The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Several days have passed in a flash, and in the blink of an eye, the Dragon Boat Festival is almost here.
Yang Donghu had been looking out with his head tilted since early morning, but no one appeared on the path leading to the mountain until it got dark.
He couldn't help feeling a little disappointed, and he didn't know whether Zhao Luochuan would be able to come back tomorrow. The day after tomorrow was the Dragon Boat Festival, and it would be better to eat the rice dumplings on that day. Although there were always a lot of leftovers every time he made rice dumplings, they didn't taste the same if he ate them after that day.
The weather was particularly hot after the rain and people had no appetite for anything. Zhu Cuilan scooped out a few bowls of cool noodles for her family. The cucumbers in the vegetable garden grew big and straight. She picked some fresh ones, cut them, and put them in a bowl, then poured chili oil and garlic juice on them. It was a perfect meal for this hot weather.
The chili oil was freshly made today. The chilies in the yard grew well and could not be eaten up every meal. Zhu Cuilan took advantage of the scorching sun and dried two baskets of chilies on the roof. She took a few dried ones, put them in a stone mortar and ground them into powder. Then she poured hot oil on them and the spicy flavor was immediately stimulated.
The rest can be saved until the pepper seedlings wilt in autumn and winter, so that they can be used to stew meat.
After the garlic sprouts in the vegetable garden are harvested, they are left in the field to grow slowly. After the wheat harvest, the garlic sprouts turn yellow and wither. Then they are dug out of the field, tied up and hung on the door to dry. They can be stored until winter without sprouting.
The garlic has not been harvested yet. If you want to eat it now, just pick it from the ground. The freshly unearthed garlic is still tender, unlike the garlic that has been dried for a long time and has a layer of old skin on the outside. After removing the outermost layer covered with soil, the inside is edible, and the taste is not as spicy as the garlic that has been stored for a long time.
Zhao He took a job in the town and will stay at his host's house tonight. He will not come back at night. Only his brother and Zhu Cuilan are at home.
There was no man at home, so Zhu Cuilan cooked early and started preparing to wash up before it got dark.
At night, the remaining charcoal fire in the cooking stove was still emitting sparks. Zhu Cuilan took advantage of the hot pot to clean it, added half a pot of water, and let the sparks underneath slowly warm up, saving the need to burn firewood again later.
Water that is not meant to be drunk does not need to be boiled, as long as it is warm to the touch.
The people in the village are always frugal. When the summer heat comes, they don't even need firewood to boil water. They just put a large basin of water in the yard in the morning. When they go to check it in the evening, after a day of heat, when they put their hands in it, it is already warm.
Zhu Cuilan was looking at her cucumber seedlings in the vegetable garden. Each seedling had three or four cucumbers.
She picked the tender ones and kept the larger ones with yellowed skin as cucumber seeds.
"Dong Hu, you and Fang Chu should scoop out the water from the pot and wash up. Check if the water is hot. If it's too hot, add some cold water. It's getting dark soon. Let's go to bed early. We still have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
Zhu Cuilan stuck her head out of the vegetable garden and shouted towards the door, then turned back to look at her eggplant seedlings.
Yang Donghu responded with a sigh and went into the house to get a wooden basin.
The weather is hot now, and I can sweat all over just sitting there doing nothing at noon. If I don’t wipe off the sticky residue on my body every day, it will be uncomfortable to lie in bed.
Tomorrow's work is all about preparing for the Dragon Boat Festival. The glutinous rice at home is from last year. It is old and has a red layer on it that has gone bad and cannot be eaten. I have to go to town to buy new rice tomorrow.
There are no reed leaves for wrapping rice dumplings, but you don’t need to buy them. They grow everywhere along the river, and you can just pick a handful.
However, the reed leaves must be scalded in boiling water before they can be used, otherwise they will easily break and the rice dumplings made with them will all break before they are even put into the pot.
We don’t have ducks at home and we don’t have duck eggs. According to custom, we must eat salted duck eggs during the Dragon Boat Festival.
There was an elderly lady named Ju in their village who was very good at pickling duck eggs. Every yolk was golden and sandy when peeled, and oil would ooze out when poked with chopsticks. However, the egg whites were not too salty and could be eaten plain.
At this time, people in their village who don’t raise ducks will tell Mrs. Ju in advance and ask her to pickle more ducks so that they can buy them with money or exchange them for other things.
If you have duck eggs at home, you can bring them to Old Lady Ju to help pickle them. She charges one penny for each egg.
Old Mrs. Ju is childless and alone in her old age. There is only a big yellow dog in her family and no one else to vent her anger on.
Few people in the village knew her last name or given name. They only knew that her name seemed to contain the character "ju", so everyone in the village called her Old Lady Ju.
Everyone in the village understood that she was an old woman and was having a hard time in her later years. On weekdays, a few kind-hearted people in the village would find ways to send her things. It was not easy to have a job to support herself, and one penny was not expensive at all, after all, salt was needed to pickle duck eggs.
Zhu Cuilan picked up about twenty eggs and planned to exchange them with Old Lady Ju for duck eggs tomorrow. She planned to exchange about ten eggs. If there was one egg for each person in the family, it would already be six eggs. Men who do hard labor are tired, so at least two eggs per person would be enough to eat.
Unpickled duck eggs had to be exchanged for two chicken eggs, and pickled duck eggs had to be exchanged for three eggs. The eggs Zhu Cuilan picked up were almost enough to exchange for seven, and if there were not enough, she could use silver to buy them.
You can't take too many eggs from the remaining basket. We haven't saved enough eggs for Yunqiao's one-month celebration. If you take too many, there won't be enough by then.
As night fell, the whole village became quiet. Yang Donghu tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. He didn't feel it when he was busy during the day, but when he had free time, he missed Zhao Luochuan even more.
Zhao Fangchu's breathing beside him was even and long. Yang Donghu didn't dare to turn over too loudly for fear of waking up the sleeping person.
The window was opened a little for ventilation. Yang Donghu looked at the bright crescent moon outside the house through the gap, silently imagining the appearance of Zhao Luochuan's eyebrows and eyes in his mind.
A cool breeze blew over, and the person who was full of longing closed his eyes, and fell into a deep sleep with a slight smile on his lips.
The next morning, the roosters crowed sharply, and when they woke up, there was a thick fog. Yang Donghu and Zhao Fangchu were both young and liked to stay in bed, so Zhu Cuilan didn't call them. She got up early and walked through the thick fog to go to Old Lady Ju's house to exchange duck eggs.
The work was divided yesterday. Today, Zhu Cuilan and Tianniu's grandmother, Aunt Zhang, went to the town to buy glutinous rice, while Yang Donghu and Zhao Fangchu went to look for reed leaves.
It was still a little cold in the morning, so Zhu Cuilan gathered her clothes. Old Lady Ju lived in a low house at the easternmost end of the village. The eaves of the door were very low, as if to highlight her hunched back.
The yellow dog lying under the persimmon tree at the door is very human-like. It doesn't bark when it sees people, but opens its big mouth and breathes out, wagging its tail more happily than the wind blowing through dogtail grass.
Old Mrs. Ju is old and has poor hearing, so Zhu Cuilan calls her in a louder voice than usual.
"Old Lady Ju."
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