Chapter 19: Boil Mung Bean Paste
Gu Dashu carried a bramble on his back and went to the Nie family to apologize to his elder sister Gu Baishuang.
Unfortunately, Gu Baishuang didn't want to see him at all. He was not even allowed to enter the Nie family's door and was splashed with a large basin of water.
His attempt to apologize was a complete failure!
To apologize by carrying a thorn stick on one's back also requires the other party to be willing to cooperate. If Gu Baishuang is unwilling to cooperate, then he, Gu Dashu, will be just a big monkey with a thorn stick on his back, which will only make him a laughing stock.
As a result, the giant monkey Gu Dashu, who was watched and ridiculed by everyone, was so angry that he broke the brambles and went to the private school in the town dejectedly to discuss solutions with his third brother Gu Jingzhe.
Gu Jingzhe went to the private school early in the morning to borrow money from his classmates.
Having hit a wall with Gu Baishuang, Gu Dashu now places all his hopes on Gu Jingzhe being able to collect the money from his classmates.
When he arrived at the private school in the town, he did not see Gu Jingzhe. When he asked his classmates, they all said they had not seen him. Gu Dashu waited for a while but still did not see him, so he had to go back to Qinghe Bay.
When we arrived at Qinghe Bay, it was already completely dark.
The panic brought by darkness makes people more desperate.
After all, another day has passed, and the five-day deadline is getting closer.
And no one knows where the silver is.
Under the sycamore tree in front of the Gu family's door, Gu Dashu and Liu Yue'e, who had returned from borrowing money from the Liu family, met each other.
Liu Tiechui's insults to Gu Dashu were still echoing in Liu Yue'e's mind. Liu Yue'e couldn't help but go up and beat Gu Dashu.
If their men were not lazy and were more capable, and if they could save some money over the years and add the money borrowed from their wives' family, they would not be so passive.
The reason why Liu's eldest sister and father were reluctant to lend money to Liu Yue'e was because Gu Dashu always gave people the impression of being a person who did not live a good life, and they were afraid that the money they lent would be wasted and never returned.
After all, no one’s money comes from the wind!
"Stop scratching me. I'm going to my eldest sister's house in town to borrow money." Gu Dashu said.
Liu Yue'e felt the mountain road turn, stopped scratching Gu Dashu's hand, and asked, "Did you borrow it?"
Gu Dashu shook his head awkwardly: "Gu Baishuang is so cruel that she didn't even let me in."
"How dare you show off? You are so shameless. Your son is about to be killed, and you still have the nerve to play tricks on me. What sin did I commit to marry into the Gu family?"
"Gu Dashu, tell me about yourself. What else do you have besides a face? Listen to people's advice and have enough food. I should have listened to my parents and married to the town."
"Why did I eat the pine nut candy you gave me so greedily? If I hadn't been hooked by your pine nut candy, would I have opened my legs to you? One wrong step leads to another."
The more Liu Yue'e thought about it, the angrier she became, and the angrier she became, the more she cursed.
Even at the cost of revealing his own past.
Tong Huaqiong was cooking mung bean paste with Chen Sufen and Gu Taohua when she heard Liu Yue'e's scolding becoming more and more fierce. She put aside her thoughts and walked to the door to stop Liu Yue'e.
"Liu Yue'e, what are you talking about? You think you are the heroine of a love story, don't you? You would be happy if you had the whole village to listen to your gossip, right?"
Looking at the couple's expressions, Tong Huaqiong understood that Gu Dashu had hit a wall with Gu Baishuang and failed to borrow money.
"Mother, you don't know yet, do you? I met matchmaker Wang in the evening, and she said...she said that the Shengjing Palace was recruiting palace maids and eunuchs, and she wanted to ask the county's eunuch master to castrate Yaozu and send him to be a eunuch...Mother, what should I do?"
"Our Gu family is going to be extinct."
Liu Yue'e started crying.
"Second son's wife, what did you say? You said there is a virgin massage master in the county?" Tong Huaqiong's eyes lit up.
Liu Yue'e nodded, wondering why her mother-in-law didn't seem worried at all, but looked happy instead.
Perverted old widow, does she really hope that the Gu family will have no descendants?
"Do you know where the purification master is?" Tong Huaqiong asked with burning eyes.
Very good!
She and Maner wanted to castrate the pigs when they were feeding them today. She wanted to ask the village chief if there were any people who wanted to castrate pigs. She mentioned it casually when she was making mung bean paste just now.
The eldest daughter-in-law, Chen Sufen, said that she had never heard of pigs being castrated, but she was afraid that she could not find anyone who dared to castrate pigs.
Now the news that Liu Yue'e brought was not exactly what she wanted.
There should be no difference between giving eggs to humans and giving eggs to pigs, right?
The castration technique can be used by anyone, and the Gu family’s pigs can be used as well.
Tong Huaqiong decided to ask a body-cleansing master to come and clean the pig's eggs another day.
"It was Matchmaker Wang who said that. I don't know."
Liu Yue'e cursed Tong Huaqiong in her heart. She always felt that she and her mother-in-law worked well together in the family.
Ever since she got married, she and her mother-in-law have had very similar temperaments. They were both lazy and gluttonous, gossiping about other people's affairs, and bullying Chen Sufen together. Now her mother-in-law has turned over a new leaf and is abandoning her if she wants to.
What a vicious widow! She is more cruel than anyone else to her former allies.
She is now hoping that the second branch of the family line will cease to exist, right?
"Mother, did you hear what Yue'e said? Butler He wants Yaozu to be a eunuch."
These days, one piece of news after another is more explosive than the other, making Gu Dashu crispy inside and tender outside.
He wanted to just close his eyes!
But my mother didn't take it seriously and even asked where the castrator was.
What's the matter? Does she still want to pretend to marry the castrator in order to save Yaozu's life?
"If the Gu family can't protect the roots of our ancestors, I will not be able to face my ancestors." Gu Dashu looked heartbroken.
"You have no shame in the first place." Tong Huaqiong said, "Don't think of yourself as a big shot. The ancestors of the Gu family probably don't want to see you anymore."
Tong Huaqiong gave Gu Dashu a stern look, and seeing that Liu Yue'e was crying in despair, he said venomously, "Don't we still have three days? A living person can be suffocated to death by urine. Keep up the good work and get as much money as you can."
"Yaozu was really screwed, you are the ones to blame as his parents, not me as his grandmother."
When she saw Liu Yue'e holding the red dates given by Sister Liu, Tong Huaqiong, the evil mother-in-law, took the red dates into her own hands and returned to the stove.
It’s great to have red dates!
Tomorrow I will ask Chen Sufen to wash the red dates, cut them and boil them into date paste.
She can make delicious date cakes.
In her previous life, there was a date cake shop near her school. There were long queues every day and it had become a must-visit place when visiting Beijing.
She ate it for four years during her undergraduate studies and two years during her graduate studies. Whenever she went home during the winter and summer vacations and wanted to eat it, she would cook it herself based on her memory of the taste, and she actually came up with a recipe that tasted exactly the same as the one sold at the store near the school gate.
I gave it to my roommate at the beginning of the school year, and she couldn't tell whether it was from the store or baked by me.
In the kitchen, Chen Sufen and Gu Taohua were busy.
One was standing in front of the stove, and the other was adding fire to the stove. Both were intoxicated by the aroma of mung bean paste and did not hear the noise at the door at all.
Maner sat beside Gu Taohua and watched the fire. Her aunt was spoiled and didn't know how to make a fire. If she burnt the mung bean paste, her grandmother would beat her again. She taught her aunt how to control the fire.
Tong Huaqiong washed her hands and twisted the mung bean paste that was cooling down beside her.
The mung bean paste was delicate and sweet, but Tong Huaqiong was still not satisfied. It would have tasted better if butter or less smelly lard had been added.
But there was no butter in that era, so she could only hurry and ask the eunuch to castrate the pigs in her home.
But even if Tong Huaqiong was not particularly satisfied with the taste of mung bean paste, it was still more fragrant than the mung bean cakes sold in the shops in town.
"Mom, the mung bean paste cooked as you said is really delicious. The mung bean cake will be even more delicious." Chen Sufen used a sieve to carefully sift the mung bean paste, full of admiration.
"That must be better than the ones in the shops in town." Gu Taohua was drooling.
"When it's ready, I'll give each of you a piece to try first." Tong Huaqiong said in a good mood.
"Sister-in-law works the hardest. I'll eat half a piece and give the remaining half to her." Gu Taohua said to Chen Sufen with a smile.
Chen Sufen's hands were shaking. Her sister-in-law had finally behaved like a normal person and knew how to feel sorry for her.
Chen Sufen became more motivated.
Tong Huaqiong took the mung bean paste sifted by Chen Sufen to the chopping board next to her and started making mung bean cakes.
In contrast to the sorrow in Gu Dashu and Liu Yue'e's rooms, the entire kitchen was bustling with activity.