063 – The Meal at the Relative’s House Is Not Delicious (1)
“Mulberry wood.” Qin Mian was surprised and held the little bow more tightly, “So this is mulberry wood. As far as I know, mulberry is a very precious wood, equal to yellow pear[1]. It can submerge or semi-submerge in water and its texture is stable and less warped. The core material of mulberry wood is only the thickness of a finger and there are yellow-like gold threads inside. This gold thread is not an annual ring, but only grows one in three to five years. It’s not easy to find such wood.”
Lei Tie said: “As long as you like it.”
Qin Mian said: “Like it very much.”
He took the bow and arrows into the bedroom and cherishingly hung it with Lei Tie’s big bow. When he came out, Lei Tie had served the food on the table.“How about going up the mountain tomorrow?” Qin Mian asked excitedly.
Lei Tie said: “Practice shooting fixed target first, then practice shooting moving target.”
“So troublesome?” Qin Mian was disappointed.
Lei Tie lightly said: “How to run without learning to walk?”
That was quite reasonable. Qin Mian had nothing to reply with. He could only concede and got up to slice meat for White Spot…
The next day, Lei Tie inserted two sticks in the yard with an old straw hat hung as a target in the middle and asked Qin Mian to aim and shoot.
Qin Mian had only got his own bow and arrows. He was full of interest. With Lei Tie’s guidance, he shot again and again tirelessly. At first, he failed to hit the target. After shooting seven to eight arrows, he found the feeling that he could hit the straw hat accurately and it was getting closer to the center.In the beginning, Lei Tie only enticed him to have fun, but seeing that he had some talent, he (LT) was a little surprised and taught more seriously. First, he made him (QM) shoot an arrow 2 zhang (6.6 m) away from the straw hat and then retreated to 3 zhang (9.9 m) away, gradually widening the distance.
Qin Mian just began to learn archery. His arms were sore after some time and finished his practice at noon.
Lei Tie said: “From now on, only practice an hour every day. Haste makes waste.”
Qin Mian nodded. He also felt that it was a bit unbearable; he could not even lift his arms. “What to eat for lunch?”
Lei Tie answered: “Hot pot, I make.”
Qin Mian smiled and lay relaxed on the settee, “Sure. You make it, I wait to eat.”
Lei Tie was not so particular about making hot pot as Qin Mian. After the water boiled, he poured in the seasoning, tasted the flavor, added salt when it tasted light, and put in the sliced meat, meatballs, potatoes, spinach and cabbage leaves brought back from the shop yesterday. By the time the meat and potatoes cooked, the spinach and cabbage leaves had turned too soft to even pick up with chopsticks.
Lei Tie’s monotonous face showed a rare look of embarrassment. Before Qin Mian uttered ridicules, he calmly picked up some vegetables and cabbage leaves and added them in.
Fortunately, the taste was not bad.
At the thought that this man rarely cooked a meal, Qin Mian only laughed silently for a moment but did not tease him.
The rice was not cooked and just eating dishes was not enough. The two men put noodles into the hot pot to cook together.
Since there was a noodle maker, it was very convenient to eat noodles. Priory, a huge mass of noodles was pressed out with the noodle maker, hung to dry, and cut with scissors. The noodles were then kept in a dry drawer and cooked whenever they wanted to. It was just that there was no drying agent in this era that the dried noodles could only be kept for a month at most. Nevertheless, this was good enough.
At the dining table, Qin Mian mentioned about the business, “There are fewer people eating spicy hot soup recently. In the afternoon, we’ll stay at home and make some radish balls, fish balls, sweet potato balls and vegetable balls. Do some trial sales first. If it’s good to sell, hire people to do it.” If it were not for making more money to expand the business, he definitely was not patient to do this every day.
Lei Tie nodded.
After lunch, they bought some sweet potatoes, potatoes, radishes, carrots and fish from the villagers.
Making sweet potato balls were the simplest. After the sweet potatoes were peeled, they were steamed. Then they were pressed into mashed sweet potatoes, added in some flour, mixed well, and kneaded into small balls. When the oil heated up, put them in and fried until they were golden yellow, chewy and fragrant. Making radish balls were easy. The radishes were chopped and mixed together with minced meat, eggs, flour and seasoning, and kneaded into balls before frying. The main ingredients of vegetable balls were potatoes and carrots. The potatoes were steamed and pressed into puree, then mixed with shredded carrots, egg white and various seasonings before they were also fried.
Fish balls were relatively difficult to make. After the fish were cleaned, removed the bones and scraped the fish flesh with a knife. Next, added appropriate amount of ginger, salt and water and beat it into puree with a rolling pin. Then, added egg white, stirred in the same direction with chopsticks, added a little flour according to the consistency, and kneaded the fish paste into balls. Afterwards, added water in the wok, put the fish balls in over a low heat, and then turned to high heat. When all the fish balls floated, they could be fished out, soaked in cold water, and drained.
Qin Mian and Lei Tie kept busy until dark. They made more than 100 of sweet potato balls, radish balls and vegetable balls, while fish balls were less, at about 80.
There were no beef and mutton in the village. Otherwise, they could make some beef balls and mutton balls.
Dinner was rice and hot pot. A dozen of each kind of food balls was served. Qin Mian and Lei Tie both liked fish balls the best.
Sweet potato balls were sweet and estimated to be more popular with women.
The emergence of several kinds of food balls had once again brought a crowd of people into Eating Savory Restaurant.
Time flew and in a blink of an eye, the twelfth lunar month ushered in.
The words “New Year” were mentioned more often. The villagers who had raised fat pigs for the New Year’s festival lined up for Uncle Liao to slaughter them. Every few days in the village, one could hear the shrill cry of the pigs.
When it came to New Year’s pig slaughtering, one should mention the pig-slaughter meal. As the name suggested, one should invite people for a meal after slaughtering the New Year’s pig. One usually invited relatives and friends, as well as fellow villagers who they got along well.
The first pig-slaughter meal that Qin Mian and Lei Tie ate was Zhang Dashuan’s and they did not expect to have another pig-slaughter meal after a day——
Upon seeing Lei Xiangyi and an old man about 50 years old walking through the gate of the courtyard, Qin Mian was stunned for a moment before he remembered that the old man seemed to be Lei Tie’s paternal uncle-in-law, Dong Daniu. They met at the time Wei Shi married in.
“Uncle-in-law, please come in.” Lei Tie took a lukewarm attitude.
Qin Mian poured Dong Daniu a cup of hot tea.
After entering the door, Dong Daniu looked around slowly and very carefully, as if measuring the value of the items in the house. After a good while, he started to talk with a smile, “I won’t drink tea as I still have to go to a few more houses. My family will slaughter pig tomorrow, so I’m here to invite you two to pig-slaughter meal. Tomorrow, come a bit earlier.”
Qin Mian said: “We’ll definitely go earlier. It’s fine to just let third brother come to inform us, how could we have the cheek to let uncle-in-law even come in person?”
Dong Daniu cheerfully said: “When you had house warming, our family was occupied, so no one came over. Today, I just took this opportunity to have a look. Your aunt and I are relieved to see that you two are doing well.” He did not mention about “splitting from the family”, only “house warming”.
Qin Mian smiled and remained silent. It matter not if one just casually listened to these words. As far as he knew, Dong Daniu had three sons in all. Even if there was something big happen to him, did he not even have time to send someone over to sit down for a while? Now he wanted to invite them to the pig-slaughter meal, it was strange no matter how one would think.
Dong Daniu seemed to have something else to do. He sat down for a while and left.
Lei Xiangyi deliberately slowed down a few steps and said in a low voice: “Uncle-in-law’s youngest son has been in prison. You two should be careful at their house tomorrow.”
Qin Mian was taken aback.
Lei Tie was also a bit shocked. He had been away for many years, so he really did not know the affairs of his relatives.
“Why did he go to prison?” Qin Mian promptly asked Lei Xiangyi.
Lei Xiangyi sighed. “It’s said that uncle-in-law and aunt spoiled Cousin Wei too much. When he’s young, he snuck around. When he’s grown up, he even dared to steal cow. He was fined 10 silver taels and sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment. He only came back in the seventh lunar month. He’s supposed to learn a lesson after a year in prison, but who knows he still doesn’t learn well after he came out – Anyway, be careful tomorrow.”
For the peasants of Great Xia Dynasty, ploughing and harvesting were their lifeblood. Therefore, the sentence was heavy.
After Lei Xiangyi left, Qin Mian thought for a moment and said tentatively to Lei Tie: “How about you go by yourself tomorrow?”
Lei Tie fixedly looked at him and did not speak.
Qin Mian also felt that he lacked loyalty and corrected himself as he said: “Alright, go together.”
Lei Tie said: “I won’t let him bully you.”
Qin Mian leaned against the armrest of the settee and looked at him, “Who is afraid of this? Anyway, I’ve learnt Kung Fu with you for so long and surely it doesn’t mean that I can’t beat him? I just don’t think it’s going to be any good tomorrow.”
After breakfast the next day, Qin Mian and Lei Tie drove the ox cart to the old house to meet with the people in the old house. All the people of the old house were outside and Lei Xiangzhi happened to be on holiday this day, so he also went together. Because of the large number of people and that the Dong’s village was a little far away, Lei Daqiang borrowed a donkey cart from a villager.
Qin Mian, Lei Tie, Lei Xiangren, Lei Xiangyi, Lei Xiangli and Lei Xiangzhi took the ox cart, while Lei Daqiang, Du Shi, Wei Shi, Qian Shi, Zhao Shi, Lei Chuntao and the three children took the donkey cart. The two families went to Dong’s village in great procession.
It had not rain recently. Although the village road was a dirt road, it was easy to tread on. The donkey cart wandered for nearly an hour. After passing through the dirt road between two ponds, it entered a village surrounded by willows and locust trees. Lei Tie pulled up after it.
This was Dong’s village.
Lei Daqiang’s older sister Lei Xiaoyun and his older brother-in-law Dong Daniu went to the door to greet them with a young man about 20 years old.
Lei Xiangyi whispered to Qin Mian: “That’s Cousin Wei.”
Qin Mian looked at Dong Wei secretly. He was quite tall, slightly fat, and actually had a fair skin with a pair of small bean-like eyes that wasted on a pair of double eyelids. He whirled around and seemed dishonest at first glance.
“Third brother, Sister Du, Sister Wei, you are all here. Come on in.” Lei Shi took Du Shi and Wei Shi’s arms affectionately, and pointed to Qin Mian as she said to Dong Wei, “These are your Cousin Tie and Brother Mian. Why don’t you greet them?”
Dong Wei looked at Qin Mian up and down with an almost unbridled look, and then glanced at Lei Tie. He smiled ambiguously and said in well-manner: “Cousin Tie, Brother Mian, please come inside.”
First impressions were really important. Qin Mian did not like Dong Wei because he did not call him “cousin” in public. Dong Wei only greeted him and Lei Tie, but turned a blind eye to Lei Xiangren and the others, saying that he did not have a favorable impression on them. Even a three-year-old child would not believe him.
Note:
[1] Also known as yellow rosewood; a precious wood because it is extremely stable, it does not deform, crack, or bend regardless of cold or heat, and has a certain degree of toughness, which can be used to make all kinds of special-shaped furniture.
