Aunt Yang has a wide range of business in the team. Every family that has a wedding banquet asks Aunt Yang, the chef, for help.
Even setting up a few simple tables requires help from others and borrowing equipment.
With Aunt Yang around, these things won't be a problem.
After hearing their purpose, Aunt Yang patted her chest and said generously:
"Leave these things to me. I will definitely take care of them for you. You don't have to worry about the tables, chairs, furniture, and manpower. I will take care of them all for you."
"It's great to have an auntie. Thank you, auntie."
After Yang Mumu took Aunt Yang aside to express her gratitude, Gu Xingzhou continued to ask sincerely.
"Aunt, I would also like to ask what dishes we want to serve. Do you have the menus used for wedding banquets of members in the previous brigade? Let's decide on the dishes first and sort out what we need. When we go to the commune tomorrow, we can bring back whatever is missing."
"Yes, yes, yes. Auntie has the final say on the dishes on the table and can give you some suggestions. Wait a minute."
Aunt Yang went into the house, took out a notebook and flipped through it.
"When the members of our brigade got married, they usually had four small dishes, eight large bowls, and six-inch plates, which means twelve bowls. Occasionally, there were some grand banquets with eight dishes and eight bowls. It's up to you to choose."
She turned to one of the pages and handed it to Yang Mumu.
The dishes are written on it.
"The dishes written above are the 12 dishes that the blind Liu family from our team had when they married their daughter-in-law last year. You can take a look and see if there are any dishes you want to change, or if there are any that are not available this season, just write them down below."
Yang Mumu took the pen handed to her by her aunt, opened the notebook and looked at it one by one with Gu Xingzhou. Aunt Yang gave examples and continued:
"It's a lean season, so there aren't any seasonal vegetables. But there are some seasonal wild vegetables. For example, bracken has recently grown on our mountain. We can get some from the mountain and bring them back to replace the pickled cucumbers that are not available above."
"Well, Auntie, this is good. Then replace the pickled cucumbers with bracken salad."
Yang Mumu took a pen and underlined the pickled cucumber and wrote "Cold Braised Ferns".
"Okay, keep watching. If you have any ideas for other dishes, just ask me and I'll help you think of some."
Gu Xingzhou pointed at the pickled radish on top and said, "Mumu, how about changing this to pickled salted eggs? We still have a lot of pickled eggs."
These eggs were laid by the three chickens raised by Yang Mumu and Gu Xingzhou respectively. They were not short of money, so they did not need to exchange the eggs for money. They kept all the eggs for themselves. Since there were too many eggs, they saved them and made salted eggs.
Yang Mumu thought about it and there seemed to be two jars of salted eggs, so she set up five tables of food, which was enough for the meal.
"Okay, let's change it to salted eggs. It will look better if you cut it in half."
Yang Mumu did not touch the other meat dishes. Yang Mumu looked up and whispered to Gu Xingzhou:
"How about we prepare eight dishes and eight bowls, 16 dishes, and we can try our luck at the beach and the mountain tomorrow for the remaining four dishes. We can also kill the three chickens we each feed, so there will be six chickens here."
"Okay, that's settled then."
Gu Xingzhou took out his notebook and pen and copied down the dishes on Aunt Yang's notebook. After he finished writing, he pulled Aunt Yang aside to ask what else needed to be prepared besides the dishes.
Aunt Yang told her everything she knew. She said that Gu Xingzhou wrote down each thing in a notebook. After confirming the items and coordinating everything, he gave Aunt Yang 5 yuan. After taking the money, Aunt Yang went to the brigade to organize people, borrow tables, chairs and benches, and started to work actively.
Aunt Yang had always remembered that they had saved Xiangyang, and this time she put all her efforts into organizing a good wedding banquet for the two of them.
Yang Mumu and Gu Xingzhou also went back to the Youth League Home to get busy, taking the list of dishes and preparing them one by one.
There was no shortage of condiments. With Lu Qianyao's golden finger, they had gotten enough oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea to last for several years. All they had to do was put them out.
I also prepared the dishes I had, such as fried peanuts, and took out a bag of peanuts and gave them to a few friends to shell.
As for the ferns on the mountain, they don't need to do it themselves, but find helpers.
Yang Mumu went to ask the children who had made saltpeter with him for help. He found 5 children, gave each of them 10 cents to go to the mountain to find ferns. The five children wanted to go to the mountain to find ferns that night, but were stopped by Yang Mumu.
"You go tomorrow. Safety is the most important thing. If you do a good job, you will get lots of candy when you give me bracken tomorrow."
"Okay, Sister Mumu, just wait for us, we will definitely find a lot for you."
Yang Mumu nodded and gave each of them two candies as motivation for their work. The five children patted their chests excitedly and promised, then went home happily with the candies.
After finishing this, Yang Mumu went back to the Youth League Home. When he arrived at the yard, he saw Aunt Yang had already brought people over with tables, chairs, benches, pots and pans, and Gu Xingzhou was setting up a cooking table and stove in the yard.
It's a bit like inviting a dragon to help organize a banquet.
Yang Mumu couldn't help but sigh, the efficiency is really high.
She also joined the team and started to work. With everyone working together, the speed was fast, and the preparations were almost done around nine o'clock in the evening.
Now there are only some vegetables and meat left, and I need to go to the commune to buy them early tomorrow morning.
There are also four new dishes, two from the sea and two from the mountains.
Friends sit together and divide up tomorrow's work.
Shen Xingci raised his hand, "I packed two dishes from the mountains. I will go hunting in the mountains tomorrow morning. I will cook whatever I catch. It happens to be spring now, and the animals in the mountains will start to look for food after hibernating. I think it should be a good hunt."
Song Yan was good at catching seafood, so he stepped forward and said, "Then I'll go catch some seafood and collect a bucket of seafood."
Liu Qingwan looked at everyone and directly suggested: "Let's all go to the beach. The more people there are, the more we can do. You two can go get your marriage certificate. Then you can take care of the food at the commune."
He Yuanyuan and Xia Zhizhi both nodded in agreement.
Yang Mumu made the final decision: "Okay, let's do it this way. We will come back early and then we can do it together."
Gu Xingzhou said what he was thinking, "If it's not enough, I will go to the brigade and ask the captain to borrow a fishing boat and go out to sea."
Everyone nodded.
After things were settled, everyone went back to their homes to rest and gather their strength for the big battle tomorrow.
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