The elementary school students stood there chattering and wouldn't move.
The children in the mountains are all very brave. It's only because Jiang Xiaoman is here as their temporary pick-up and drop-off teacher that they're being watched over. Jiang Xiaoman has no doubt that if he weren't here, these mischievous kids would have already cheered and rushed over.
However, judging from the looks of it, there's a good chance you can actually find some wild honey in that grassy area. Thinking back to the school kitchen where she couldn't even find a spoonful of sugar while cooking lunch, Jiang Xiaoman gritted her teeth—
"Go ahead! You two big guys stay here and watch them. I'll go get some damp firewood to smoke out the bees. If we get any honey, I'll make you some braised pork for lunch tomorrow!"
"Could I send a bowl to Principal Dad?"
"Yes! Don't run around, or your principal dad will kill me if you get stung by bees." Jiang Xiaoman put down her basket, ran to a farther place to chop some wet firewood, tied it up, and lit it. Slowly, a pungent smoke rose up.
Jiang Xiaoman had already put on a mask. While using a machete to clear the way, she held up burning, damp firewood and followed the wild bees returning to their hives. After a while, she saw two bright yellow beehives hidden in a clump of bushes, with a swarm of wild bees buzzing around them.
This is a beehive that is not yet fully formed!
However, looking at the two honeycombs whose upper parts were completely sealed, Jiang Xiaoman excitedly gripped the damp firewood in her hand. These two large honeycombs could yield at least two pounds of honey!
Langshan Township is located in a remote area. In the past, when transportation was not well developed, the villagers living deep in the mountains were basically self-sufficient. For example, Jiang Xiaoman's father would keep several beehives every year. There are many wildflowers in the mountains. Every year, he would put a few beehives in the forest and harvest enough honey for the whole family to eat all year round, saving them the money to buy sugar.
Having watched his father collect honey since he was a child, Jiang Xiaoman was quite familiar with the habits of wild bees. After finding the beehive, he didn't act rashly. Instead, he first protected his hands and face, and then used the damp firewood that was smoking to drive the bees away little by little. After the bees had mostly fled, he quickly grabbed a machete before the little creatures returned, cut the two pieces of the honeycomb into sections along the base, put them in a plastic bag, tied the opening tightly, and ran away!
When cutting down wild beehives in the wild, you have to be quick! And you can't be greedy, otherwise the wild bees that were scared away will come back, which could be fatal. So those people in the mountains who make a living by cutting wild honey usually go in groups of several. After finding a large area of wild beehives, two people are responsible for cutting them down, while the rest of the people have to stay nearby and continuously use smoke to scare away the wild bees and protect their companions.
Fortunately, they didn't find many beehives this time, and Jiang Xiaoman handled it all by herself.
"Run!" At Teacher Jiang's command, the kids cheered and took off running along the mountain path, quickly leaving the swarm of wild bees behind.
“You guys have sharp eyes! Here, everyone take a piece. I’ll take the rest back and extract the honey. Tomorrow, I’ll give half to your principal dad, and we’ll use the other half to make braised pork!” Jiang Xiaoman opened the plastic bag and generously broke off a few pieces of beeswax full of wild honey, giving each person a small piece.
Jiang Xiaoman hadn't tasted this kind of pure wild honeycomb in a long time. She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. With one bite, the rich and sweet honey burst in her mouth. At this time of year, the wild bees in the mountains collect honey from all kinds of flowers. The honey hasn't been purified or filtered yet, so it doesn't taste purely sweet. It has a slightly astringent taste, but this is actually the real wild honey.
After finishing the honey, they didn't spit out the remaining beeswax right away. Natural beeswax has a good oral cleaning effect, similar to chewing gum. They chewed it slowly until only residue remained, and then spat it out. In this way, the last student who lived the farthest away was safely delivered home.
Although they were all from the same village, they weren't familiar with each other because they were separated by several mountains. After saying goodbye to her parents, Jiang Xiaoman declined their invitation to stay for dinner and hurried home.
When he got home, it was almost dark, and his father was still squatting on the floor of the main room drying tea leaves.
Author's Note:
Sorry! There was an event at work this morning, which made me late. From now on, unless there are unforeseen circumstances, I'll update around noon! Thank you to all the little angels who voted for me or watered my plants between 11:59:56 on November 7th and 12:45:50 on November 8th, 2021!
Thank you to the little angel who threw the landmine: Riding a Black Horse with a White Horse (1);
Thank you to the little angels who watered the nutrient solution: 100 bottles from "The Salty Fish Who Doesn't Want to Turn Over"; 60 bottles from "Cute Little Yuanyuan"; 35 bottles from "Buddha's Dawn"; 30 bottles from "Temple Girl" and "Gold"; 10 bottles from "Riding a Black White Horse", "Mommy Says I'm Fat Every Day", and "Qingwu"; and 3 bottles from "Under the Sun".
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
Chapter 5
"Dad, you're busy, I'll go cook!" Jiang Xiaoman put down her basket and ran to wash her hands.
When he was at home, he almost never let his dad cook. It wasn't because he felt sorry for his dad, but mainly because Jiang Youliang's cooking skills were so bad that even the chefs in their school cafeteria would cry.
Jiang Youliang knew that his son didn't like his cooking, so he chuckled and called out to him, "I just cooked a piece of cured pork, and I picked up a bag of mushrooms on my way back this afternoon. You can stir-fry the cured pork and make a soup."
Jiang Xiaoman raised her eyebrows, surprised that her father knew how to prepare side dishes. Stir-fried cured pork with mushrooms was indeed a good dish.
However, one dish and one soup might not be enough for the two of us. After washing my hands, I went to the kitchen and saw a white radish in the kitchen basket. So I chopped some cured pork, put it in the oil, added ginger and garlic to sauté until fragrant, then added the cured pork and stir-fried it. Then I added the sliced white radish, stir-fried it for a while, poured in a bowl of water, covered the pot, and waited for the water to boil away. A bowl of stewed cured pork and radish was ready to eat with rice.
While the radish was stewing, Jiang Xiaoman poured out the wild mushrooms that his father had already cleaned.
These mushrooms were clearly picked from the pine forest behind his house; they were small, yellowish-brown caps, and tasted especially delicious stir-fried with cured pork or stewed with chicken! Of course, they usually couldn't afford to buy meat or slaughter chickens, but stir-frying these pine mushrooms with chili peppers was also surprisingly tasty…
These pine mushrooms are very tender, so there's no need to cut them with a knife. Just wash them clean, break the large ones in half by hand, and don't break the small ones at all. Just stir-fry them directly in the pan.
The father and son were busy with their own things, but they also took the opportunity to chat. Jiang Youliang first asked how the school was doing. Hearing that the two teachers were managing, Jiang Xiaoman helped with cooking and took the children who lived far away home on her way back in the evening. She secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Few people in the mountains have received an education, so they always regard teachers who educate and nurture students as sacred figures. Although Jiang Youliang always boasts that he raised a college graduate, he also knows that Jiang Xiaoman doesn't have a "teacher's certificate," and he's afraid that his son will mislead Jiang Baichuan's few remaining students...
Jiang Xiaoman then asked his father what he had done at home that day. Jiang Youliang had a lot to say about this, and he immediately launched into a long, detailed account of his "achievements" for the day.
I cooked all the pig feed for the day early this morning, and fed the chickens as well.
This morning I went up the mountain and picked dozens of kilograms of tea leaves. After lunch, I went to pick mushrooms.
When I came back in the afternoon, I tidied up the vegetable garden. I cut down all the elder's greens to feed the pigs, cleared out a plot of land to plant soybeans, and in the evening I also cut down a piece of cured meat, cooked it, and washed it clean.
Jiang Xiaoman listened with a smile, then scooped out the radish that had been stewing until tender from the pot, washed the pot, poured in oil, and added the chopped cured meat and mushrooms to continue stir-frying. People here love spicy food, and they especially like to add chili peppers when stir-frying mushrooms. Jiang Xiaoman chopped half a bowl of chili peppers and added them in, filling the whole house with a fresh and spicy aroma, mixed with the savory fragrance of pine mushrooms. This made Jiang Youliang unable to sit still, and he took the initiative to come over to serve his son rice.
The family usually eats rice mixed with sweet potatoes. Jiang Youliang only scooped out a bowl of rice, which was enough for his son. He could eat the sweet potatoes on top of the rice. The leftover rice crust and uneaten sweet potatoes would be cooked with some water, chopped greens, and salt the next morning. That would make breakfast.
Jiang Xiaoman saw that his father had served him all the rice again, and he didn't even have the strength to object.
He knew it! As long as he was still a son, his father would always save the best food in the house for him.
However, during the meal, he put several pieces of fatty and lean cured meat on Jiang Youliang's plate in one go: "Dad, eat more meat. The school doctor at our school said that my blood pressure is a bit high, so it's best to eat less cured meat."
"What?!" Upon hearing this, Jiang Youliang put down the bowl he had just picked up. "The pork we slaughtered at home can't be kept fresh for long. We still need to buy a refrigerator. I heard that meat frozen in a refrigerator won't spoil for a year..."
Jiang Xiaoman didn't expect that her dad would want to buy a refrigerator just because of what he said. She quickly stopped him, laughing and crying at the same time: "It has nothing to do with meat. It's just that the food at our school is too good. We eat meat all the time. The doctor told us to eat more vegetables. Eating vegetables is healthier!"
“Hey! Then I’ll grow more vegetables this year. We don’t have much else in these mountains, but we can eat more wild vegetables and fruits than we can eat.” Jiang Youliang believed his son’s words without a doubt, because when the village organized a physical examination last year, many people around his age were diagnosed with high blood pressure or high cholesterol. The doctor did say that they should eat less pickled and cured meats and more vegetables.
Jiang Youliang picked a lot of mushrooms. These pine mushrooms wouldn't taste good if you couldn't finish them on the same day. So Jiang Xiaoman simply cooked them all. Most of them were stir-fried with cured meat and chili peppers. If they couldn't finish them, they could eat them with porridge the next morning. She also grabbed a handful, sliced them, and made an egg drop soup. It was incredibly delicious.
The father and son were starving after a long day, and the food was delicious tonight. They ate all the crispy rice at the bottom of the pot, then scooped it out and soaked it in half a bowl of wild mushroom and egg soup. It was incredibly tasty.
"Dad, don't have rice porridge for breakfast tomorrow. I'll make you some noodles, and we can use the remaining piece of cured pork bone to make soup." After finishing his meal, Jiang Xiaoman washed the dishes and chopsticks. While his father was frying tea leaves, he took out the old-fashioned hand-cranked honeycomb bucket and planned to extract the honey from the two honeycomb pieces he had just picked.
There were only two pieces, not very big, and they were shaken off in no time. There was some honey in the remaining beeswax, and the father and son didn't waste it. They chewed it up and ate it while they worked.
After collecting the honey, Jiang Xiaoman went to the kitchen again. She washed the bones and skin from the cured pork that evening, added half a pot of water, and put it in a large pot to simmer slowly. After washing her hands, she quickly came over to help her father fry tea leaves.
Their tea is all wild tea picked from the mountains. It doesn't look very appealing, but it tastes exceptionally fragrant. In the past, when his family was poor, Jiang Youliang would fry some tea leaves every year and carry them down the mountain to sell in order to save money for his schooling. Although the price wasn't high, it added up, and the money he made from selling tea leaves in one season was basically enough to cover his tuition and fees for a semester.
Jiang Xiaoman has a financial aid program for impoverished students from the school, and she also saves money by selling recyclables, so she doesn't have to worry about that.
The people here are used to drinking green tea that is hand-stirred over a wood-fired stove. The tea leaves picked that day are first cleaned of impurities, then spread out on a bamboo mat to dry. Once the leaves have softened slightly, they are put into a large wood-fired pot and stir-fried by hand using only the heat of a small charcoal fire. This requires skill and speed; if you are too slow, the delicate buds of the tea will burn, and burnt tea leaves will not fetch a good price.
Continue stirring and kneading the tea leaves until they turn a good color and curl up. At this point, you can't knead them anymore. You have to use your hands to shake and turn them over, using the residual heat of the iron pot to dry the tea leaves completely. Then take them out to cool before packing them into bags.
Mr. Jiang runs a small private workshop, picking and frying as much tea as he can each day, so he doesn't feel much pressure. Jiang Xiaoman helps him pick out the impurities from the tea leaves. He can't do the other tasks because they require high technical skills, and he has nothing else to do, so he simply kneads some dough and plans to fry some sugar beans to take to school and share with the students.
The school only provides one meal at noon. The children are very active, and sometimes they get hungry after class. Those who live nearby are okay; they can at least fill their stomachs by roasting potatoes or sweet potatoes at home. But students who live far away have to run home hungry.
The village store does sell snacks, but they are mostly generic brands of instant noodles and spicy strips. Jiang Xiaoman wouldn't dare buy these for the students. After thinking it over, she felt more comfortable making them herself.
Of course, the main reason is that it's free since I made it myself.
After opening a bag of flour and estimating the number of students in the school, Jiang Xiaoman poured out half of the bag.
This flour wasn't bought locally; he brought it back from school every time he had a holiday.
They don't grow wheat here, and flour is more expensive than rice. But it's different in the city where he goes to school. As a major wheat-producing area, the wheat flour there is cheap and delicious. In particular, there's a local supermarket near his school where wheat flour is only a little over one yuan per kilogram when there's a discount. The only downside is that each person is limited to buying ten kilograms at a time.
However, could such a small matter stump Jiang Xiaoman, the master of saving money?
When the supermarket had a sale, he would go to the supermarket three times a day! He would buy ten pounds each time, and by the time he was on vacation, he would have enough flour to fill two large woven bags! He would take the train home during the holidays, and then continue to carry the flour home like ants during the next vacation... For four years of college, his family ate this kind of discounted flour, which was cheap and delicious.
He also discovered that these individually packaged 10-pound bags of flour were very convenient to use, eliminating worries about them getting infested with bugs if not finished quickly. After finishing the flour, the outer plastic bag could even be used to store other things. It's just a pity that after graduation, it will be difficult to buy this kind of discounted flour again.
Mix flour, water, and sugar to form a dough. No fermentation is needed. Simply roll the dough into a long strip, cut it into small dough balls about the size of your little finger, sprinkle a layer of flour on the work surface, and roll each dough ball into a small ball. Set the dough aside for later use.
Here's the key point: you absolutely have to use sand to stir-fry it!
Jiang Xiaoman's family had just built a bathroom with a shower last year, and the leftover sand was piled up on the side. She took a shovel, scooped up some sand, picked out the impurities, and first put it into a small iron pot at home to stir-fry until the sand felt hot to the touch. Then she poured in the prepared dough. What followed was a test of endurance and physical strength.
The dough must be constantly stirred until it turns a nice golden brown color; only then is the candy bean considered ready.
The fried candied beans smelled delicious, but they were a real test of one's teeth. Jiang Youliang was getting old and cherished his few remaining teeth. He was determined not to break his molars just to eat a couple of candied beans. So Jiang Xiaoman took a clean plastic bag, tied the fried candied beans tightly, and saved them to take to school tomorrow to share with the kids with good teeth.
Author's Note:
Thank you to all the little angels who voted for me or watered my plants with nutrient solution between 12:45:50 on November 8, 2021 and 11:13:45 on November 9, 2021!
Thank you to the little angel who watered the nutrient solution: 23221325 1 bottle;
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
Chapter 6
Before dawn the next day, Jiang Xiaoman got up. The mountains were especially cold in the early morning. He quickly grabbed an old school uniform jacket and put it on. Jiang Xiaoman quickly started a fire. The large pot contained the pork bone soup that he had stewed the night before, and he filled the small pot next to it with water. He boiled both burners at the same time. The boiling water in the small pot was the hot water that he and his father would need for the day. He boiled it all at once and poured it into a thermos so that they wouldn't need to boil water for the rest of the day.
Once the stove was lit, he didn't care. Estimating the father and son's appetite, he scooped out three bowls of flour, added water, and stirred it into a paste. When the bone broth boiled, he lifted the lid, took a long-handled wooden spoon, and stirred the paste into the pot little by little. He then covered the pot and let it simmer for a while. The cured bones were already salty, so there was no need to add salt.
Dumpling soup is very easy to make. Before taking it out of the pot, Jiang Xiaoman sprinkled some chopped green onions on top, ladled it out into a rice bowl, and then reheated the leftover cured meat and mushroom stir-fry from last night. She also took out half a bowl of pickled chili peppers and tender ginger that her father had made himself from the jar.
Just as breakfast was finished, his father brought out the tung oil torches he had hastily made the night before.
Walking along mountain paths in the morning can be a bit dangerous. The mountain people are very experienced and make their own torches from tung oil every year. They light the torches when walking at night to provide light, and most importantly, wild animals are afraid of fire and will run away as soon as they see the torches.
On a cold morning, a bowl of hot, stewed pork noodle soup warms you up, making you feel like a martial arts master meditating and practicing internal energy. Jiang Xiaoman finished two large bowls of noodles in one go, and seeing that there was still quite a bit left in the pot, she gave her father a smug look—
"No plain noodles for lunch. These dumplings are enough for you if you heat them up. Wait for me to come back tonight. I'll go to the market today to buy some meat and make you braised pork with preserved mustard greens. You can chew that."
After reminding his father to eat on time, Jiang Xiaoman lit a torch, slung his basket over his shoulder, and ran down the mountain.
It takes about 40 minutes to walk from his home to the village along a mountain road. He sets off just as dawn breaks and arrives in the village just in time to catch the first bus to the township. After getting on the bus, it takes another half hour to reach the market town where the township government is located.
Yesterday, while helping with cooking at school, Jiang Xiaoman discovered that many items in the cafeteria were missing. So, he gave Jiang Caiyun the key to the school gate, asking her to open it so he could have time to go shopping.
They hold a big market every ten days, attracting people from all around. The streets are packed with vendors selling all sorts of things.
Jiang Xiaoman first went to the wholesale department and bought a large bucket of dish soap, five catties each of brown sugar and white sugar, and then she went to buy a foot of linen cloth—the linen cloth used to cover the bowls and chopsticks in the canteen was all rotten and crumbled as soon as it was rubbed, and Jiang Xiaoman really couldn't stand it anymore.
After buying these items, Jiang Xiaoman stored them at the wholesale department. He wasn't in a hurry to buy meat; there were too many people, and the butchers wouldn't let him bargain, so it wasn't worth it. He had something else to do.
Jiang Xiaoman took out a selfie stick, connected her phone, turned on the camera, and smiled somewhat awkwardly at the lens: "Hello everyone, today I'm going to show you what we mountain folks can buy at the market."
As he spoke, he strolled over, holding a selfie stick.
He recently started making videos, but since it's just the beginning, the traffic is dismal. The highest number of views for his first few cooking and tea picking videos was only a few thousand, and he only has a little over a hundred followers. However, he plans to persevere for a while, at least during this time at home, he will keep making videos.
Perhaps because he has been thinking about ways to make money since he was a child, Jiang Xiaoman wants to try any industry that has the potential to make money. Making short videos only costs some time, electricity and internet fees, which is the lowest-cost entrepreneurial model he can find within his current capabilities.
Langshan Township is located deep in the mountains, and the people who come to the market are all from the mountains. They sell all kinds of things. At this time of year, the most common items are various wild mushrooms and wild vegetables, as well as homemade cured meat and homegrown vegetables. After walking around, Jiang Xiaoman took pictures of some things that city people don't often see. Just as she reached the end of the street, she suddenly saw an old lady selling her handmade floral cloth shoes in a corner!
Jiang Xiaoman pounced on her like a hungry tiger, her eyes practically brimming with tears: "Grandma! I've finally found you!"
This time, he absolutely had to follow Grandma to her house!