Starting a new chapter in life

I scooped out a big spoonful, smelled it, and it tasted alright. I tasted a little, and it was a bit too salty. It seems I put in too much salt. As for the taste, although it's not as good as my fourth sister's cooking, it's enough for me to eat.

Jingyan happily covered the sauce jar with a cloth, took two eggs, added a little more oil to the pan, and fried the eggs into a sauce. When the aroma of the egg sauce came out, Jingyan almost couldn't control her drooling. Ah, the taste she missed!

After frying the egg sauce, she soaked the sorghum rice she brought from her hometown. She went to the yard and chopped off about twenty leaves from the lettuce that had already grown quite a bit. Looking at the somewhat bare, short stalks, Jingyan couldn't bear to look at them anymore. She washed the lettuce clean, cooked the sorghum rice, rinsed it with cold water, ate a bite of rice, dipped a lettuce in the sauce, and ah~ so delicious. She had been craving this taste for so long.

After eating and drinking her fill, she went to stir the sauce vat with great enthusiasm. The first batch of sauce she made exceeded her expectations, and she suddenly felt very confident in herself, thinking that she could do even better next year. As for the color... she couldn't ask for too much.

That day, Aunt Qi's family also opened the newly made soybean paste jar. The color was golden orange. After pounding it a little with a pestle, the aroma was even more pronounced. Thinking of Jing Yan's soybean paste, she hesitated for a moment, but in the end, she ladled out more than half a bowl and took it to her.

After knocking on the door, and when Jingyan opened it and peeked out, Aunt Qi smiled and said, "Little Zhang, I'm bringing you some soy sauce today because I'm opening the jars. Yours should be almost ready too, have you opened your jars yet?"

Jingyan glanced at the bowl in her hand. Hmm, there was a plate covering it, probably to prevent it from getting dirty and to hide the color of the sauce. But when Aunt Qi mentioned opening the jar, she cheerfully said, "I just used the sauce I made yesterday to fry some egg sauce. I think it's pretty good. Auntie, come in and take a look. It seems that apart from the color not being very good, everything else is fine."

Seeing her serious expression, Aunt Qi followed her into the house, saying as they walked, "Oh dear, it seems I might have worried too much. The braised meat you make is usually very delicious, so I imagine it won't be too different. However, the fermentation time of your sauce base is a bit short, so the color of the sauce might be a little light..." She had just finished speaking when she saw the sauce, which was almost the same color as the sauce jar, and the rest of her words got stuck in her throat, and she couldn't say anything more.

Jingyan turned around and asked curiously, "If my fermentation time is short, will the color be light? If I ferment it long enough, won't my sauce be black?" Jingyan pointed at the sauce jar and looked at Aunt Qi with a look of horror.

Aunt Qi didn't know what to say, so she could only mumble, "Maybe the color will be a little lighter than this?"

Jingyan couldn't care less about her own sauce now. She took the sauce bowl from Aunt Qi, lifted the plate on top, and saw that the sauce was golden in color and had a purer aroma than her own. With the comparison, her originally lively eyebrows and eyes visibly wilted.

Looking at her pitiful expression, Aunt Qi felt a little sorry for her: "Xiao Zhang, get me a spoon, I'll taste it and see if I can find the problem."

Jingyan nodded quickly and ran to the kitchen to get a clean small rice spoon.

Aunt Qi mashed the soybeans a few more times with the pestle, and seeing the color of the sauce below, she was speechless. However, she still had a conscience and didn't say anything. She scooped out a little bit with a spoon, tasted it, and said, "Too much salt. It's too salty. Next time, reduce the salt by about 10%. The flavor after fermentation is not strong enough. It's definitely not fermented properly. Next year, on the 18th or 28th of the second lunar month, we'll cook the soybeans to make sure the fermentation time is sufficient. We'll try again then. If it still doesn't work, we'll do some more research."

Jing Yan nodded like a chick pecking at rice: "I'll remember this time. Aunt Qi, do you think there's anything wrong with this sauce? I made some sauce yesterday and ate it without getting an upset stomach."

Aunt Qi smiled and said, "It's just that the fermentation time was not long enough. It won't make you sick. If you don't like it, you can come to my house to make some sauce. I made quite a lot this year."

Jingyan smiled and thanked her, "If I want to eat fresh sauce, I'll come to your house to ask for some. I can eat the fried sauce I have, it's not good to waste it, it would be a waste."

Aunt Qi nodded, told her to pour out the sauce, and took the empty bowl home. After leaving Jingyan's house, she relaxed a lot, patted her chest, and muttered to herself, "Oh my god, this child is supposed to be a good cook, how could she make the sauce like this? The color is so awful, she must be a tough person to eat it."

A few days later, Gao Mei also brought her some homemade sauce. This time, Jing Yan didn't mention her masterpiece and happily accepted it. The two chatted for a while, and Gao Mei noticed that the vegetable seedlings in her yard were growing well. The tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers had already blossomed, and the cucumbers had been trellised to make it easier for them to climb. Gao Mei nodded and said, "Jing Yan, your vegetables are growing really well. Oh my, you've already eaten several batches of lettuce, haven't you? Look, they've grown so tall, and the lower leaves are all bare."

Jingyan smiled a little shyly: "I made some egg sauce a while ago, and I used lettuce as a dipping sauce. I must say, it was very tender and delicious."

Gao Mei nodded: "If you like it, that's fine. Are you still going to the market next month?"

Jing Yan looked at her with a puzzled expression: "Why do you ask that?"

Gao Mei shook her head: "I was just thinking of reminding you that it's getting hotter and hotter now, and your braised meat won't keep well. If you're going to the market, it's best to make less. Things spoil easily in this weather, and it wouldn't be good if someone got an upset stomach."

Jingyan nodded: "I was a little worried about going to the market this time, so I plan not to make braised meat from August to October. However, I should go to the big market in August again. I have a lot of rice at home and plan to sell the extra."

“How much surplus grain do you have? Why bother making a trip to the market? Just ask around and sell your grain if anyone nearby is short of it. It’s such a long way.” Gao Mei didn’t think she had much.

"There are 100 jin of rice and 100 jin of flour each," Jingyan replied, while also wondering how to ask the neighbors.

"One hundred catties? That means two hundred catties for both items? Girl, how much do you plan to sell them for?" Gao Mei asked.

Jingyan didn't know why she reacted so strongly: "Yes, I've been here for almost ten months. Most of the time I'm home alone. How much more can I eat? If you're going to sell, just go by the market price. Rice is 15 cents a pound, and flour is 20 cents a pound. No coupons needed. Sister Gao, do you think this price is reasonable?"

Gao Mei nodded: "That makes sense, girl. Wait a minute, I'll ask around for you when I get back tonight. I just heard a few days ago that a family in our community, with two employees supporting seven people, always runs out of grain. They've already bought grain from a bunch of colleagues who have relatives in the production team. These days, nobody has much surplus grain."

I heard about this from Xiao Zhao in our office. That family is their neighbor. If they had your batch of grain, they could save money and make it through the autumn harvest. Then they could buy some from the production team. It would be a good time, so we should help them out if we can.

Jing Yan didn't care who she sold it to. "Okay, Sister Gao, I'm not in a hurry. Anyway, it's all the same no matter who I sell it to."

Gao Mei, having come up with a breakthrough on another matter, left in high spirits. Jing Yan simply sighed, "These days, people are so kind and simple, sharing information without expecting anything in return. Although there might be some selfishness involved, it's not too serious. It's truly wonderful."

Two days later, Gao Mei came to the door with a man. The man was pushing a cart with six or seven flour sacks on it.

Jingyan opened the door when she heard the knocking. When she saw the two of them, she let them into the yard. The man seemed a little awkward, so Gao Mei got straight to the point: "Sister, where is the surplus grain you want to sell? If this brother wants to buy it, he can carry it himself, so you can save some effort."

The man nodded in agreement. Jingyan led the two into the warehouse and pointed to two large vats: "Everything we're selling is here. One vat is rice, and the other is flour. I checked them a couple of days ago, and they're not spoiled or infested with insects."

The man opened the jar, peeled back the moisture-proof kraft paper covering it, took the flour sack, and used the enamel jar to fill the sack. After filling it, he carried the sacks of grain to the front yard, pulled out a scale from the corner of the cart (the scale only had a hook), took out a weight, hung the sacks on it, and began to weigh them. Two sacks of flour and two sacks of rice, each weighing fifty jin, made the scale stand very high.

He said happily, "You're such a honest girl, you always give me the exact weight." He then put the grain sacks and scales on the cart, took out thirty-five yuan from his pocket, counted it, and handed it to Jingyan: "Please check it again, girl."

Jing Yan didn't stand on ceremony. She took the bag, counted it carefully, and nodded, "That's right, it's perfect."

The man looked at Gao Mei, who glanced at him and had no choice but to speak to Jing Yan: "Jing Yan, if you have any leftover grain stored in the back of your house, even if it's only 50 jin (25 kg), just let me know and I'll bring him over to buy it. He can carry it himself. Is that alright?"

Jing Yan nodded in agreement: "Sister Gao, why are you being so polite with me? Just because of you, I'll definitely tell you if I have any extra food in the future. That way, I can relax a bit."

Gao Mei was very satisfied with the respect Jing Yan showed her, and the man was also very grateful to Gao Mei. The two of them didn't say anything more, pushed the cart and left Jing Yan's house. She locked the gate, went back to the storage room to check if the grain jar was properly covered, took a broom and swept up some loose flour and a few grains of rice that had been left around the jar, and threw them into the chicken coop in the front yard. With the grain dealt with, one less thing weighed on her mind.

In late July, a night rain washed away some of the heat. The next morning, seeing that the rain had stopped, Jing Yan happily took her small shovel and the backpack He Chunni had given her, ready to go to the back mountain of the 13th Company to see if she could pick mushrooms.

This time she remembered better. She filled her military water bottle with cooled boiled water, made five or six rice balls with pickled vegetables inside, wrapped them in brown paper, put them in her coat pocket, slung her water bottle over her shoulder, locked the door, and went out.

When she arrived at the 13th Company, she went directly to He Chunni's house, but no one was home. She remembered that the old people who used to cool off at the company's crossroads when she last came were not there today either. She originally thought it was because it rained yesterday that no one was home today, but now it seemed that something had happened. Since she knew the way up the mountain, she went to the back of the mountain by herself.

Once inside the mountains, fearing she might get lost, Jingyan carefully followed the small paths worn into the forest. When searching for mushrooms, she only dared to walk near the paths, collecting them and then retreating. And sure enough, she did find several clumps of mushrooms. There were quite a few varieties of mushrooms here, including grass-flowered mushrooms, white shiitake mushrooms, purple-flowered mushrooms, egg yolk mushrooms, chicken oil mushrooms, and thigh mushrooms. She also collected quite a few hazel mushrooms.

As she picked the mushrooms, she made plans. Some mushrooms could be stir-fried directly, while others would be better stewed after being dried. Hazel mushrooms, in particular, had to be picked clean and dried separately to be used in chicken stew with mushrooms in the winter. Just thinking about the taste made her mouth water.

Along the way, they saw other mushrooms that looked different, but Jingyan didn't recognize them. She knew of only about ten kinds that were safe to eat and wouldn't cause poisoning, three of which were oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms that she had cultivated later. Oh, and she also recognized lion's mane mushrooms, but she couldn't find them and didn't know how to cook them.

The types of mushrooms she recognized were already in her basket, but she wasn't greedy and only picked the ones she knew. Overall, the amount of mushrooms wasn't much, not as much as she had expected, but thinking about it, she could guess that this was probably just the beginning and the small amount was normal. He Chunni had suggested that she come in August, but it was still a bit early.

After spending most of the day in the mountains and picking more than half a basketful, Jingyan was quite satisfied. She originally intended to return the way she came, but then she saw some people heading downhill in another direction. She stopped a girl, handed her a piece of fruit candy, and asked, "Excuse me, miss, could you tell me which way is this? If I want to go to the city, can I walk downhill from here? How far is it?"

The girl looked at the piece of candy in her palm, hesitated for a moment, and didn't take it. Instead, she asked, "Which company are you from? You're not lost, are you? The mountains around here aren't very high. As long as you remember the direction, you shouldn't be unable to find your way home."

“I’m not from the company. I went up the mountain once with a sister from the 13th Company. She told me that mushrooms start appearing in the mountains around July or August, and it was perfect timing to come after a rain. It rained last night, so I came here today. I went to her house to look for her, but no one was home, so I came up by myself. I was originally planning to go back the way I came, but I felt like I’d walked quite a distance today. I just happened to see you guys, so I wanted to ask if there was a faster way back to the city.” Jingyan explained while observing her expression. There shouldn’t be many cases of women and children being abducted these days… right?

The girl suddenly realized: "No wonder you asked. It is indeed a bit far from the 13th Company, and you came a bit too early. Look at how few mushrooms you picked in one day. It's not worth wasting your time. Our company hasn't even started picking mushrooms yet. Generally, everyone comes together in mid-August. Come back in half a month and ask your sister to take you. Don't wander around in the mountains alone in the future. You're not from around here, and people won't pay attention to you because they don't recognize you."