After Apocalypse, I Got Rich With Superpower

Chapter 58: Chapter 56 Stir-fried Pork Intestines

Chapter 58: Chapter 56 Stir-fried Pork Intestines

Men do more work, and in winter there’s not much to do, so women and children are hardly let out to work. They take care of everything, and we all eat together at No. 8 Farm. After eating, we take some steamed buns and such over there. They have food, and if hungry, just whip up some corn paste to eat and call it a day.

Aside from making daily rounds to both farms, Li Pan would return and teach the children to read, herself studying some planting knowledge as well. She could buy videos on her phone.

Today she found two clay pots and planted a few seeds given to her by the director. She wasn’t sure what kind of seeds they were, but she planted each one separately, which would make it easier to move them later on. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The flowers and plants in the yard were almost all withered, but every now and then they needed some superpower to help them grow better next spring. This fall, when people from the base came, they shaped the flowers and plants in the yard, with Xie Ling taking special care to learn.

When the flowers bloom in the yard next spring, it will turn into a beautiful little garden, which will be very lovely.

Besides growing flowers and plants, Li Pan also planted some spices and medicinal plants available in the yard, which she could harvest in time too. She also transplanted breadfruit trees and coconut milk fruit trees.

The breadfruit tree can be used as food, and she specifically transplanted dozens more in the forest area during autumn. In a few years, there will be a lot of breadfruit to harvest.

In the afternoon, Li Pan baked bread in the house, adding some dried fruit to it.

Jiao Ming and his group had finished their work and gone to patrol.

They also brought clean pig offal and a washed pig’s head.

“Tonight, I’ll stir-fry some pork intestines, and make some pork liver and couple’s lung slices,” she said.

“They’ll bring meat tomorrow.”

“Alright.”

The bread was done, smelling sweet and tempting. Li Pan and Zhang Yu cut up the pig offal and blanched it before making a few dishes. For dinner, there would be steamed buns and pulled noodles.

Fry some mutton then add tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and winter melon—whatever veggies you like. Once the meat is tender, you can turn off the heat. Then boil water in a separate pot, adding a few drops of vinegar to prevent sticking. Once the water’s boiling, drop in the pulled noodles. After the noodles are in, you can add all the veggies, season with salt, bring it to a boil and it’s ready to serve.

This is a dish learned from the people of the northwest. Their ‘soup with noodles’ is made with dough and slightly different from the southerners’ version, but both are quite tasty.

Fearing that the ‘soup with noodles’ wouldn’t be filling enough, they also steamed some buns made from bean flour and wheat flour, as well as cornmeal buns and pumpkin buns. They didn’t contain bran, also known as 85% flour.

It wasn’t as white as pre-disaster flour; it had a slight yellow tint. Eighty-five and eighty-eight are the ratios of flour to bran—a piece of knowledge from the older generation.

Pre-disaster during peaceful times, the refined medium-gluten flour was deeply processed. The flour they ate was a bit rougher, but it had the aroma of wheat.

At the base, they ate 88% flour, and even then they added more bran.

That’s essentially whole wheat flour: a kilo of whole wheat produces a kilo of flour without much loss, since the bran is included. It’s the worst quality flour—eating it makes you choke and it’s tough to swallow down your throat.

Using a bit less bran, you get 88% flour; if the texture is slightly better, you get 85% flour. It’s solid and has a wheaty taste but still feels a little coarse when you eat it.

These days, nobody eats pure white flour—it’s wasteful and asking for scolding—only the rich district dares to do so.

Even these dark buns taste good to them, not causing any choking or bulging eyes, which is great.

They finished the ‘soup with noodles’ and all the veggies. There was still some offal left, which they could eat in a couple of days. The pork was almost all cut and frozen too.

“Brother, I’ll make some fried meatballs tomorrow, and some radish balls too,” she said.

“Sure, cook whatever you want. I’ll help you after I finish my work tomorrow,” he replied.

“I can’t season the filling as tasty as you do.”

“Add some more vegetables.”

“You could add some green onions and yam eggs to the meatballs, they’re also delicious.”

“Alright.”

The next day, she made a round to the farm fields before coming back to prepare the filling. Today, she needed to make more fillings: beef, lamb, and pork. It wasn’t just for meatballs—dumplings were on the list too, as well as vegetarian meatballs and dumplings and buns.

Zhang Yu had already kneaded the dough, ready to make steamed buns. She made a few extra pots of dough to freeze outside; with more people, food would be consumed quickly.

A few kids sat there chopping the filling, giggling and watching cartoons, filling the room with playful noises. With a few children around, the house was full of vibrant and lively energy.

Li Pan and Liu Qian used the shredder to grate radishes, taking a little of each kind, as there were plenty of radishes at home that would go to waste if not eaten, and new ones needed to be planted in the spring.

The shredded radish was chopped finely and mixed with the filling. Adding some grated yam ensured the mixture would bind well, and a bit of starch was mixed in before frying.

The fried radish balls were crispy and tasty, no worse than the meat ones.

The meat fillings were also chopped up. She divided each type in half for tomorrow’s dumplings and steamed buns. She worked on the meatballs first today.

She and Liu Qian were in charge of frying the balls while the kids were responsible for washing dishes and stoking the fire, getting ready to cook lunch.

For lunch, they made braised pork with long green beans. Since the meat from the jars was almost gone, they slaughtered a pig and planned to preserve some meat properly, to avoid the trouble of it defrosting.

They sliced a plate of marinated meat, a variety of slices for each plate. On top of this, they made a few other dishes.

It took them a whole day to finish making the meatballs, packing them up, labeling them, and putting them in the outside freezer.

They had to continue kneading and fermenting the dough in the evening so that they could make meat buns and vegetarian buns in the morning, not forgetting the frozen chives and zucchini.

For dinner, they made a soup with assorted meatballs, throwing in a variety of them, along with some tomatoes and vegetable vermicelli. The meatball soup was just perfect—drinking a bowl warmed them up, inducing a comfortable sweat.

It took a few days of busy work to prepare various New Year goods and foods like eight-treasure rice and steamed rice flour meat, steamed rice flour ribs. The bowls were all frozen outside.

They cleaned up inside and outside the house thoroughly. The breeding pens were also cleaned and disinfected, fearing diseases might spread with the arrival of spring.

The base sent over the wild buffalo meat and wild boar meat they had ordered; not just for them to eat, but also needed for the mutant animals, or else it wouldn’t be enough.

When the Patrol Team left, they bought some breadfruit to take with them. This too could be used as food, and they had chefs prepare it for sale.

The snow in the yard was swept clean, and they hung beautiful red lanterns. Celebrating the New Year required a sense of ceremony, and they even bought firecrackers.

Before the New Year, a few kids took the gifts Li Pan had given them and returned to the orphanage to celebrate. They brought with them home fried goods, eight-treasure rice, and other varieties, along with especially bought candies to give to the children there.

Zhang Qi and others returned to the orphanage for the New Year and came back with the Patrol Team on the fifth day. They missed the director grandfather too.

Liu Qian spent the New Year with her brother at the base. The others, having no relatives, gathered together to celebrate the New Year. On the second day of the New Year, they all went back to the base to have a few drinks with their brothers and then call it a night.

On the second day of the New Year, Zhao Quan sent New Year’s gifts through someone as he was on a mission, on duty during the New Year, earning extra overtime pay.

Unfortunately, his sister-in-law and children did not come; her mother had passed away. The sister-in-law said that with a death in the home, it was better not to visit others during the New Year, not to bring bad luck. She sent gifts instead.

Today, with the house empty, Qin Jianzhong and Shi Lei had gone to No. 7 Farm. Jiao Ming and Cui Yanjun had gone to officially process their resignation at the base, and also to visit their brothers.

Li Pan mixed some dough, planning to make biang biang noodles doused in hot oil. They hadn’t finished eating the New Year dishes yet; on New Year’s Eve, they made ten dishes, including a large one called the lion’s head. They bought abalone and other ingredients specifically for that dish, which everyone enjoyed immensely.