Chapter 18:
Two people with little experience in growing vegetables, in a room with almost no light but only the blessing of fluorescent lamps, finally grew vegetables that can be fried for at least one plate.
Holding a small basket of cabbage picked out of the earthen pot, Qin Huai looked at Mu Nan who was still picking inside, looking for ripe and ready to pick: "You don't like to eat cabbage, why would you grow this?"
Mu Nan said: "This grows fast, I want to see how long it takes to harvest a batch if planted like this."
Qin Huai smiled: "You only grow fast when you grow seedlings. If you start directly from breeding, it won't be so fast."
Mu Nan, who was sure that nothing slipped through the net, stood up from a pile of earthen pots, and put the two handfuls of cabbage in his hand into the small basket Qin Huai handed over: "Try slowly, our family doesn't have any from the village, so we don't have any." I don’t know people who will go to the ground, and I don’t know who to ask if I want to ask someone. I can only rely on myself. Apart from this, I can’t think of the days in the future. Before the social order is restored, what can we do for a living? You make software Yes, I paint, people have food and clothing problems, so there is no need for spiritual food.”
Mu Nan said again: "Anyway, we don't rely on this to make a living. It's just a superficial way to make a living. If it really works, it's also a livelihood."
Qin Huai: "After the earthquake, did the country start rebuilding soon?"
Mu Nan thought about it for a while: "It's not too fast. I, I just dreamed that after the earthquake, many people went to the ruins to pluck things, food and valuables. Many people rummaged but no one cared. I also saw There are rescue teams, but most of them are self-rescue. For a while, it was quite disorderly and chaotic, and then began to have a base."
At that time, the number of private bases began to increase. Of course, those private bases were not for charity. If you want to live in a place with water and electricity supply, you have to provide corresponding supplies. It used to be money, but after the earthquake, money is worthless. So gold, silver, jade, and food can be exchanged. Where did those things come from? Naturally, they were pulled out of the ruins.
At that time, Mu Nan, of course, followed the crowd to rummage through the ruins for a while, otherwise he would eat and drink behind closed doors, which is too abnormal. It was not easy during that time, the weather was hot, and the earthquake shook him. There are many collapsed houses and buildings. Not to mention the heavy stones, you have to be careful under your feet. If you accidentally loosen the stones under your feet, there are many people who fall into the pit and die, not to mention He said that he often sees a decomposed corpse or broken limbs when he removes a stone.
Those days can be regarded as an important turning point for Mu Nan to face the apocalypse, and it was also the first time he truly experienced the cruelty of death in the apocalypse. He still remembers that he clearly had a space of food at that time, but he was so skinny because he couldn't eat. Skinny and boneless, the whole person is as haggard as anyone else. After slowly adapting to the environment, he finally accepted the reality of the end of the world, and he didn't dare to squander the food stored in the space.
Alone and thin again, but he is easy to bully if he doesn't look at him. Maybe even if he didn't give the child some cornbread that day, he might not be able to escape the robbery of those people. Maybe they have been eyeing him long ago.
Hearing Mu Nan's sigh, Qin Huai thought he was worried about the future: "Worrying about this now won't change anything, don't worry, when the time comes, I'll move bricks to support you, and rebuilding the base should require a lot of manpower."
Mu Nan glanced at him: "Let me grow vegetables to support you." You can do some easy work, so why bother to work hard.
Qin Huai smiled, and handed the dish in his hand to Mu Nan: "Take it, you can fry a plate later, I'll go and see the chicken coop."
The balcony of Qin Huai’s house is open. In the beginning, Mu Nan kept a few chickens outside because he was worried that there would be chicken droppings, which would make the house stink. He put them outside the balcony and washed the ground with a hose while wearing a mask. Even if there is chicken droppings, it won't make the house dirty, and the mycelial virus doesn't seem to be able to colonize animals, so Mu Nan felt relieved to keep the chickens outside.
But after Qin Huai came back, he put the chickens indoors, but kept them in the room where the vegetables were grown, and built a nest, otherwise every time he fed the chickens or cleaned the balcony, he would have to be exposed to the smog, which would be too dangerous up. The chickens Mu Nan bought consisted of males and females, and they were mixed and not separated, so Qin Huai occasionally went to check on the eggs, and the fertilized eggs were left to wait for the chickens to nest, and the unfertilized eggs were collected and stored in Mu Nan's space. .
After Mu Nan finished washing the cabbage, he heard the sound of chicken clucking. Qin Huai walked in with the chicken in one hand and two eggs in the other. Seeing him, he said, "Get a rope, I'll tie this one up first." on."
Mu Nan hurriedly went to the drawer to find the rope. He also had rope in his space, but he bought that kind of lifeline, and it was a bit too long to tie the chicken with that rope. To Qin Huai: "Why are you tying it up? Do you want to eat chicken?"
Qin Huai said: "Just keep the hen and one rooster. For the chickens you bought, there are three roosters. They were small before and didn't have much meat. Now that they are grown up, eat them as soon as possible. Uncastrated roosters are aggressive. Strong, eats a lot, likes to crow, and is very noisy, I see people in the group these days asking who has chickens, and I am woken up by the crowing of chickens every morning."
Mu Nan was suddenly a little surprised: "The rooster still needs to be castrated?" In his cognition, only pigs need to be castrated.
Qin Huai saw his surprised expression, and said with a smile: "The chicken you eat is basically castrated. The castrated chicken grows faster and the meat is more tender. The taste of uncastrated chicken is relatively mild. To put it mildly, it’s not easy to grow meat if you eat too much, so raising chickens is actually enough to raise hens, and if you want chicks, just keep a rooster.”
Mu Nan knows how to buy chickens because after the earthquake in the last life, although there was a shock on their side, the houses are all in good condition. He thought, then raise chickens and grow vegetables at home, and when the government base is established in the future, he I moved to the base with chickens and vegetables, so I bought a few more roosters and hens, in order to sell eggs or chickens to make a living in the future.
But now Qin Huai said that there is no need to keep too much, so kill and eat it, but looking at the chicken flopping in Qin Huai's hands, Mu Nan was a little helpless: "Can you kill the chicken? Chicken blood should be harvested like pig blood Is it right? Is it enough to cut off the chicken head? I'd better look it up online."
Qin Huai threw the bundled chicken to the porch: "Go and boil a pot of water first, and I'll check out the strategy."
Seeing Qin Huai holding the chicken and saying calmly that he wanted to kill him, Mu Nan thought he had experience, and he needed to look up strategies on the Internet for his feelings.
As for the process of boiling water, Qin Huai found a few chicken-killing videos on the Internet, so what about twisting the chicken’s head to the chicken’s buttocks and wiping its neck? It seemed a bit difficult for him as a novice, and he was a little afraid of being bitten by the chicken. It's better to cut off the chicken head directly with one knife. Asking Mu Nan to get a clean bowl, Qin Huai took the chicken and the bowl back to his side, so as not to fill the room with blood.
Mu Nan followed behind, trying to watch from the sidelines, Qin Huai habitually treated him as a child: "Go and watch over the water in the pot."
Otherwise, he was afraid that Mu Nan would be affected and dream at night when he watched the scene of blood spraying. Although this is just a chicken, but I grew up in the city, and I may have never even been to a traditional vegetable market. I have never seen someone kill a chicken. When the chicken is dead and the internal organs are cleaned up later, let Mu Nan get used to it slowly.
How can a person whose heart is numb even after touching the corpse, be frightened by the scene of being killed, Mu Nan stepped forward and took the knife in Qin Huai's hand: "You hold the bowl to catch the blood, and I'll cut off the head. "
Before Qin Huai could refuse, Mu Nan took out a thick glove from the space, grabbed the chicken's head with his gloved hand, and stretched its neck: "I'm going to chop it up, grab the chicken Steady."
Seeing that Mu Nan really wanted to do it himself, Qin Huai stopped talking and grabbed the chicken in his hand: "Chop it up."
As soon as he finished speaking, Mu Nan's knife fell, because he didn't know how hard the neck of a live chicken would be, so Mu Nan's knife was a bit heavy, the knife almost fell into the cutting board, and the chicken's head naturally fell off , the blood burst out as expected, Qin Huai quickly blocked it with a bowl, picked up the whole chicken upside down and let the blood out.
Mu Nan picked up the chicken head that had been chopped off, there was still meat to eat on the comb, and there was a piece of chicken neck attached to the head, what a waste to throw away, and when he picked up the chicken head, he squatted next to Qin Huai and watched the bloodletting The chicken: "How do I eat this chicken blood? It should be edible, right? But I have eaten pig blood and duck blood, but it seems that I have never eaten chicken blood."
Qin Huai was a little surprised at his boldness. He glanced at him and saw that he was really fine and he was all about eating, so he said, "You can eat chicken blood, but let's not eat it."
Mu Nan was puzzled: "Why?" If he could eat it, why wouldn't he eat it? Although he hadn't experienced it himself, he had seen others dig up tree roots and boil bark. It was a waste of any edible thing, which made people feel guilty. .
Qin Huai: "I haven't heard anyone describe those who are too excited as if they have been injected with chicken blood. The chicken blood is probably hotter, and now the summer itself is hotter. If you eat this hot food, you will suffer." Especially they are bloody. Fang Gang's age, if he gets dry again, it will be somewhat embarrassing.
Mu Nan didn't think too much about it. Hearing what Qin Huai said, he said, "It's fine if you can eat it, then make it first, then put it in the space, and eat it when the weather is cold."
After scalding and plucking the hair with boiling water, and cleaning the internal organs, most of the afternoon passed. Qin Huai didn't stew the rooster in soup. The chicken itself was kind of woody, and it would be even more unpalatable if it was stewed again. So he enlarged the ingredients and made the roast chicken directly. The chicken was soft and rotten. He poured the chopped potatoes into it and waited for the potatoes to cook. When the flour is glutinous, you can start the pot.
Looking at the continuously bubbling pot, Mu Nan sniffed at the aroma, "It's still the same as before."
Qin Huai cooked by himself when he was very young. After his grandma got old and her eyesight became bad, he and Qin Huai stopped letting her into the kitchen. If it was too dangerous to burn, he wanted to learn it. At least he could do Qin Huai a favor, but Qin Huai never let him touch a knife or fire, so Qin Huai was the only one who did the cooking.
Being able to eat Qin Huai's cooking again in this life, Mu Nan couldn't help sighing every time, it's the taste, the taste of home.