AWB Chapter 123 Tasting
Chapter 123 Tasting
So when the three Changping brothers came home from school, they saw two strangers in their house.
"From now on you can call her Aunt Mai. This is Aunt Mai's daughter Xiao Ya." Chen Cui introduced her to the children.
Mai's tall body immediately bent down, waving her hands and shaking her head: "I don't dare to be addressed as such by the young masters, just call me Mai."
Chen Cui smiled and said, "I've already told you, don't call them Miss or Master, just call them by their names. We are an ordinary family, there is no need to be so particular."
It was Mrs. Mai who cooked dinner. Although she was tall, she was quick and skillful when doing housework.
Moreover, Mai’s cooking skills are not bad. She is very skillful in washing, cutting and frying, and the food tastes good too.
Chen Cui felt that it was much better than what she did, so it seemed that she could hand over the cooking job to others from now on.
The children all praised the food. Mrs. Mai stood aside, watching everyone eat happily. She finally felt relieved and went back to the kitchen to eat.
She and her daughter were eating in the kitchen. This was her own request. Chen Cui originally wanted her to sit at the table and eat with them, but she refused to agree, so Chen Cui just let her do as she pleased.
Although they ate in the kitchen, the food was prepared and portioned out in advance, so it was fresh and clean, and there was no restriction on how much they could eat. In Mai's opinion, this was already very good.
After dinner, Mai promptly collected the dishes and took them to the kitchen to wash. The three Changping brothers went to the study to do their homework, while Chen Cui took Sui Sui to play games on the bamboo bed.
This is the parent-child time between mother and daughter. Without the constraints of housework, she can spare more time to accompany her children.
After giving Sui Sui a bath and putting her to sleep, Chen Cui went to the study to study today's content.
The teacher in charge of teaching her today was Chang Ping. He simplified the content taught by the teacher in class today and taught it to Chen Cui. The focus was not on the articles in the book, but on recognizing new characters.
Anyway, she doesn't need to take the imperial examination, the most important thing is to be able to recognize and write.
After coming to the new school, Changping really felt the difference.
The students in the class are generally more hardworking than those in the town and have a better foundation. The teacher's teaching progress is also fast. Now they are studying the Analects of Confucius, and they basically cover two chapters a day.
In class, the teacher is responsible for explaining the detailed content, and more memorization and dictation need to be done by yourself after class. What you have learned the day before will be checked early the next morning.
If you can't memorize it, you will be punished by copying it out loud at the least, and you will be spanked on the palm at the worst. After that, you still have to recite it.
After checking the old lessons, he began to learn new content. The teacher cited extensively to support and annotate the words of the sages, and interspersed many allusions.
The students listened very carefully, and many of them took time to take notes.
In fact, Mr. Chu may know all these contents, but the students in the town have a shallow foundation. He has to take care of the progress of most students and cannot go too deep into the classroom. He can only let Changping, a promising student he thinks of, find another place to study.
After the three brothers adapted to the teaching methods of the new school, they began to learn new knowledge eagerly, with a stronger sense of urgency than when they were in the town.
After all, most of the students in the town are from farming families, and many of them actually just plan to go to school for a few years, learn to read and write, and then work in shops in the future and have a good income.
In the Dongming School where they are now, many students come from well-off families in the county. They have their sights set on the long-term, focusing on the imperial examinations, hoping to gain fame, so their enthusiasm for learning is naturally different.
Chen Cui started going to the workshop every day again, but she still had to go back to the village to check every two days.
After all, Mrs. Mai was new and hadn't figured out her background yet. She was worried about leaving Suisui alone with her at home, so she still kept her daughter by her side.
She first went to the cornfield and picked a dozen ears of tender green corn. Then she went home, watered the vegetables in the backyard, and picked what she could.
Although it is convenient to buy groceries in the county town, everything costs money after all. Recently, the children have to go to school, rent a house, and buy a baby. These expenses are one after another, but there is no new income. It is better to save as much as possible.
Before leaving, Chen Cui went to tell Liu Fengshou the place where she picked corn and asked him to cut the corn stalks, so that when there were fewer corn cobs in the field, he would not be able to tell which ones he had picked.
She went to check on several acres of land and found that there were no weeds in the fields. It was obvious that Liu Fengshou was a really honest man who would not take the money without working.
After Chen Cui returned to the county town, she hurried to the back house of the county government office and delivered fresh corn cobs to the county magistrate's wife.
"Is this the corn? It looks quite strange." Zhang Ruomei looked at the thing with a green shell.
"Ma'am, you may not know that the outer shell of corn looks green, but after peeling it, it is actually yellow inside. Only the yellow seeds are edible. The corn in the middle is not edible by humans, but it can be ground into powder and fed to livestock."
Chen Cui then told the girl some precautions: "When cooking, remove most of the green skin on the outside, leaving only the two innermost layers. After cooking, you can pick it up and eat it directly, or you can pick out the seeds one by one and put them in a bowl and eat them with a spoon. For now, I only know how to eat it."
In fact, she knew a lot about how to eat corn, but she couldn't tell it now.
After all, she is a newbie who has just come into contact with corn, so she can’t understand too much!
"You are so thoughtful. I'll have someone cook dinner for the master to taste. He has been very busy with work these days. He has to eat lunch in the front yard and can only return to the backyard at night. He has no time to go out. When he is free, I will tell him about your crops!"
Zhang Ruomei's words could be considered an explanation. After all, she was the one who said before that she would tell the master about Chen Cui's family's new crops, but she had delayed taking action. Now that the things had been sent over, it was a disguised reminder to her. How could she not understand?
Seeing that her goal had been achieved, Chen Cui decided not to stay any longer and got up to say goodbye.
At dinner time, a few cooked corn cobs appeared on her dining table.
Chen Cui told the children how to eat corn. They each took a corn stick and ate it happily. Even a little kid like Sui Sui ate most of it. Chang Fu finished the rest for her.
"Mom, have the corns in our fields grown this big?" Changping asked after dinner.
"These are the big ones, the rest are big and small, but most of them are not much different overall."
He had helped out when the corn was being planted, and he had an idea of how many corns to plant per acre. Even though they were smaller than the corn we eat today, the number was still there.
There are about 3,000 corn plants planted in one acre of land. Even if the yield is not as big as what we eat today, if we only count the edible part, the yield is still extremely amazing!