Crossing Over to Yamada Love

The eggs that the family had saved up before were all eaten up while the house was being built. A few days ago, Mo Lan asked Wang Shi to buy 200 eggs. She processed them and planned to use them as a new food after the shop opened. The egg water she was drinking now was probably the eggs that Wang Shi had saved up recently.

After Mo Lan finished dressing, Wang Shi picked up a wooden comb and started combing Mo Lan's hair. Mo Lan was truly helpless with the various hairstyles of this era. She used to have long hair that flowed down her shoulders, but after she came here and tied her hair into a bizarre bun for the first time, Wang Shi took over the task of combing her hair.

After getting ready, Mo Lan followed her uncle onto Old Liu's oxcart. Now Old Liu was practically their family's driver, as they went into town almost every day to buy all sorts of things.

Actually, there was a butcher in their village who also sold meat, but he sold less meat and didn't sell it every day. He sold most of the better meat to the Cheng family, and the rest of the meat was only available to the Cheng family after they had finished choosing.

Mo Lan had been there a few times, when she urgently needed meat. The meat that was left over when she bought it wasn't from good locations and wasn't cheap either, so they usually only came here to buy meat when they needed it urgently. Otherwise, they would go to town to buy it.

She bought a few cabbages and some mustard tubers. Oh, there are cucumbers for sale! It seems some people start growing vegetables early. She'll have to go to her vegetable garden to see if her cucumbers have ripened yet.

After buying the vegetables, they arrived at the meat stall. The meat stall owner was a man in his thirties surnamed Li, who was quite familiar with Mo Lan. Ever since she and her aunt were bullied by a butcher when they first came to buy meat, Mo Lan had chosen to buy meat from this stall because the price was reasonable and the owner was a nice person.

"Brother Mo is here! Little Lanlan, how much meat do you want to buy today?" Butcher Li greeted him warmly.

"Uncle Li, give us a pig's head, ten catties of forequarters, two catties of pork belly, two large bones, and four pig's trotters. And a set of offal, please." Mo Lan announced what she wanted.

"Alright, I'll chop it for you right away." Butcher Li smiled憨厚ly and picked up the cleaver to start chopping meat for Mo Lan.

After weighing the meat and calculating the price, Butcher Li tossed two pieces of offal into his basket, saying they were for Mo Lan and the others.

Mo Lan smiled and thanked her, but frowned as she looked at the slippery pig intestines. In this era, this stuff was cheap and precious, and not many people would bother to wash it properly. If it wasn't cleaned well, the stench would be too strong and too much trouble, and the yield was also small, so few people bought it; it wasn't worth it.

Mo Lan didn't plan to sell the offal, but it would be nice to make it for her own family.

After leaving the butcher shop, Mo Lan and her friends bought two chickens, beef, peanuts, and some grain before hurriedly returning home.

Once home, everyone got busy, some chopping vegetables, others mincing meat. The reason for separating the tasks was twofold: firstly, it was more efficient.

Secondly, the first time they made dumplings, Qiu finished chopping the meat and started chopping the vegetables directly without cleaning the cutting board. When Mo Lan asked her about it, she said that the meat scraps on the cutting board were not clean, so she would dip them in the meat while chopping the vegetables so that the meat would not be wasted and the vegetables would be more fragrant.

Mo Lan couldn't tell her mother that raw meat contains a lot of bacteria, and that not washing the cutting board after chopping raw meat could easily cause illness. She could only suggest chopping the meat and vegetables separately, which would save a lot of time, and that she would wash the cutting board afterward, since illness can enter through the mouth, and they had to be careful about that.

Seeing everyone busy with their own tasks, Mo Lan went to start a fire herself. First, she used a flint to light a large piece of birch bark and put it into the stove. Then she put some straw on top, followed by a few small but dry pieces of firewood. As the fire slowly ignited and the firewood caught fire, Mo Lan then added slightly larger pieces of firewood.

The fire slowly started to burn, the flames dancing on Mo Lan's face, making her cheeks rosy. Seeing that the fire wouldn't go out, Mo Lan used a large firewood pole to prop up the wood inside, widening the gaps so it would burn faster. She got up and checked that there was enough water in the pot, then sat down to tend the fire, watching the wisps of white smoke rising from the stove, and began to cook pig heads, pig tails, and pig trotters.

Watching the bubbling pig scraps, Mo Lan found a corner to wash the pig intestines.

"Lan'er, that stuff is filthy. Leave it there and wash it when I'm done. Don't get your hands dirty, or you'll get smelly." Qiu, who was chopping meat, hurriedly called out as she watched her daughter wash the pig intestines.

"It's alright, Mother. I'll wash first, and then you can wash it if it's not clean enough," Mo Lan called out to Qiu Shi.

"Hey, don't try to be a hero. If you can't wash it properly, just leave it." Mrs. Qiu instructed her daughter.

"Yes," Mo Lan replied, and then began cleaning the pig intestines.

To be honest, this stuff was really dirty. She first squeezed out the filth from the pig intestines, then scooped water to wash them. After pouring out the water, she started to turn the pig intestines inside out. Looking at the green, sticky stuff inside, Mo Lan frowned. There was nothing she could do; to make money, she had to endure it, Mo Lan comforted herself in her heart.

She first washed away the dirt inside with water, then poured in baking soda and soaked it for a few minutes before Mo Lan began to rub it vigorously. Seeing that there was almost no dirt left on the intestines, Mo Lan nodded in satisfaction and rinsed it with water again.

After rinsing, Mo Lan turned the intestines back inside out. She was very careful while doing so, separating the turned-out and unturned parts to prevent them from sticking together and becoming unclean.

After turning it all over, the front of the intestines was still sticky, so I rinsed it with water again. Then, Mo Lan used chopsticks to turn it over again and used coarse salt to clean and rub the inside.

After washing it again, Mo Lan saw that it was almost ready and carried the intestines to another large pot. If you ask what's most abundant in the courtyard right now, Mo Lan will tell you that besides people, it's pots. There are three large stoves in the courtyard, with three large pots on top, so that there's always enough to use at any time.

After the water in the pot boiled, Mo Lan first threw in the turned-over pig intestines, and then threw in a few star anise. Star anise is used to remove the fishy smell, so you can add some star anise when making something flavorful.

After boiling for a while, seeing that the intestines were mostly curled and folded, Mo Lan took them out. Then she scooped out the dirty water from the pot and poured it into a large bucket. She added clean water to the pot and waited for the intestines to cool down before turning them over and putting them in to boil. Mo Lan didn't add anything else besides spices and cinnamon during the boiling time.

After purging her intestines, Mo Lan began to wash her hands and face. She used soap to wash them from side to side, and finally lathered them with soap. She put her hands under her nose and smelled them, but still felt a lingering odor. She sighed inwardly, thinking that after washing them so many times, there shouldn't be any smell anymore. It seemed to be just her imagination.

"This girl insisted on washing her hands even when told not to, and now she knows they smell bad." Qiu couldn't help but laugh as she watched her daughter frown at the smell of her hands.

Haha, as soon as she finished speaking, everyone laughed. Originally, everyone was secretly laughing at Mo Lan's actions, but now that Qiu Shi had finished talking about her daughter, Mo Lan pouted and gave her a mournful look, everyone couldn't help but laugh.

"Grandma, Aunt, Mother, Sister, and Little San'er, you can all laugh at me. Whoever laughs at me will get their intestines eaten at noon." Mo Lan said fiercely to everyone, but in her heart she was also laughing.

"Sister, San'er didn't laugh at you." The little guy had been sitting on a small stool watching his mother and the others make dumplings, but when he heard his sister mention his name, he quickly stood up and told her that he hadn't laughed.

"Okay, San'er didn't laugh, I'll give San'er some for lunch." Mo Lan walked over and gently pinched San'er's cheek.

"San'er, smell if your sister stinks?" Mo Lan put her hand in front of San'er's nose.

The little guy sniffed for a long time, his little brows furrowed and his little face twitching. After thinking for a while, he finally said, "It smells a bit bad, but Xiao San'er doesn't mind the smell."

Mo Lan was speechless. How come she still smelled bad?

"San'er, do my hands smell bad?" she asked again.

"Your hands don't smell, but your body does." The little guy pointed to her clothes and answered her question very seriously.

Mo Lan's eyes lit up after hearing this. That's right, her hands and face didn't smell bad, but she hadn't changed her clothes. It seemed that the smell came from her clothes.

*Smack!* Mo Lan gave Xiao San'er a quick kiss, then ran back inside to change her clothes. Mo Lan only had two sets of clothes in total, both altered from Mo Mei's old ones. But she didn't mind; after all, clothes were just for covering the body, and cleanliness was all that mattered. She didn't ask for anything else—no, not now!

After changing her clothes, Mo Lan ran up to Xiao San'er and asked, "San'er, smell me, do I still smell bad?"

"It doesn't smell anymore, Sister doesn't smell at all." The little guy sniffed a few times and happily told Mo Lan the answer.

Mo Lan happily chatted with Xiao San'er for a few moments before going to watch over the two pots.

After the intestines were removed, Mo Lan was about to retrieve them when she suddenly remembered something and shouted to Qiu Shi, "Mother, come and help me retrieve the intestines. I'm afraid they'll smell bad again. We're going to sell steamed buns later, and if I smell bad, people might not eat our steamed buns."

"Yes, Mother is coming right away." Upon hearing this, Qiu hurriedly put down what she was doing and came over to scoop the cooked intestines out of the pot.

"I must say, Lan'er washed them really clean, even better than I did," Qiu said, praising her daughter as she looked at the intestines in the basin.

Mo Lan chuckled to herself, thinking to herself, how could it not be clean? The villagers are reluctant to use water, or even baking soda and coarse salt. Who could be as wasteful as her?

"What, Lan'er is going to take the intestines to sell? These things are cheap, will anyone buy them?" Qiu asked her daughter while rinsing the water in the pot.

“We’re not selling them. The butcher gave them to us; we’ll eat them ourselves,” Mo Lan answered her mother’s question casually.

"Okay, even though this stuff isn't very tasty, it's still meat. Consider it an extra dish for lunch." After cleaning the pot, Qiu went back to her work.

Mo Lan was troubled by the remaining chicken. She had used one of the two chickens to make soup, but she couldn't make roast chicken with the other. She didn't know how. Should she make braised chicken or poached chicken?

Forget it, I'll just make braised chicken. Poached chicken needs to be dipped in sauce, which I'm afraid people will find troublesome, while braised chicken can be torn apart by hand, which is more in line with the taste and image of construction site men.

Acting on her idea, Mo Lan made the remaining chicken into braised chicken.