The aroma of cooking filled the house: I sent my eldest brother to become the Grand Secretary.

That evening after dinner, Shen Cao overheard that Shen Yu'an and Wei Siyu were leaving to return to the capital early the next morning.

Knowing that the two of them would have to travel for half a month and it would be quite tiring, she specially prepared to make some snacks for them overnight.

She took out the pork hind leg that she had bought in advance from the ice cellar.

With an ice cellar, things are much more convenient. You no longer have to buy meat every day; you can buy several days' worth at once and store it in the ice cellar to keep it fresh.

The meat from the hind leg of a pig is tougher than that from the foreleg because the hind leg is mainly used for weight support and has a lower fat content, making it particularly suitable for making pork jerky.

She thought about it and realized that Wei Siyu couldn't handle spicy food, so she decided to make honey-glazed pork jerky for him. Shen Yu'an, on the other hand, liked spicy food, so she made his portion spicy.

The pork foreleg meat that had just been taken out was a little tough, so she first cleaned the meat.

Then she cut the thawed part into chunks. The middle part was still a bit hard, so she took advantage of that and sliced ​​it into very thin slices of pork.

Originally, there was no need to prepare thin slices, but in her previous life, Shen Cao discovered a method when she was making pork jerky. This method made the pork jerky chewier and more meaty.

She first chopped the pork leg meat into minced meat.

Then, separate the minced meat and sliced ​​meat into two separate bowls.

Add appropriate amounts of salt, sugar, pepper, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sweet potato starch, and red yeast rice powder to two separate bowls. (Red yeast rice powder is made from Monascus purpureus, a flavoring and coloring agent. The red fermented bean curd we usually eat contains red yeast rice powder.)

Mix the minced meat and sliced ​​meat separately until well combined.

She then took out the parchment paper she usually used for packaging, placed an appropriate amount of minced meat and meat slices on a piece of parchment paper, covered it with another layer of parchment paper, and rolled it out with a rolling pin into a meat slice about one coin thick.

Then place the minced meat slices along with the parchment paper into the preheated frying pan.

Heat over low heat until the pork jerky is formed, then peel off the top and bottom layers of parchment paper.

Then continue to bake slowly over low heat.

Fry the pork jerky until both sides are cooked through and slightly browned. Then brush both sides with honey and sprinkle with white sesame seeds.

The pork jerky is now ready.

Because she added some thin slices of pork, the pork jerky had a very fibrous texture and tasted delicious.

For Shen Yu'an's portion, she added a little chili powder, which made the pork jerky spicy.

She made a total of twelve pork jerky pieces from three catties of pork, four spicy and eight honey-glazed.

She gave four cards each to Shen Yu'an and Wei Siyu, and left the remaining four cards for her younger siblings.

She cut the cooled pork jerky into bite-sized pieces with scissors, then wrapped it in oil paper, preparing to deliver it to the two of them early the next morning.

She thought for a moment, then took out a small jar of the beef sauce she had made earlier from the refrigerator.

The next day, while the two were having breakfast, she gave them the packed items.

Shen Cao was thinking that the two of them would be traveling for half a month, and they would definitely eat at inns along the way, so she didn't prepare much, because the weather was getting hot now and she was worried that it would spoil.

The two could eat something to stave off hunger while traveling.

What Shen Cao didn't know was that the two of them didn't treat it as dry food at all, but rather as a snack.

Before even leaving Xin'an County, Wei Siyu had already eaten half of the pork jerky.

Seeing that she had almost finished her pork jerky, Wei Siyu set her sights on Shen Yu'an. "Brother Yu'an, your pork jerky looks different from mine. Can I try some?"

"not good."

"Then let's take turns eating, I'll try yours, and you try mine?"

"it is good."

It took Wei Siyu a lot of persuasion to finally get two pieces of clothing from Shen Yu'an.

Shen Yu'an was afraid that he would finish his own food too early and then try to take hers, so she prepared to distract him.

"Siyu, I heard that your aunt is seriously ill. Why aren't you worried at all?"

Wei Siyu went back with him because her mother was seriously ill, but the boy showed no anxiety whatsoever about having a sick family member, and instead took his time along the way.

Wei Siyu got a headache as soon as Shen Yu'an mentioned this.

"Hey, this is just to fool people like you who don't know the truth."

“My mother wasn’t seriously ill at all; she was forcing me to go back and get married.”

Shen Yu'an chuckled. This did seem like something Madam Wei would do.

"It's a good thing that you're getting married, how can you be so ungrateful?"

Shen Yu'an started teasing Wei Siyu.

"I'm still so young, I don't want to find someone to manage me."

"But you, Brother Yu'an, you're a few years older than me. Doesn't your family arrange a marriage for you?"

Shen Yu'an gave an awkward, bitter smile.

"Hahaha." As soon as Wei Siyu saw Shen Yu'an's expression, she knew that the Shen family must have made arrangements for him as well.

The two are evenly matched, sharing the same plight.

In Xin'an County, Shen's Restaurant officially opened for business for the first time, and the number of customers was much better than Shen Cao had expected.

Many dockworkers come to Shen's Restaurant because of its delicious food, and the prices are also reasonable, similar to their usual meal expenses.

Who wouldn't want to spend a little more money to eat more delicious and higher-quality food?

Moreover, Shen's Restaurant offers a lunch delivery service, and the delivered meals are exactly the same as those served in the restaurant. Some dockworkers who don't have time to go to Shen's Restaurant but still want to eat their lunch meal there will order delivery for the next day a day in advance after finishing work in the afternoon.

Shen Cao's lunch supply was insufficient to meet demand, so the first day had to end early.

She looked at the ledger and saw that she had earned three taels of silver on the first day at noon. After deducting the cost of one tael of silver, she had made a full two taels of silver just at noon.

Father Shen smiled happily as well. A few months ago, he would have had to work as a carpenter for more than twenty days without eating or drinking to earn that much silver.

After finishing their work at noon, Shen Wan and Shen Qing, remembering the candied hawthorns their sister had promised them yesterday, took Shen Cao to the market.

It's already May, the weather is getting warmer, and there are more seasonal fruits on the market.

Xin'an County has a particularly wide variety of fruits due to its climate.

Shen Cao found mangoes, cherries, mulberries, and even bayberries for sale in the market.

She bought some of every kind of fruit, and of course, she also bought some hawthorn, the most classic ingredient for making candied hawthorn.

Back home, she took out white sugar and sesame seeds from her storage space and made a small pot of syrup.

With her younger siblings, she cut the mangoes she bought into chunks, skewered them with small bamboo sticks, coated the skewered fruit with syrup, and placed them on the cutting board.

Once the syrup cools, the liquid syrup turns into a hard sugar shell.

Pick up a string of candied hawthorns, take a bite, the crisp sugar shell is sweet, and inside is fresh fruit, so delicious.

Shen Cao also made red bean paste, sandwiching a layer of red bean paste in the middle of the hawthorns to make red bean paste candied hawthorns.

Shen Wan and Shen Qing were overjoyed to see the various kinds of candied hawthorns their sister had made.