Traveling Through Farmhouses: Taking the Baby on a Famine Escape

In the evening, Zhang Xixi picked all the tomatoes from the vegetable garden and asked Sun Xiuxiu to take them to the kitchen downstairs. Today's dish was scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

We've been too busy at home these past few days to go to town, and we've run out of meat. Tonight, we'll have Xiao Jin bring back a few pheasants or rabbits tomorrow!

After dinner, Zhang Xixi and the others returned home. Xiao Jin also came back, this time with a roe deer. There wasn't much meat, just enough for Xiao Hua to eat. Zhang Xixi didn't keep any, but asked Xiao Jin to bring back some wild animals tomorrow.

After leaving the deserted village, Manager Qian rushed back to the prefectural city without stopping for a moment. This was a matter of life and death!

He finally arrived at Jinxiufang in Lingzhou Prefecture late at night. He immediately asked his son to take the pills to the capital and also asked a security escort agency to escort them.

Then they wrote a letter and sent it back immediately by carrier pigeon, hoping that the people there would come to pick them up after receiving the letter. After all, their enemy forces were also very powerful, and they didn't know what would happen along the way, so it was better to be on the safe side!

In the deserted village, many families have reclaimed about two acres of wasteland and come to Zhang Xixi to exchange the medicine and buy pasture seeds. Of course, the exchange is done in the same way as before, except that the start time is not a month later, but according to Zhang Xixi's arrangements.

A few days later, the fence around the chicken coop was finished. Zhang Xixi and Sun Xiuxiu herded all the chickens into the coop early in the morning. From now on, they would just come over every day to feed them and collect the eggs.

This task was still assigned to Sun Xiuxiu, who also took care of the vegetable garden next door, weeding and removing pests.

Wang Daniu and his team had almost finished making the mud bricks. When they were building the houses, Zhang Xixi went over and explained to them how to build the dormitories. In fact, it was just two rows of houses connected together, with ten rooms in each row, and no walls.

Zhang Xixi went to build the house the first time, but she didn't go again because she didn't know how to build a house. She explained the design to Wang Daniu and the others, and they understood it immediately.

She strolled around the rice paddies, where over a hundred ducks were happily eating locusts and aquatic plants. Little Chen was weeding in her family's rice paddies.

That evening, after Zhang Xixi and Xiao Chenshi drove the ducks back, they went to the rice paddies again and bought more than thirty buckets of growth nutrient solution, which they poured into the paddies.

Hopefully, this rice will be as good as the ones planted by the villagers, and we can harvest it in September. Then we can try out other methods.

With nothing much going on at home these past few days, Zhang Xixi came up with the idea of ​​researching new foods, since she had nothing else to do anyway.

The next day, she invited Chen and Zhang Dacheng, father and son, to her home. They would do it behind closed doors, because this method would be used to make money later.

"Girl, what do you want by calling us here? And why did you close the door so mysteriously?"

Zhang Xixi smiled and said, "Mom, I want you to help me make a new dish."

Zhang Wenhong hurriedly asked, "What kind of food? What kind of crazy idea have you come up with this time? It's not some expensive stuff again, is it?"

Chen and Zhang Dacheng also kept a close eye on Zhang Xixi, afraid that she would mention some expensive food. They were just a peasant family, and it was enough for them to have enough to eat. It was really unnecessary and too expensive for them to have such things all the time!

"Oh dear, second brother, the things we're using this time aren't anything fancy, it's just sweet potato noodles made from sweet potatoes."

Chen asked skeptically, "It's just sweet potato, there's no need to add anything!"

"Of course, sweet potatoes are fine."

Zhang Xixi explained to them in detail every step of the process of making sweet potatoes, from washing and grinding to boiling and gelatinizing the starch, kneading, beating, filtering, scooping out the starch, cooling, hanging, and drying.

The Chen family and the others listened with blank expressions. There were too many steps; they couldn't remember them all or understand them!

"Daughter, we don't understand some of the words you're using. Let's just tell you what to do first and what to do next!"

"Fine!"

Zhang Xixi realized that her father and his generation were from ancient times and couldn't understand some of the language they spoke.

Processing sweet potato noodles is both simple and difficult. All you need is a wood-fired stove, a large pot, a few strainers, a few large vats, and a drying rack made of wood and rope. These are the main tools for making the noodles.

Zhang Xixi asked the Chen family to help carry the tools to the yard, and then had Zhang Dacheng and Zhang Wenhong build a stove.

Next came the task of cleaning the sweet potatoes and grinding them into sweet potato flour. They first went to the cellar and carried up several baskets of sweet potatoes. Zhang Xixi and Chen Shi cleaned them, while Zhang Dacheng and Zhang Wenhong ground them with a stone mill.

Because it's not mechanized like modern times, the milling speed is a bit slow, but there's nothing we can do about it. Right now, we're just using manpower to grind the mill for our family's food. We'll buy donkeys to pull the mill when we expand the scale later.

After lunch, they had already mashed a large basin of sweet potato puree. They then filtered all the puree through cheesecloth and put it into another basin.

"Okay, let's leave it like this to settle for now. Tomorrow we'll pour off the black water on the surface, and what's underneath will be pure sweet potato starch. Then we can put it in the sun to dry into blocks of sweet potato starch."

Chen looked at the sweet potato residue inside the gauze and asked, "What should we do with this residue? Are we just going to throw it away?"

"Actually, you could feed it to the pigs, but it seems like no one in our village raises pigs."

Chen said slowly, "These days, people can't even get enough to eat, so there's no one to feed pigs. There are fewer piglets for sale in town. Besides, now that you and your two sisters-in-law are leading the way, every household has bought ducks to raise in the rice paddies, so they're even less inclined to raise pigs."

Zhang Xixi thought for a moment and then said, "Then let's throw it in the vegetable garden and let it rot and fertilize the field!"

Two days later, it was time to officially start cooking the noodles. Zhang Xixi and Chen put the dried sweet potato noodles into a basin early in the morning, poured in water, and stirred well.

Then they scooped the dough into a strainer and let it drip into the hot water in the pot. After boiling, Zhang Dacheng and Zhang Wenhong scooped it out and hung it on a wooden pole to dry.

At noon, Chen made hot and sour noodles with the prepared vermicelli, the recipe of which was provided by Zhang Xixi.

Everyone tried the noodles and found them very chewy and delicious!

Erbao and Zhou Yujie both love hot and sour noodles, while Dabao thinks they're too spicy.

Zhang Xixi picked up a bite with her chopsticks and put it in her mouth. It was sour and spicy, just like the taste before, and just as delicious!

She finally stopped eating hot and sour noodles when she was completely full.

After lunch, we rested for a while and waited until we had digested our food before taking stock of the yield of sweet potatoes and vermicelli.

About six pounds of sweet potatoes can yield one pound of dried sweet potato vermicelli, enough to cook five bowls of hot and sour noodles. With more vegetables, it's enough for two people.

Once the mountainous areas are cleared, more sweet potatoes can be planted, and the resulting vermicelli can be transported to many places.