Chapter 10 Eating Meat
When Shen Qingshan learned that the children had caught a rabbit on their way back, he asked his wife to get a knife so that he could show off his skills to the children.
Huang Xing looked at her three children squatting beside the bed, staring at her husband. She couldn't help but ask her daughter, "Why is Ayao here too?"
In the past, when her husband was processing prey at home, her daughter would always avoid him, but today she took the initiative to come closer.
"Mom, I want to eat meat!" Chen Yao stared at the rabbit without raising her head.
Shen Qingshan looked at the children: "Are you scared?"
The children all shook their heads.
Seeing that his daughter was still squatting there motionless, Shen Qingshan smiled and reached out to grab the tied rabbit from the basket. He grabbed the rabbit's hind legs with his left hand and twisted the rabbit's neck with his right hand.
With two clicks, the lively rabbit fainted in his hands due to dislocation of the head and neck joints.
Shen Qingshan supported himself on the bed and moved outward, took the knife handed to him by his wife, cut the blood vessels in the rabbit's neck, and the bright red blood dripped into the empty bowl on the ground.
After draining the blood from the rabbit, Shen Qingshan hung it upside down on the wooden pillar at the head of the bed. He first used a knife to make a circular incision above the sole of the rabbit's hind legs, then cut from the incision upwards towards the thigh to the lower abdomen, where the left and right sides met.
Then slowly pull down from the thigh, gradually peeling off the fur and rabbit meat.
When he peeled the forelimbs, Shen Qingshan stopped, carefully cut the forelimbs with the blade, broke the forelimbs and pushed them out from under the skin, so that a whole hairless rabbit appeared in front of everyone.
Yang Wenying had already covered her eyes while the blood was being drained, not daring to continue watching.
Chen Yao and Huang Dongsheng were so excited when they saw their father cut a knife in the belly of the rabbit skin, and a whole piece of rabbit skin appeared in front of them, which was a perfect work of art.
"Dad, can it be used like this?" Chen Yao stood up excitedly.
Shen Qingshan chopped off the rabbit's head and limbs, scraped off the remaining flesh and fascia under the skin, and washed the blood off the fur with hot water. "It's not good enough yet. We need to soak it in rice flour for seven days. Do we have any brown rice at home?"
"Yes, I'll go tan it right away." When Chen Yao went to the kitchen to get the rice bag, she found that there was not much brown rice left. "Dad, is there no other way to tan the hides?"
Shen Qingshan wiped the blood stains off the bedpost with a rag and looked at the children: "Why are you so anxious to make it? What are you going to make?"
Huang Dongsheng and Yang Wenying both looked at Chen Yao.
Chen Yao didn't expect that her father would find out. In fact, she didn't intend to hide it from her family, so she said that she wanted to make a pair of hand protection gloves for her uncle and Yang Jizong so that they could wear them when quarrying in winter.
"There is another way to nitrate leather, but the leather nitrated in this way smells a bit unpleasant." Shen Qingshan said, leaning against the head of the bed.
The three children looked at him eagerly.
Huang Xing glared at her husband and said, "Why don't you tell the kids now? Why are you keeping them in suspense?"
"My father, your grandfather, once taught me how to smoke hides. I was still a child at the time, and our family was incredibly poor. If your grandfather hadn't been a hunter, I wouldn't have been able to marry your mother..."
When Shen Qingshan talked about the past, he went off topic. If Huang Xing hadn't reminded him, the children would probably not know what to do before dark.
"Dad, then I will tan it according to what you said." Chen Yao picked up the leather and was about to leave.
As soon as she moved, the other two children followed her and tried to leave.
When the children stepped out of the room, Shen Qingshan looked at his daughter deeply and said, "Ayao, do you know how wide his palm is?"
This question stumped Chen Yao.
The original body and Yang Jizong had only simply greeted each other's parents, without any physical contact at all. How could she know how wide and big Yang Jizong's hands were?
To be honest, if Yang Wenying hadn't been around every day, she would have almost forgotten what Yang Jizong looked like.
Chen Yao felt a little guilty when her father looked at her. She turned around and asked Yang Wenying, "Do you know how big your brother's hands are?"
"I, I don't know!" Yang Wenying's cheeks seemed to be bleeding.
"Cousin, why don't we carry our loads and go to Wanhe Township tomorrow. It's heading towards the eastern suburbs. We can visit my father and cousin-in-law by the way, measure their palms, and then come back to do it." After Huang Dongsheng said this, he suddenly felt that he was quite smart.
Chen Yao's scalp tingled when she heard the words "cousin-in-law". Seeing that her parents had no objection, she had no choice but to agree in the face of their eager eyes.
"Cousin, go back and ask your aunt to come home for dinner." Chen Yao was afraid that Huang Dongsheng would say something shocking if he stayed here, so she sent him away first.
Huang Dongsheng didn't think much about it. Before leaving, he didn't forget to tell Huang Xing: "Aunt, we're having rabbit meat with brown rice tonight. We have plenty of brown rice at home, so don't make bean porridge!"
Before Huang Xing could refuse, the child had already run to the field.
"Mom, just listen to my cousin. Let's have rabbit meat with brown rice." Chen Yao pulled Huang Xing's hand and shook it back and forth, and they would return it when there was food at home.
"You all are so good at making your own decisions. I can't control you. Tell me, how do you want to eat this rabbit meat?"
Chen Yao giggled, held her mother with her left hand, and went to the kitchen with rabbit meat in her right hand.
Yang Wenying and Shen Qingshan in the room bowed and hurriedly caught up with the mother and daughter who were walking out.
Cut the rabbit meat into thumb-sized cubes, stir-fry over high heat to release the fat, add onions, ginger, and garlic and stir-fry, then add chopped bean curd sheets and soaked straw mushrooms, and the aroma will immediately fill the entire yard.
When Miao and her son came over with half a bag of brown rice, they were attracted by the fragrance in the yard and went straight into the kitchen.
"Second sister, you are really good at cooking!" Miao praised Huang Xing while scooping three bowls of brown rice, washing them clean, and putting them into the ceramic pot to cook.
Huang Xing looked at the three greedy little devils gathered in front of the stove, staring at the meat in the pot. Reluctantly, she took a spoon and scooped out a few pieces of meat: "You taste it for me!"
Yang Wenying and Huang Dongsheng looked at Chen Yao again.
As the leader, Chen Yaoqing picked up a piece and put it in his mouth: "Then let's try it."
After she gave the order, the two children took the meat from the spoon and put it into their mouths.
"Sister-in-law, you try it too!" Huang Xing handed the spoon to Miao.
"The children can just try it. I don't need it." Miao refused but failed. After the rabbit meat entered her mouth, she almost drooled at the aroma. "It's delicious."
Chen Yao was afraid that if she stayed in the kitchen, her mother would not be able to resist feeding her all the rabbit meat, so she took Yang Wenying and Huang Dongsheng to the yard to learn to read using a sand table.
Mr. Wenying started teaching again, and with a new student of the same age, he became even stricter.
In her opinion, Chen Yao is extremely talented, but Huang Dongsheng is the one who gives the teachers the most headaches in class.
Even the simplest character "人" (person) was written crookedly like a crawling worm.
Yang Wenying and Huang Dongsheng were young after all, and both of them lacked patience. As they were learning, they started arguing with each other, and in the end, neither of them was willing to give in.
"If you don't study hard, when our business grows bigger in the future, how can you help A Yao manage it when you can't read or read?" Yang Wenying was so angry that she threw the dead branch in her hand.
Huang Dongsheng raised his eyes to look at his cousin, asking her if it was true.
Chen Yao pushed her sand table over and asked Yang Wenying to check her handwriting. After receiving Yang Wenying's praise, she hugged the sand table and said, "Mr. Wenying is right. Cousin, you must study hard."
Huang Dongsheng instantly lost his fighting spirit. He gritted his teeth to smooth out the words on the sand table and started writing again.
Yang Wenying raised her chin high like a victorious rooster. Seeing Chen Yao stand up and leave, she immediately reached out to stop her: "Are you going to slack off again?"
"Mr. Wenying, I have already finished all my homework for today, so how can I be considered lazy?"
"Then I'll teach you arithmetic."
"No, I have to try to use the smoke method to make rabbit skins with saltpeter. You can teach my cousin first." Chen Yao put the sand table back into the house and took out the raw hides from the kitchen.
Huang Xing and Miao, who were eavesdropping in the kitchen, saw the child come in and immediately pretended to be busy. When the child left, their eyes met and they both laughed.
I saw Chen Yao set up a few dead branches in the sheltered corner of the wall, placed the raw hide on the dead branches, and lit firewood underneath. Soon, a cloud of smoke drifted in the yard, covering up the aroma of meat.
When Shen Qingshan smelled the wood smoke in the yard, he knew that his daughter must be tanning leather according to his method.
This child is exactly the same as he was when he was young. He dares to think and act, and is not afraid of making mistakes at all.
Chen Yao was coughing from the smoke and ran to the main house, covering her mouth and nose: "Dad, how long will it take?"
"After an hour, touch the leather. If there are any hard spots on the edges or corners, rub them vigorously until the whole leather becomes soft. Then rub it with wood ash a few times." Shen Qingshan pointed at his daughter's face, "Wipe off any ash."
Chen Yao stretched out her hand and wiped it, and three more gray shadows appeared on her face.
Shen Qingshan looked at his daughter's cat-like face and couldn't help laughing out loud.
Huang Xing and Miao came into the room with dinner and took a look, then they also laughed.
"Go out and wash up, then call them to come for dinner." Huang Xing pushed her daughter out and put the dishes on the table.
After seeing his daughter go out, Shen Qingshan wanted his wife to help him sit on a stool to eat with everyone. He didn't want to sit alone on the bed.
His request was rejected by his wife. He sat on the bed with a bowl in his hands, looking pitifully at everyone sitting around the table to eat.
The adults looked at the three children eating voraciously and urged them: "Don't choke, there's more in the pot."
"There's enough food, you can eat as much as you want tonight." Miao took a spoon and poured a spoonful of soup on her son's rice.
After finishing a bowl of rice, Chen Yao looked at the shiny soup, stood up and added another bowl of brown rice, mixing it with the soup and putting it into her mouth.
It smells so good, how can meat be so delicious?
She finally realized her wish of eating three bowls of rice in a row tonight.
"Burp——" Chen Yao put down her bowl and chopsticks and burped. Even the most well-educated Yang Wenying did the same.
Not to mention Huang Dongsheng.
The three children were taken to the yard by their parents to take a walk to help digest their food.
"It would be great if we could eat meat every day in the future?" Huang Dongsheng couldn't help but sigh.
Chen Yao looked at the fertile fields in the distance and said, "It will definitely happen."
"Cousin, I'm going to see my father tomorrow. Can I tell him about my business these days?"
Yang Wenying also looked at Chen Yao.
"Of course, we have to let uncle know that everyone hasn't given up on them and is working together to find a way to bring them home."
After Chen Yao finished speaking, she was a little stunned. Unconsciously, she had subconsciously regarded this place as her home, and she had a family around her who would work together.
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