The journey of the only child of a peasant family to take the imperial examination

Not long after Zhang Ping'an returned to Ze County, a letter came from Chang County, setting a date for the Magpie Bridge meeting.

A total of more than 200 women were willing to live in Ze County.

If there is a pair of people who are attracted to each other and they eventually get married, the government will allocate five acres of land as a dowry for these women.

If you don’t find the one you like, you can return to Chang County to live. It all depends on your personal wish.

All travel expenses are provided by Ze County.

These women were willing to come because they were mentally prepared, so the final result was naturally very satisfactory.

Nearly half of the men were willing to go to Chang County to live with the women, while the remaining women from Chang County stayed in Ze County.

After the yamen has uniformly issued the marriage certificates, the yamen will then host a wedding banquet for all the newlyweds to complete the etiquette.

For this purpose, a pig was specially slaughtered to show respect.

The wedding was simple but lively!

At the same time, this month, more and more babies are born in Ze County.

This broke the situation of no baby crying in the county town in the previous few years.

Now when I pass through the streets, I can often hear the crying of babies and the coaxing of women.

Looking at the diapers hanging in the yard, I knew that a baby was born in this family.

New life represents hope.

Regardless of whether a boy or girl is born, the government will register the births at home and will never allow baby girls to be drowned.

All goat milk is also prepared for newborn babies and can be obtained for free at the street office.

So far, there has not been a single case of drowning or abandonment of babies in Ze County, except for those who died of illness.

Under such customs, people supervised each other and fed their children much more carefully than before.

With more and more people getting married and babies being born, the atmosphere of life in Ze County is becoming more and more lively.

There were more smiles and satisfaction on the faces of the people.

Time flies, and it is early September. Soon it is time to harvest sweet potatoes.

In late autumn, when frost and dew first fell, everyone went out to work in the sweet potato fields.

Many women even carry babies on their backs while doing their work.

Sitting on a mat and digging sweet potatoes along the ridges of the field.

Under the lush sweet potato vines, densely packed purple-red sweet potatoes hung below.

The big ones are as big as an adult male's fist, while the small ones are only as long as the little finger.

No one missed a single one and put them all into the bamboo baskets.

Mule carts and ox carts stopped on the ridges of the fields, weaving through them and slowly pulling the sweet potatoes back to the county town.

Everyone had a smile of surprise and satisfaction on their face.

They had never seen such high-yield crops in their lives and called it magical.

There is even a saying that "a sweet potato yield of dozens of dan per mu is twenty times more than that of grain."

Sweet potatoes in particular have a good taste and are sweet, making them more popular.

Many elderly women and men secretly hid smaller sweet potatoes in their arms or crotches when the patrolling soldiers were not paying attention.

Zhang Ping'an turned a blind eye to these things.

These people will weigh themselves and record their weight before leaving the city. If the weight difference is too big when they come back, there must be something wrong, and killing the chicken to scare the monkey is inevitable.

People who are too greedy never have a good ending.

If the difference is not that big, it’s fine. After all, you can’t hide much.

At present, Lord Zhou's governance strategy for the various places below is still based on benevolent policies, and he does not treat the people harshly.

In fact, this was also a method commonly used by landlords at that time to prevent farmhands or servants from causing trouble.

However, the standards set by the landlords were much stricter. Once discovered, the offenders would have their food rations deducted at best, and at worst, they would be beaten half to death and sold again.

After more than ten days of hard work, the field was swept three times to ensure that no sweet potatoes were missed. Finally, all the sweet potatoes were harvested and put into the warehouse.

The amount of grain collected is much larger than before.

If there weren't so many empty houses in the county town, they could be used by just repairing them. Rebuilding them from scratch would be a real headache.

These more than two million kilograms of sweet potatoes will be the main food for this winter.

Some have to be left for seeds.

Next year the area for sweet potato cultivation will be even larger.

As two experienced foodies, Lao Tu and Ruan San must be the first to try new things like sweet potatoes.

These days, the two of them have been eating sweet potatoes for every meal. They have tried steaming, boiling, baking and stir-frying sweet potatoes.

In the end, the two of them came to the same conclusion: "This thing tastes good, but eating too much will cause heartburn and bloating. It's better to eat it with whole grains."

"It's your fault that you two are so impatient. These sweet potatoes are our main food this winter. When I was planting them in Ci County, I had already figured out several ways to store and prepare them. They are both durable and won't cause heartburn. I'll let the chef try them in the next two days," Zhang Ping'an smiled and said unhappily.

"Oh? What method?" Ruan San asked, holding his stomach.

"Sweet potatoes will rot easily if not stored properly. First of all, they need to be ventilated. If the quantity is small, you can also use the sand burial method. Spread dry sand in a wooden box or corner, layer the sweet potatoes on top of each other, and store them away from light. However, our quantity is too large, so this method is not suitable.

What I thought of was to take out half of it, slice it, dry it in the sun or bake it in the oven, and make it into dried sweet potatoes to seal and prevent moisture. The rest can be mixed with grains and cooked and eaten.

It is also simple to relieve bloating. When cooking sweet potatoes, add a little tangerine peel or ginger from time to time to relieve bloating and heartburn. This is not a big problem.

But remember to avoid eating it with persimmons, otherwise it will cause abdominal pain."

This was the conclusion Zhang Ping'an came to when he and Chen Jianqiu conducted research together. Although he knew in his previous life that eating too many sweet potatoes could cause heartburn, he didn't know how to alleviate the heartburn, so he had to figure it out in this life.

"Dried sweet potatoes? Will they be as dry as dried radishes?" Ruan San was a little disappointed.

"Don't be impatient, I haven't told you the eight ways to eat sweet potatoes!" Zhang Ping'an continued slowly.

"There are eight other ways to eat sweet potatoes? What are they?" asked the bald old man.

Everyone, including Liu Sanlang, was curious.

If something is highly productive, tastes good, and can be eaten in many ways, it is truly a godsend.

"In fact, in addition to the four methods of cooking sweet potatoes, namely steaming, boiling, roasting, and frying, as well as making dried sweet potatoes, you can also make sweet potato flour. Sweet potato flour is also very delicious, but the method is more complicated. You need to grind the potatoes and filter the pulp, then reduce it to flour and make it into cakes and bait. This is the sixth way to eat it.

The seventh way to eat it is to make sweet potato candy. Use sweet potato juice to boil and concentrate it into syrup. The taste is no worse than sucrose. In the future, it may be used as one of the necessities for marching and fighting, and can quickly replenish the physical strength of soldiers.

The eighth dish is sweet potato wine. The sweet potatoes are steamed and mashed, then mixed with koji and fermented, and then distilled to produce wine. The taste is different from ordinary alcoholic beverages."

Zhang Pingan said carefully.

After hearing the previous ways of eating, Liu Sanlang and his companions were relatively calm.

But the last two are surprising. Whether it is wine or sugar, they are definitely luxury goods at that time.

Not to mention ordinary people, even ordinary soldiers found it difficult to eat it often.

If we can make wine and sugar from sweet potatoes with such a high yield per mu, it will undoubtedly be a great blessing.

"Is this true? Don't scare me!" the bald old man asked quickly.

Seeing Zhang Ping'an nod, he thought for a moment and asked again, "Does Lord Zhou know these methods?"

"Of course I know. I'm not going to hide these methods. Sweet potatoes are now being widely planted and promoted across the country, and these methods will play a big role."

At that time, few people would have thought that more than ten years later, sweet potato wine would become a mainstream drink that ordinary people at the bottom could afford.

Everyone who entertains guests must buy a few jars.