After dinner, she took the opportunity of going out for a walk to aid digestion and made another trip to the rocks to retrieve the fish cage.
Because it was too dark, she had to secretly turn on her flashlight. It was fortunately cold outside and no one was around, so she boldly shone the light.
In the five cages, she collected from twenty to thirty crabs along with sea eels, yellow croakers, groupers, golden carps, and Longli fish. It was quite a harvest.
She brought all the crabs ho since they were still lively, while she saved the other fish to enjoy the next day.
If there were too many crabs to eat, she could make Crab Sauce. She brought them ho tonight to spit out the sand, and tomorrow she could start making the Crab Sauce.
In Xiao Yu’s view, shrimp could be turned into Shrimp Sauce and fish into Fish Sauce; after ferntation, they could be preserved for a long ti.
On the island, she had made more than ten jars of Shrimp Sauce alone, enough to last her ten to eight years without a problem. Since she made it herself, the ingredients were all the freshest and most natural. She had also made plenty of Crab Sauce, and her skills were well honed, so tomorrow she planned to start teaching Yaya.
Actually, sand crabs were the best for making Crab Sauce, as these smaller crabs could be flavored with their shells intact.
However, large crabs could also be used. The large crabs had more crab eggs, adding a slight difference in flavor.
So places even used wine to make drunken crabs; there were many thods depending on what you preferred to eat.
Before heading ho with the crabs, she stored tonight’s catch in a fish cage to keep them fresh, setting bait in the remaining four, hoping for another good catch tomorrow.
The next day, the weather was not good as it began to rain, and Xiao Yu did not go out to fish. For breakfast, she cooked so porridge, boiled eggs for the two of them, and made a cold kelp dish adding rice vinegar, minced garlic, and chili. Even though there was soy sauce, there was no light soy sauce or sesa oil, so the taste was certainly less than perfect.
Of course, this wasn’t enough, so Xiao Yu took out a small bag of flour from the space, falsely claiming it was bought yesterday, kneaded so dough, and cooked a few flatbreads as the staple food, which, wrapped with the tangy kelp, tasted wonderfully delicious.
This was the first ti the grandmother and granddaughter had tried this kind of al; they found it extrely novel and delightful, much to their contentnt.
Upon further inquiry, it was revealed that Yaya’s family’s two-acre plot planted with millet had, after the autumn harvest and taxes, all been sold. Then she paid Grandma’s dical bills. Not only was there no money left, but she also owed the drugstore four or five taels of silver. This debt had accumulated over ti with Yaya kneeling and bowing repeatedly.
After the autumn harvest, all the lands were planted with potatoes, which should be ready to harvest around next month, that is, November or December.
"Potatoes are planted on all two acres of land?"
Yaya nodded, "Yes, my uncle and aunt helped plant them. I saw that they were planting potatoes too, so I followed them. Potatoes can be used as vegetables or as staple food, which is quite economical!"
According to the yields of that era, having two thousand jin per acre was considered high, so two acres would likely produce three to four thousand jin.
Honestly, that’s not a low yield, but since potatoes didn’t fetch a high price there, even though the quantity sounds substantial, if you sell them at one copper coin per jin, you can only earn three to four taels of silver. Not including the taxes that needed to be paid, ending up with two or three taels in hand was considered good.
Countless months of hard work all for just a few taels of silver, plus the dical bills for Grandma, it was no wonder she had no ti for sea foraging. Aside from potatoes and cabbages, their ho lacked even basic dried goods or dried fish; they truly were in a pitiable state!
Fortunately, she could help with the potato harvest this year. If they sold them by weight, it would be a big loss. She had to find a way to help them make more money.
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