Dinner was a thick cornal porridge.
When it was ti to eat, Juhua sliced so thin Cong and added it to the clay pot. After a mont’s thought, she also picked up so pork lard cracklings and put them in.
As the cracklings simred in the hot soup, the dish’s flavor was instantly transford. The fresh, sweet, and savory taste of the greens and tofu mingled with the fragrant crunch of the lard cracklings. The thick, greenish-yellow broth—a mixture of savory, sweet, and aromatic flavors—was enough to make one’s mouth water!
’Heh heh, this is a truly authentic, rustic ho-style dish.’
The family didn’t bother going to the main hall. They ate right in the kitchen, pulling up small stools to sit around the stove.
The dish in the clay pot bubbled, BUBBLE BUBBLE, as steam rose and the fragrance wafted through the air. The tofu was stewed until tender, and the greens were nearly falling apart.
Juhua quickly removed so charcoal to lower the heat. ’If the greens get too mushy, it’s no good. They’ll lose all their nutrients.’
"Whoa! This slls amazing. Let have a taste—" Zheng Changhe chuckled, picking up a mouthful of greens with his chopsticks and popping it into his mouth. "Mm, delicious. Wow! To think you can make greens and tofu taste this good. Daughter, you’re really sothing else."
With that, he took his spoon, ladled a large scoop into his bowl, mixed it with the cornal porridge, and began to eat.
Qingmu also exclaid, "It slls so good!"
Yang Family was filled with admiration. ’She’s been cooking for decades, and while her food isn’t bad, it all tends to taste the sa. But this daughter of mine makes every dish taste different. I haven’t seen her use any fancy ingredients, just common household staples, yet sohow the flavors she creates are unique—and so satisfying to eat!’
Juhua smiled, thinking, ’The flavor of greens with soybean dregs would be even better. I should save these lard cracklings. In a few days, we’ll probably be making tofu and butchering a pig for the New Year. I can use them then to cook with the dregs.’
’In the winter, the low temperature makes the soybean dregs fernt and mold slowly. But I rember from my past life how my mother would cover the basket of dregs tightly with an old padded jacket, place it in a large wok, and light a small fire in the stove pit once a day to warm it, speeding up the molding process. Farrs often have their own sets of life experiences that are far more effective than the formulaic procedures that ca later.’
After finishing a bowl of corn porridge, Qingmu had a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He asked Juhua, "Are there any greens left? How about you make another pot like this tomorrow morning? I want to take it for my teacher to try."
Yang Family quickly replied, "Yes, there are several heads left. We almost finished the first batch of yellow-heart cabbage, so I harvested all the rest and piled them in the cellar. I’ll wash them in a bit, and you can just stir-fry them and pack them up tomorrow morning. When you get to your teacher’s place, help him stew it on the stove—that way a scholar like him won’t ss it up and burn it."
Qingmu nodded eagerly in agreent.
Juhua said, "The lard cracklings are what really bring out the flavor in this dish. Otherwise, it would be quite ordinary."
Zheng Changhe, who was also sweating from the al, added, "Wouldn’t it taste even better with so chili peppers? It would warm you right up."
Juhua replied, "Dad, this yellow-heart cabbage is sweet, and it’s also very savory when cooked with acorn tofu. If we add chilies, their spiciness would overwhelm the sweet and savory notes. Tomorrow, I’ll make a pot of just tofu with chilies for you. It won’t matter if that one is spicier."
Yang Family shot him a look and said, "It’s already cold, and we like to huddle in the foot warrs and chat at night. If you eat too many chilies, your ’internal heat’ will get even worse." She had wanted to say that too much internal heat would make it hard to take a shit, but since they were eating, she swallowed the words.
Zheng Changhe wiped his mouth and grinned. "Listening to Juhua and turning that wasteland into a vegetable garden really paid off. We’ve pickled two whole vats of spicy cabbage alone, with more stored in the cellar. And we’ve been eating yellow-heart cabbage this whole ti. Zhao San even ca by this morning to cut a few heads to take ho—his family ran out long ago. He said if he’d known to spread more wood ash to help them resist the cold, he would have planted a second crop like we did."
Yang Family looked at Qingmu and Juhua and said, "It’s all because these two kids love to tinker around. They were spreading wood ash in the field all day, covering it with straw—covering it at night and uncovering it during the day, never complaining about the trouble. After the spinach, they planted cilantro, and then the yellow-heart cabbage. I thought for sure nothing would survive, but who knew it would actually grow."
Qingmu said, "You just have to be careful when they’re seedlings. Once they’re bigger, they’re not afraid of the cold—this type of vegetable is naturally cold-resistant."
He and Juhua exchanged a smile. In the first few days after sowing the seeds, they not only spread wood ash but also pulled over a lot of straw to cover the ground. They even used well water for watering, protecting the seedlings like they were precious treasures.
Juhua leaned against her mother with a grin, thinking about the effort she and her brother had put into growing these vegetables. ’At the ti,’ she thought, ’I knew these vegetables could survive the winter. They just needed so careful tending.’
She recalled that in her past life, when she was a child, her mother would pull up spinach and cilantro for the New Year’s Eve dinner—even when it was snowing heavily outside. Her mother would say it was good to eat so green vegetables on the last night of the year, ignoring the superstition that you shouldn’t eat spinach then. People said that eating spinach on New Year’s Eve would lead to a year full of stumbles and bad luck.
That’s why she found it strange. She had often read in books that many places had no green vegetables in winter, yet she had personal experience cutting greens from snow-covered fields. It was also common for her to dig up carrots in the biting wind to feed the pigs. ’Those places must just be exceptionally cold,’ she figured.
’Growing out-of-season vegetables is expensive, and we don’t have the ans or the need. It isn’t as if we have nothing to eat. Besides, even if we managed to grow sumr’s Huang Gua, who would we sell it to?’
’Besides, vegetables grown in greenhouses just taste different. Heaven decreed that a plant should grow in a certain season. If you insist on violating the laws of nature, thinking you’re clever, you don’t realize that what you grow is no longer the original thing—the flavor will be much worse. It’s the sa principle as ’southern oranges becoming bitter citrons in the north’! Having a few types of vegetables in winter is enough.’
Although the newly purchased land couldn’t be reclaid yet, Zheng Changhe still found ti to divide it into plots, dig drainage ditches, and plan which plots to clear first to plant Shanyu and which to plant corn. As a result, he spent less ti at ho.
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