Chapter 250: Encountering a tough guy again

The woman hugged the girl and looked at Li Long vigilantly.

Li Long felt he didn't need to be a bad guy, so he explained:

"This big sister, I just rode my bike over, your child rushed over from there, almost hit her... you see if there's anything wrong?"

There was no such thing as "touching porcelain" at this time. The child didn't let Li Long look just now, and Li Long couldn't tell if the child had twisted anything.

"Then..." The woman hurriedly looked at the child, touched her up and down, and asked in a low voice.

Both of them were dressed in rags, originally patches on patches, and now there were several holes.

Both of them hadn't washed their hair for several days, their faces were covered in dust, and the cloth shoes on their feet had openings. This summer was fine, but when winter came...

Li Long didn't want to think about it anymore.

"My girl is fine." The woman finally said, "This big brother, you... are you okay?"

"Fine, I'm fine too." Li Long waved his hand, "Your child is picking wheat, right? These wheat ears are still on the road, you take them back."

Since it was fine, Li Long felt at ease. He turned back to the road and began to pick up the fallen vegetables.

The woman took the child to the side of the road and didn't rush to pick up the wheat ears. The little girl put her finger into her mouth, looked at a tomato that had fallen on the ground, her eyes full of longing.

Li Long noticed it and felt a bit sorry, so he picked up the tomato and said:

"Little friend, it's for you."

The child's face was happy at first, then she looked at Li Long vigilantly, and then looked towards her mother.

There was guilt, vigilance, and anxiety on the woman's face. She said in a low voice:

"I... have no money. I... can I exchange it with wheat? I have wheat over there!"

"No need, no need, who doesn't have difficulties." Li Long smiled, "Eating a tomato is nothing. Has this child not been able to eat well for several days? How about this, I'll leave you some vegetables."

As he spoke, Li Long took some eggplants, peppers, cowpeas, etc., from the basket, placed them on the side of the road, put the tomato on top, and then nodded to the mother and daughter and left.

He did this purely to show that he had no malice.

He didn't put knife beans because if this thing isn't cooked, it will be poisonous.

After Li Long left for a long time, the mother and daughter ran over immediately. The girl grabbed the tomato and put it to her mouth, then took it down and handed it to her mother's mouth:

"Mom, you eat!"

"You eat." The mother turned her head, holding back tears, "Mom won't eat—Mom still has to pick up the wheat ears, you eat, hurry up and eat, after eating, take these vegetables to under the bridge hole."

The child stubbornly stuffed the tomato to her mother's mouth. The mother had no choice but to take a small bite; it was delicious!

Li Long had walked far away, but the mother and daughter were still in his mind.

They should have run over from their hometown to rely on relatives and friends, but they shouldn't have found anyone. Such things have been happening since the 50s and 60s, but he just didn't expect to run into it himself this time.

Li Long left the vegetables because he felt pity, and also because the accent of this mother and daughter seemed to be from his hometown area. He didn't know how many counties away, but it wasn't far.

Consider it accumulating virtue.

Riding his bike to the large courtyard, Li Long put the vegetables into the kitchen and sorted them out—there was a small storage room in Old Ma's kitchen, with wooden shelves inside, where quite a few things could be placed.

It was shaded here, and things could be kept for several days.

Looking at the time, there was still more than an hour before getting off work, so Li Long began to knead the dough, planning to make simple pulled noodles.

This time he didn't use much meat, just peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes, the most old-fashioned way of eating mixed noodles in summer.

After kneading the dough, Li Long cut the long eggplants into thin slices, and didn't throw away the eggplant legs. This thing is called vegetarian chicken legs in this era, and it's usually eaten by pampered children in the family. It is said that it also has medicinal value.

Peppers and tomatoes were also cut, and a head of garlic was peeled, half of which was cut—because he had read that book (Enmity and Gratitude in Kuocang Mountain), so Li Long must put garlic when making eggplant dishes. The remaining garlic would be eaten raw with noodles later.

After all, eating noodles without garlic, the fragrance is less than half.

Stir-fry the vegetables first, pour oil and put garlic to stir-fry, add some water after the high heat, to force the water out of the tomatoes, forming a liquid similar to sauce, then stew for a while, add salt, and take the vegetables out of the pot.

The fragrance permeated the kitchen, and Li Long felt sweat appearing on his forehead, but it was nothing, it was midsummer, normal.

Brush the pot, pour water and continue to burn, then go to take a watermelon and cool it in the water, then start kneading the dough and rubbing the dough balls.

When Gu Xiaoxia entered the courtyard, Li Long was putting the noodles into the pot. Seeing her come in, Li Long said:

"Wash your hands, you can eat after washing your hands."

Gu Xiaoxia said with a smile:

"Really good, there is ready-made food to eat as soon as I enter the house—"

Actually, she really wanted to say that Li Long was a bit spoiling her. But she liked this feeling very much, and she couldn't say such words.

Propping up the bike, Gu Xiaoxia took her bag into the bedroom, came out after a while, and helped Li Long.

"Do you want to eat hot noodles or cold noodles?" Li Long habitually asked. Hot noodles aren't scooped directly from the pot, that way it's easy to clump when eating; it's to scoop the noodles out and pass them through cold water, commonly known as "exciting" it, and then pass it through hot water in the pot.

Cold ones are naturally the noodles that have been "excited."

"Cold ones," Gu Xiaoxia looked at the noodles Li Long pulled and said with a smile: "You are very good at pulling noodles, so thin."

"Thin ones are easy to chew, our noodles are winter wheat, chewy, and easy to handle when pulling."

Think about his previous life, for a period of time in the county, everything planted was two reds and one white—that is, cotton, tomatoes, and grapes, with very little grain crops; the flour for eating could only be bought from the supermarket.

At that time, they had already started to distinguish what high-gluten flour, etc. Anyway, in the understanding of rural people like Li Long, it was to extract some things from the flour. After all, products like "wheat germ" had already appeared on the market.

The flour used to make pulled noodles at that time wasn't as easy to pull as before.

For a period of time, everyone believed what was said on the radio and television, to only eat flour processed in regular factories, and not to buy flour from small processing plants, because the flour inside was prone to mold...

But after eating for a period of time, it felt that neither the noodles nor the rice were as fragrant and delicious as before.

Later, a part of the land was forced to plant grain to ensure food security. Along with this, some small flour mills that had been banned were revived. The flour processed inside didn't circulate much in the market, but people nearby who knew would go to buy it.

Li Long's family also bought it, the price wasn't expensive, but to tell the truth, the steamed buns made with this flour could taste the wheat fragrance again.

Not easy.

When Li Long was scooping the noodles, Gu Xiaoxia scooped a bowl of noodle soup for each of them. Both of their noodles were scooped into enamel basins, and Li Long took another bottle of vinegar and explained:

"I'm used to pouring vinegar."

"I eat it too." Gu Xiaoxia didn't find it strange, "Especially when frying chives, I pour even more. My dad said when I was young, I could occasionally eat noodles, and I would just mix them with vinegar, which scared him!"

"That's indeed quite scary..." Li Long didn't expect his partner to be a "vinegar bottle."

"Then you can't laugh at me." Gu Xiaoxia lowered her head to mix the vegetables, "At that time... just my dad taking care of me, I was young and didn't know anything, sometimes I would make him angry, my dad was angry, and he cooked casually, I..."

Gu Xiaoxia couldn't go on, she lowered her head.

Li Long reached out and patted her head and said:

"Everything is fine now. You have a good job now, and you can help the family. I went to see Uncle Gu yesterday and chatted a lot, he said he is quite comfortable living alone now, let you not worry about him..."

"My dad is just like that, he keeps everything in his heart... can you... go see him often in the future?"

"Me going is not as good as my big brother going." Li Long shook his head and said with a smile, "My big brother goes, and he can argue with him, I go, and I can only listen to your dad educating me as a person who has come before... Fortunately, I think I am still quite excellent, and can enter your dad's eyes."

Listening to Li Long blowing his own trumpet there, the sadness in Gu Xiaoxia's heart dissipated unknowingly.

"Eat quickly, the noodles are going to clump." Li Long pointed to the noodle bowl and said, "You have to go to work in the afternoon. After eating, go and rest for a while..."

The two of them talked and laughed and finished the meal. Li Long also told about the mother and daughter he met on the road, and Gu Xiaoxia also felt quite pitiful listening.

！.

After eating, Gu Xiaoxia drove Li Long to the bedroom to rest. She said Li Long had been busy for several days and must not have rested well, and she would wash the bowls.

Li Long smiled and went into the room.

After a small nap, Gu Xiaoxia had already gone to work, so Li Long pushed his bicycle out of the courtyard, locked the door, and went to the free market.

Arriving at the market, he really saw what he wanted—someone was setting up a stall to sell watermelons and sweet melons.

In the local dialect, "sweet melon" refers to green-skinned Hami melon. And others have their own names, such as fragrant melon called "yellow egg," white-skinned ones are pear melons—this is considered a standard name, and there are flower orchid silk, etc., but now the names have changed and it's not easy to find.

The famous ones like Xizhou honey, old man melon in later generations didn't have a shadow at this time—at least not in this market.

"How to sell watermelon?" Li Long asked, "Where is the melon from?"

"Pingyuan Forest Farm." The stall owner was very polite, "0.03 yuan per kilogram, all at this price."

"What about sweet melon?" Li Long looked at a small pile of sweet melons on the side and asked again.

"0.1 yuan... it's expensive, but it's very sweet!" The stall owner's sweet melon obviously didn't sell well, he said.

"Then weigh five watermelons, and two sweet melons." This sweet melon is large, one must be 6 or 7 kilograms. Li Long saw it on a short video platform in his previous life, and it was sold by the tooth in the market in southern Xinjiang, which is this kind of sweet melon.

This kind of sweet melon has been popular until the first ten years of the next century, and later because the size was too large for a family to finish, so later almost all sweet melons were of the 2 or 3 kilogram size.

Even, but it really didn't have that feeling before.

Li Long still remembers that once at Urumqi Railway Station, a Uyghur fellow was selling such a large sweet melon, one weighing 5 or 6 kilograms, 1 yuan each, the kind that was fully ripe. Li Long bought four, carried them to the August 1st Reception Office to get on the train.

Although there were yellow eggs planted in the fields at home, this sweet melon is another kind of sweet, different.

Eating it at home was beautiful, and he still remembers the taste to this day.

Put the watermelon in a sack, put it on the back seat of the bike, tie the sweet melon and put it on the front handle of the bike, pay the money, ride and turn back to the large courtyard, put down a sweet melon, and then leave again.

This time he carried his gun and really went into the mountains.

The lock of the wooden house was still good. It seems that there should be no idle people in the mountains now. Li Long rolled the watermelons into the small room, then put a watermelon in the sack, shouldered his gun, and went to find Lv Dafeng.

Lv Dafeng was washing clothes by the stream. Seeing Li Long coming, he stood up and greeted him with a smile.

"Is there honey?" Li Long shouted loudly. He was carrying a bloody wild boar leg in his hand and didn't dare to approach.

"Yes, yes." Lv Dafeng saw it was Li Long, smiled, put down the bee board, and said:

"I cut a batch of honey yesterday, not much, but the honey is especially good."

As he spoke, he went into the tent and took out two bottles.

"One bottle is honey, one bottle is pollen. Most of the honey hasn't been sealed yet. When it's sealed, I'll cut it and bring it to you." Lv Dafeng looked much more energetic, "Comrade Li, I don't want this meat; the one you left last time hasn't been finished yet."

"Keep it, pickle it if you have salt; no one can say when the next hunt will be." Li Long said, "I'll take the honey..."

"Um. This pollen can be eaten dry, or mixed with honey; it's good for women." Lv Dafeng said.

Li Long nodded, indicating he understood. In his previous life, there was a lot of marketing for pollen, and some even used it directly as a facial mask.

Carrying this bottle of more than 2 kilograms of honey, Li Long returned to the wooden house, collected all the semi-dried mushroom slices, put them into a sack, and also packed the wild boar meat, roe deer meat, and internal organs, put them on the bicycle, carried them, and went out of the mountains.

He first went to the large courtyard. Today is Monday, and at this time, Gu Xiaoxia was still at work. Li Long put the meat and internal organs in a basin, continued to soak them with water, and then took that sack of mushroom slices to the acquisition station.

"Xiao Long, it's my fault for not making it clear to you." Chen Hongjun looked at Li Long very happily, but after seeing those dried mushrooms, he said with an apologetic look:

"The black tiger palm mushrooms we collect must be whole mushrooms, not the sliced kind. You sliced them, so we don't know what the original shape was, and it's not easy to grade them. Customers don't accept them like this either."

"Then that's fine." Li Long wasn't too disappointed, "I didn't ask clearly at the time; it's a habit to slice mushrooms when drying them, it's convenient to eat. Then I'll just dry the whole head of this kind of mushroom later—but to be honest, it's not easy to dry them like that, and it's not easy to eat them."

"Then you don't have to worry about it." Chen Hongjun said with a smile, "The grading from above is like this. As long as you bring them, I'll collect them. Are there many mushrooms in the mountains?"

"Many, there are quite a lot. It's just the season."

Li Long took out more than 2 kilograms of dried mushrooms from the sack and placed them on the counter:

"Comrade Chen, since you don't collect them, I'll take them back and eat them myself. I'll give these to you; the taste of this mushroom is still quite good."

"It's indeed not bad, then thank you." Chen Hongjun didn't decline either. He had been dealing with Li Long for a while and knew that this young man was generous, and he also liked to communicate with such young men.

Li Long left the acquisition station and rode his bike to the supply and marketing cooperative, leaving some dried mushrooms for Li Xiangqian, asking him to pass some on to Old Man Li who used to watch the door.

Now the person watching the door had been changed to a young man. Li Long also asked before he knew that Old Man Li's health hadn't been good these days, so he hadn't come out.

Returning to the large courtyard, Li Long estimated that Gu Xiaoxia was about to get off work, so he started cooking.

There were quite a few things brought back, so Li Long steamed rice, stir-fried a roe deer meat, and stir-fried a mushroom meat.

When Gu Xiaoxia rode her bike to the entrance of the large courtyard and saw the lock wasn't there, she was startled at first, and then happy: Li Long had said that only the two of them had the key, so Li Long was back?

Pushing the door open, she smelled the fragrance of the food. Gu Xiaoxia was both happy and ashamed.

In this era, that kind of traditional concept was still quite stubborn; usually, it was the woman who cooked, even if the woman had a job, she would still cook and look after the children after work. The man would at most help out.