Chapter 308: Huanggou Village Doesn’t Keep Idle People
Madam Zheng was looking around outside the classroom, and Su Ying nodded.
"Let's go, sir, and see the mung bean vermicelli!" Su Ying said to Lu Zhaoshi.
"Oh, mung bean vermicelli, let's go and take a look!" Lu Zhaoshi stood up after hearing this and followed Su Ying to the vermicelli factory.
The children also followed suit, as this was a required course for them.
"Aying!" Everyone looked at Su Ying eagerly when they saw her coming.
There were more than a dozen baskets of mung bean flour drying in the yard, and it was yellow-green.
"How is the mung bean powder drying?" Su Ying grabbed a handful of mung bean powder and looked at it.
It is in pieces, not completely dry, and will break into small, moist particles with a light pinch. It is 60% dry.
"Well, that's enough!" Su Ying clapped her hands and took out a basket of mung bean powder, which weighed about seven or eight pounds.
After these mung beans are selected and washed, they are soaked for 7-8 hours (14-15 hours in winter), ground into a pulp with a stone mill and filtered.
Mung bean raw soy milk has a lot of foam, so you need to add a little green oil and stir it to remove the foam.
After filtering the soy milk, let it settle for one day. Pour out the clear water on top and keep it for later use. Take out the starch at the bottom and dry it in the sun until it is 60% dry.
Grind the starch into powder, take one-fifteenth of it, add 1.5 times the amount of cold water to make powder water, put it into a copper spoon, half immerse it in boiling water, and stir the powder water into a thin paste.
Pour it into the powder, mix thoroughly to make it semi-fluid, and place it into the funnel.
The holes of the funnel are finer than those of fern root and kudzu root powder.
The starch paste leaks out from the small holes in a line shape, falls into the boiling water in the pot, and floats on the water surface after being cooked.
Pick it up with long chopsticks, soak it in cold water for a while, then wash it in the reserved clear water to remove the yellow-green color and turn it into transparent white.
Finally, hang it on a bamboo pole to dry in the sun, and it will become transparent mung bean vermicelli after drying.
Crystal clear, not easy to break when dry, durable in storage and easy to transport.
"Is mung bean vermicelli ready?"
Lu Zhaoshi patted the powder off his apron and looked at the fans floating on the bamboo poles like silver threads in disbelief.
During the production process, Lu Zhaoshi felt itchy and put on an apron to cook vermicelli himself to experience the joy of labor.
Wang Yannian and County Magistrate Hu both participated, but they were clumsy and had a lot of starch on their faces.
"Yes, it can be dried tomorrow. You can take some back to eat! It tastes better than fern root, kudzu root, and konjac vermicelli. It's delicious." Su Ying said.
"Well, this silver thread is incredibly beautiful and finer than other vermicelli. What's the yield and how much are you planning to sell it for?" Lu Zhaoshi asked.
"One hundred kilograms of mung beans can produce about 40 kilograms of flour, which is higher than the flour yield of kudzu vine. The production process is similar.
Taking into account the purchase cost, the price is temporarily set at 100 wen per catty. Merchants will probably sell it for 150 to 200 wen per catty," Su Ying calculated.
"One hundred and fifty to two hundred coins per catty? It's so expensive, who would buy it?" Lu Zhaoshi was shocked. Su Ying was too mean!
"Sir, one hundred kilograms of mung beans can produce forty kilograms of flour. Although the flour yield is higher than that of kudzu root, there is a cost to purchase these one hundred kilograms of mung beans.
Fern roots, kudzu vine, and konjac are free, they are dug from the ground, and the raw materials have no cost!
The cost of mung bean vermicelli is much higher, and twenty cents per pound is not enough.
Secondly, mung bean vermicelli is sold to wealthy families, not ordinary people. The high cost naturally makes the selling price high, and only these people can afford it.
Furthermore, once it becomes popular, the price of mung beans will inevitably rise, so we have to leave some profit margin.”
Su Ying calculated everything for Lu Zhaoshi.
"Aying, are you still only selling this mung bean vermicelli to Fu Dongjia?" Lu Zhaoshi asked.
"Does the lord have a channel?" Su Ying asked.
"A little bit!" Lu Zhaoshi smiled.
Mrs. Cui has a caravan and made a fortune last year by selling vermicelli, honey and tea oil. Mrs. Cui has a way to sell this mung bean vermicelli.
Brown sugar was in short supply, so Lu Zhaoshi never asked Ade for help. The caravans had to buy it up on their own.
Lu Zhaoshi had a hunch that today's mung bean vermicelli would be a big hit, so he thought of scraping some for himself. Who wouldn't care if they sold it to him?
"Okay, we'll deliver every ten days. Fu Dongjia delivers every five days, and you deliver every ten days. How about that? We'll also deliver soybean oil and honey.
I can't give you the colored silk fabrics for now. I'll see how things go with Mr. Fu." Su Ying thought for a moment and said.
The governor has been very supportive of Wu County and Huanggou Village, so it is normal for him to ask for some reward.
The remaining mung bean starch was made into vermicelli by the villagers, and the courtyard was hung full of it.
Everyone learned the whole process of making mung bean vermicelli, and Su Ying didn't bother with the remaining details, leaving it to the villagers to figure out on their own.
There were a lot of mung bean dregs left, which is a good thing. Every family got a lot, including the Zhou and Song families.
Su Ying was given two bowls of mung bean dregs, including one for the village school children. "Let's go, let's have something delicious tonight!"
Not only Xiaotao, Atang, and a bunch of other children were happy, but the three officials were also delighted as they could taste the delicious food.
Take two bowls of mung bean dregs, mix one bowl with chopped vegetables, add a small amount of flour, two eggs, pepper powder and salt, stir, and fry into pepper and salt vegetarian meatballs.
It is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, crispy and delicious.
While it was still on the stove, adults and children gathered around to taste it, and only half a bowl was left when it was served on the table.
Steam another pot, mash it and mix it with honey and brown sugar, then add a little chopped winter melon candy, sesame powder and a small amount of pastry, mix it into the filling for the red bean paste buns.
"Huff!" Xiao Tao picked up the hot bean paste bun, carefully poked it open, and a stream of hot air gushed out.
The anxious Atang broke it into two halves, blew on it while eating, finished one in a few bites, and then started a second one.
"Mmm, sister, it's delicious! Delicious!" The two younger sisters loved it.
"Sir, it's delicious!" Niu Xiaobao and his group of children loved it very much. It was the first time they had eaten such buns.
"Haha, Aying, you are really imaginative. Even bean dregs can be made so delicious!" Lu Zhaoshi tasted it carefully.
This mung bean dregs is added with honey, brown sugar, winter melon candy and a little oil pastry to remove the bean smell. The filling is sweet with a lava texture, which is sweet but not greasy.
The buns are not big, one can be eaten in two or three bites, and one person can easily eat seven or eight.
"Eat, why don't you eat anymore?" Su Ying saw the children from the Zhou and Song families finished eating one and didn't reach out again.
"Sir!" the children said politely. Their eyes were full of greed, but they didn't touch it. "Sir, can we take it away?"
"Uh..." Su Ying understood that the children wanted to take it home for their families to eat.
"Take it!" Su Ying added some more buns and meatballs and divided them into two bowls.
"Thank you, sir!" The children from Zhou and Song thanked him and happily took the food home.
"Are these the newly relocated disaster victims from Hebei Province?" Lu Zhaoshi saw that these children were yellow and thin, obviously different from other children.
"Yes! They just arrived not long ago, and we haven't let them participate in the village's vermicelli making, oil pressing, beekeeping, and road construction yet. We borrowed a set of oxen and plows and asked them to reclaim the wasteland.
"We should take advantage of this time to cultivate the land quickly. After March or May, when the second rice crop is harvested, we can settle down." Su Ying said with a smile.
As fellow villagers, Su Ying and her friends tried their best to provide help. Now the men were all at the construction site and could not help build the house, so they could only live in the shack temporarily.
They get a share of anything good in the village.
Help is help, but we can't take care of everything. The most important thing is that they have to rely on their own hard work.
Huanggou Village does not keep idle people and will not indulge anyone, including disaster victims.
Only when you have given something will you cherish it, and not take the help given by others for granted.
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