Chapter 122 Making Chopped Peppers
The young people in the village have their own cooking methods, and the old men are not far behind.
They had nothing to do, so they began to weave bamboo hats out of bamboo.
During the day, I took him to Qiaotou and set up a stall selling bamboo hats.
This bamboo hat is loved by many fishermen because it has a large brim and can block the sun.
When many people came, they saw them selling bamboo hats, and everyone bought one and wore it.
This thing is breathable and cool when worn on the head. It is very suitable for wearing under the sun in summer.
It’s not like a cloth hat, which is very hot to wear.
The bamboo hats made by the old people are actually the same thing as the bamboo hats.
But they are all made of thin bamboo strips, very delicate.
After Zhang An's suggestion, they also woven many patterns and fonts on the hats.
This kind of bamboo hat looks much more delicate and beautiful than a bamboo hat.
And when the old men in the village were weaving it, they also brushed it with tung oil.
This can be used regardless of whether it is sunny or rainy. It is really a very convenient thing.
And now it is not just these fishermen who often come to Changqing Village.
There are also some people who come specifically to play in the farm next door, and they will walk along the road to Changqing Village to take a look.
In the past, because the road into the village was not good and there was mud everywhere, people were reluctant to go inside.
But now that the cement road into the village has been repaired, many people are willing to spend a few minutes to walk in.
Look at this vast river and this village in the mountains.
In addition, Zhang An planted the guide sign he made at the stone pass.
From time to time, a group of guests would come to Zhang An's house. Wang Fang was so happy to see these people.
This is not a guest, this is all money.
Now Wang Fang no longer stays in the old house. Except for feeding pigs and at night, she stays in the yard by the river.
Lest someone come to your door and miss out on business because you are not here.
Everything shows that the village is developing in a good direction.
Of course, as more people came, littering began to appear on the ground.
However, fishermen still have basic qualities. Even if some people throw garbage on the ground, they will not throw it into the river.
One is because there are no trash cans in the village, and the second is that everyone has not developed the habit of not littering.
In the end, Zhang An discovered this problem and quickly talked to his uncle about it.
Zhang Jianwen thought this was nothing, but Zhang An came back from later generations.
We know that littering everywhere is not a good thing over time.
So Zhang An took the serious side and told the old village chief, and even painted cakes for him.
If you say this, the place is already full of rubbish. What will you do if more people come in the future?
Sure enough, when the old village chief heard this, he also took it seriously. He hired Carpenter Lin to make several large trash cans and put them by the river overnight.
And he also took the initiative to speak kindly to a group of outsiders about this matter.
Although there will still be some garbage on the ground at the end, it is only a little bit.
Most of them will be thrown into the trash can by themselves.
After this period of busy work in the village, everyone took the crops home.
While the sun is nice now, everyone must quickly dry the newly collected food.
Otherwise, if the grain is not dried when winter comes, it will sprout and the grain will be useless.
Therefore, everyone regarded this period of time as a break, quickly dried the food, and then stored it.
After the temperature drops in a few days, everyone will be busy planting seeds again.
Today's meeting, Wang Fang was called by other maids in the village early in the morning to go to the town to attend the meeting.
Zhang Jianguo, on the other hand, took the big dark horse of his family out to show off.
I was busy harvesting crops some time ago, and it was not only the people in this family who were tired.
The animals at home also work very hard, more tired than people.
The more Zhang Jianguo looks at the dark horse in his family, the more satisfied he becomes.
The only thing he was dissatisfied with was that he wouldn't let those mares get close.
Now many families in the village and outside the village have come to ask how much they would pay to breed their big black horses to their mares.
What can Zhang Jianguo say, is this a matter of money or not?
This is because his own big black will not let those mares get close at all, otherwise he will raise his hooves.
Before, there was a person from another village who didn’t believe in evil, so he brought his own horse over and wanted to try it.
But in the end, the little mare was kicked crazy by Dahei.
From then on, no one dared to lead a horse to come to find him unhappy.
Zhang An is shaking his head when he looks at this big black man, this guy who doesn’t know the style.
Every time I see Zhang Jianguo taking Dahei out for fun, the other animals in the family are particularly envious.
But no matter what Zhang An said, Zhang Jianguo did not dare to take other animals out.
I am afraid that after they go out, they will run into the mountains and I will not be able to chase them back.
"Dad, where did you get the civet cat cubs?"
Zhang An was about to make lunch, when he saw his father coming back with the horse.
He was holding a tawny cat cub in his hand.
“Isn’t this what your mother always said that she wanted to ask a tabby cat to come back and raise it to look after mice? I just passed by your uncle Jianzhong’s house and saw their female cat giving birth to cubs. The month is also here, so let me "Bring one back."
In the past six months, Zhang An's family has been hearing the noise of mice at night for some reason, which has never happened before.
Maybe the conditions at home have improved, but mice have come to visit me.
There are many animals in Zhang An’s house now, and Wang Fang doesn’t dare to put rat poison in the house.
Worrying that the mice will arrive without medicine, it would not be good to poison these things in your home.
So I have been thinking about asking a local civet cat to come back and raise it.
When Zhang An reached out to take it, Zhang Jianguo took his hand away from the kitten's eyes.
When he first brought it, he kept covering the kitten’s eyes with his hands.
Because the two families were too close together, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to support the family if I took it over, so I secretly ran back home while I was raising it.
So when you bring it back, you need to cover its eyes with your hands.
It can still remember the way back.
Zhang An was holding this little thing and could clearly feel that it was shaking.
This is a manifestation of fear. After all, I have arrived in a strange place and left my familiar mother and brothers and sisters.
“Meow~”
A crisp voice came out from Zhang An’s hand.
This kitten probably looks like a full moon and is not very big.
The nose and the pads on the four cat paws are still pink.
Zhang An held it and walked around several rooms in the house.
Walked around the table and stairs a few times.
This is to let the kitten recognize its home. After two more turns, it will become familiar with it.
This is what families in rural areas do when they ask for babies from other families.
Later, Zhang An found a random basket and made a nest for it.
In fact, there is no need to make a nest for a cat.
When it gets familiar with it, it will find a place to sleep on its own.
But the cat is very small now, so Zhang An will take care of it.
Dahu and the others now saw a new friend coming to the house, so they all crawled over to watch.
The little cat had never seen this scene before. Looking at the giant creatures in front of him, the little tabby trembled with fear. "Go, go, go and play by yourself, don't scare it here."
Zhang An did it on purpose when he saw these dogs. He reached out and patted them. The three brothers were driven away.
Since ancient times, everyone knows that cats and dogs are at odds with each other, so why are chickens and dogs at odds with each other?
Zhang An’s big rooster also followed the three big dogs at odds.
Every time there was a quarrel, the yard would be filled with ashes. It was really a chaotic situation.
But Dahu, a few sensible people, treated them as a joke.
So after a long time, Zhang An didn't care about them and just let them play as long as he didn't die.
If it were someone else’s dog with such a big size, the rooster would probably have already entered the pot.
Put the kitten on the ground. It seems to have recognized the basket Zhang An gave it just now.
As soon as he left Zhang An, he ran to the basket and lay down on his stomach.
Seeing that it was so well-behaved, Zhang An didn't pay much attention to it. He just drove away the big tigers to save them from making trouble with the kitten.
The big tiger did the same. Seeing Zhang An not letting them play with the kittens, he ran back to the kennel.
Looking at the time, I felt that Wang Fang was about to come back from the show.
Zhang An lifted the rice steamer that had been steamed on the coal stove and prepared to start cooking.
"Xiao An, who sent you the kitten?"
When Wang Fang came back, she saw a little tabby cat at home.
I asked with some joy where the kitten came from.
She has thought for too long about feeding a cat to the house, so that she will be cleaner when she sleeps in the future.
I tried to look for them some time ago but could not find them because there were no suitable cats in the village yet. Most of them were half-grown cats raised by other people.
I couldn’t raise the cat after I brought it home, so I had to wait for the female cat to give birth to cubs.
“When my dad came back from his horse, he brought it from Uncle Jianzhong’s house. It seemed that their female cat had given birth to cubs.”
At this time, Zhang An happened to finish cooking the last dish. .
Seeing that my mother was back, I immediately set the table for dinner.
"Dad, my mother is back and ready to eat."
While Zhang An was cooking, Zhang Jianguo was not idle either.
Wear the last red peppers recovered from home and braid them with straw.
Firstly, it is convenient to hang it in the yard to dry. Even if it rains and there is no sun, it can also be hung on the top of the coal stove to dry.
The second thing is that after it is dried, you can find a ventilated place to hang it, so it will not break easily.
Zhang An’s family makes dozens of kilograms of dried chili seeds every year.
Zhang An’s family didn’t grow much chili pepper this year, just two plots of land in the back yard.
But there are quite a lot of peppers this year. Even though Wang Fang has picked them several times, there have been several big baskets picked in the past few days.
"Mom, will our family still make sour chili this year?"
Zhang An asked while scooping rice for his parents.
In June, although Wang Fang took the time to make a few cans of sour chili, Li Hongbin ended up taking away two cans.
There is not much left to eat at home.
If we don’t make it, we probably won’t have enough to eat until the Chinese New Year.
Whether it is sour chili, oil chili or paste chili, it is still chili.
But what kind of chili pepper should be used in any dish to make it taste right?
“If you want to chop, I will chop a few more cans this time. I saw that there are dozens of kilograms of fresh chili seeds left at the end of the field.”
Anyway, just do it. After eating, Wang Fang took out the pepper-chopping basin and stubble knife at home and washed them.
This stubble knife for chopping chili peppers was specially bought on the street.
A wooden stick over one meter long is attached to the back of a stubble knife that is more than ten centimeters wide.
You can actually use a kitchen knife to chop peppers, but people don’t use kitchen knives very much.
The kitchen knife at home is very convenient for chopping sour chili peppers, but the hand holding the knife will definitely be stained with chili pepper water.
Those who have done it themselves should know that if you only let your hands come into contact with the juice of the pepper for a short time, it may be fine.
But if the chili pepper water stays on your hands for a long time, the skin on your hands will be very uncomfortable.
It will get hot first, making you feel as if your hands are burning, like a fire.
And the symptoms lasted for a long time, and it felt very uncomfortable.
Zhang An had grabbed chopped chili peppers before, and his hands were burning.
It's only slightly better when you put your hands in cold water.
But as soon as you take it out of the water, it will burn immediately.
So no one wants to use a kitchen knife.
If you use a stubble knife, you can place the basin on the ground, and then sit on a bench and hold the stubble knife to chop.
After mincing, you can use a stubble knife to turn the bottom up and chop it again. You don’t need to turn it directly with your hands, which is very convenient to use.
Every household does not need to have this set of tools. You just need to borrow them from others when you are doing it at home.
Anyway, I don’t chop peppers very often. Zhang An’s family did it because few people in the village had them before, so Wang Fang bought a handful herself.
Zhang An didn't spend much time before picking a basket of red peppers from the garden.
This should be the last chili pepper in Zhang Anyuan’s house.
When Zhang An picked the peppers just now, he carefully picked them and found that there were no new peppers on the pepper tree.
When you have time, you will pull out these pepper trees.
When the time comes, the land will be plowed and we can plant vegetables for the next season.
The family picks off the pepper handles and washes them with clean water, then pours them into a basin and starts chopping.
"Mom, don't put the ginger."
Zhang An saw his mother scraping a few handfuls of ginger and preparing to chop them together in a basin, so he quickly stopped her.
Because Zhang An doesn’t like eating ginger very much, some shredded ginger is fine for cooking, but large pieces are unacceptable.
"Okay then, go to Zhang Ping's house and dig some Jerusalem artichokes back."
When Wang Fang chops sour peppers, he likes to put in some other things.
Generally, garlic and ginger are put in directly and chopped together.
Since her son didn’t like ginger, she asked Zhang An to dig some Jerusalem artichokes back from the village chief’s garden.
Jerusalem artichoke tastes delicious, without the smell of ginger.
Hearing this, Zhang An went out and walked towards his uncle's house with a hoe in hand.
“Auntie, let me dig some Jerusalem artichokes and chop them into sour peppers.”
In the yard of Zhang Ping's house, the old lady was drying something in the sun with a dustpan.
"Go dig it, it's in the garden."
"Okay."
The old uncle's garden is also behind their house. From the main room Go in and go through the back door of the kitchen.
At this time, many families in rural areas have Jerusalem artichokes planted in their homes.
But they didn’t plant it specifically, but planted a nest in a corner of the garden.
You don’t need to take care of it at ordinary times, it grows well on its own.
For example, here at my uncle’s house, they usually cover it with some coal ash and don’t take care of anything else.
But it grows very well, and every plant Zhang An digs out has a large stem.
And no matter how you dig it, as long as you leave a root behind, it will grow crazily on the ground and produce a large field of Jerusalem artichoke next year.
So everyone nicknamed it Wannian Zirong.
(End of this chapter)