a little deeper than yesterday."
Shen Ning frowned and said, "Sister-in-law, don't go too deep when you go out too late. It's very dangerous in the mountains after dark."
"Okay, I'll be careful next time." The two kids were really warm-hearted, and Sang Luo responded very happily. She looked around and asked, "Did everyone go to dinner? Why didn't you go down together?"
Shen An curved his lips and said, "We are not hungry, so let's wait for sister-in-law."
She stood on tiptoe to look at the basket on Sangluo's back and saw wild vegetables. She asked in a low voice, "Are those sour dates?"
Shen Ning was also excited and pointed to the side of the house: “Have the things that sister-in-law picked up yesterday been prepared in the afternoon?”
She and her second brother both saw the large winnowing basket on the tree and were extremely curious, but they were not tall enough to see it even if they wanted to.
Sang Luo smiled and nodded: "It still needs to be dried for three days. I will make another batch tonight and then I will let you taste some fresh sour jujube cakes. But you can't call it that to the public. You have to change its name."
Otherwise, all the raw materials will be leaked.
The brother and sister nodded in unison and made a note that even if their family sold this in the future, they would not tell anyone else about it.
Shen Ning was a little disappointed that she didn't get to see how her sister-in-law made the sour jujube cake because she was working in the afternoon. Now she heard that she would make a batch in the evening, especially that she and her second brother could taste the fresh sour jujube cake, her eyes lit up: "Can you give it to us?"
Maltose is precious, and my sister-in-law also bought them some Hu bing today.
"Here, how can you not want to eat what you made at home? Let's go, you two pack up, wash your hands and go downstairs to eat. Let's borrow a few large winnowing baskets from your Grandma Chen later, and we can make this basket of food tonight."
If they didn't go, they were afraid that the Chen family would be waiting for them and they wouldn't be able to have dinner.
Shen An and Shen Ning didn't think too much about it. When they heard that they were going to make date cakes in the evening, the brother and sister became energetic and hurried to wash their hands.
Sang Luo also put the backpack back into the house.
When he was about to go out, he had already walked outside the house. Shen An remembered something and didn't leave: "Sister-in-law, I'll stay at home. Can you bring me some food?"
In Shen An's opinion, their family now not only makes magical tofu, but also sour jujube cakes, which are their means of living in the future. There is a basket of sour jujubes in the house now. If people from the village come in and find them, when they sell the sour jujube cakes in the future, won't people guess what they are made of?
Shen An kept the recipe from his sister-in-law's house very strictly, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was guarding it strictly.
Thinking of this, he didn't even need to wait for Sang Luo's answer. He made up his mind and said, "That's it, sister-in-law. You and Aning go downstairs to eat. Just bring me some food back."
Sang Luo knew what the child was worried about after a quick thought, and she felt relieved. When she first came here, she was really poor, with nothing.
Of course, she is still poor now. Most of the money she earns every day is spent on food and household items. She doesn't save much. In order not to show off, she calculates the amount of food she buys, buying a little every day and doesn't save anything.
Even so, Sang Luo doesn't even have a hundred dollars saved in her purse now.
I get up in the middle of the night to make the magical tofu, and go out to set up the stall before dawn. I walk twenty miles back and forth every day. It seems like just a few words, but it is really tiring to do it day after day.
But these two children are so sensible that Sang Luo never feels tired no matter how hard she works, because she is never the only one working hard. The two children are small and weak, but they try their best to contribute to this family, to protect this family, and to protect her.
Sang Luo was a lonely person all her life. It was only after she became the Sang Luo of this world that she realized what it felt like to have family and friends in these two children who had no blood relationship with her.
She patted Shen An's head and said, "Okay, thank you for your hard work, Xiao An. Sister-in-law will bring you food later."
It seems like you were praised?
Moreover, this sentence "our Xiao An" was the first time Shen An heard such intimate words from his sister-in-law.
The child was a little excited.
He is not really that young, especially since he lost his parents at a young age and later his older brother. As the older brother, he has to protect his younger sister, so he is more mature than his peers.
Chen An also understood some things, for example, his eldest sister-in-law was only brought back by his third aunt in exchange for half a bag of grain when she was in trouble, and she did not really marry his eldest brother. He also saw the villagers getting married, and they had to wear wedding clothes and worship heaven and earth, only then could they get married.
Therefore, if the elder sister-in-law is really serious about it, she actually has no responsibility to support him and his younger sister.
Chen An actually knew it in his heart, and deep down, he was also worried, afraid and confused.
But the eldest sister-in-law never thought of abandoning them, not when they were so hungry that they could only eat bran, and not now, and these days, she treated him and his sister very well.
However, this kind of closeness that comes from the heart, the feeling that we are really a family, was something that Shen An felt particularly clearly just now.
He was a little excited, so excited that his tongue seemed to be tangled and knotted, and he seemed to not know how to speak. It took him a while to smooth out his words: "I am not tired, it is my sister-in-law who is the most tired."
Chen An couldn't describe the joy and eagerness to please or get close to someone, he just smiled with his eyes curved and urged: "Go quickly, sister-in-law."
He thought that since he would have nothing to do later, he would wash all the leaves of the magic tree, so that his sister-in-law would have to do less work when she came back in the evening.
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