The first thing I did was to find out

Chapter 29 Gray Face
In the evening, when the Qin Huai family of four gathered around a small table by the window on the first floor to eat stir-fried vegetables and buckwheat buns, Zhao Rong couldn't help but scold Qin Congwen again what she had said in the afternoon.

This time Qin Huai listened to the whole story and even listened to an exaggerated version.

As Qin Congwen's eldest son, Qin Huai felt that he needed to prove Qin Congwen's cooking skills: "Mom, although Dad's cooking skills are average, they are not so bad that the steamed buns he made are inedible. The steamed buns back then were not delicious, probably because..."

"The flour that Dad bought because he wanted to save money was of very low quality."

Qin Congwen was so moved that tears came to his eyes when he heard Qin Huai speaking for him. After so many years, someone finally spoke up for him.

Qin Congwen nodded repeatedly, agreeing madly: "Yes, yes, that flour seller should be arrested and imprisoned for 10 or 8 years. He said that someone in his family was sick and needed money urgently, and sold me a large batch of flour at a low price. It was all high-quality white flour and there would definitely be no quality problems. I was soft-hearted and agreed."

"It turned out that it wasn't the best white flour at all. It was pure gray flour, which was more authentic than the gray flour I ate when I was a child. How evil must he be. He would never sell that stuff to me if he had sifted the flour at all."

Zhao Rong said angrily, "How dare you say that? You bought something without checking the goods. The top layer is white flour, and the bottom is all gray flour. After all, you have been running the store and doing business for so many years. You can still be fooled by such a trick."

"I would have just admitted being cheated, but you refused to give up the flour and insisted on steaming those damn buckwheat buns. All the neighbors ate them and almost closed the store because of you!"

"Mom, what is gray noodles?" Qin Luo asked curiously, "Brother, do you know?"

Qin Huai shook his head.

"It's the flour that's ground very coarsely, including the bran, and isn't sifted. Your dad and I ate it when we were little." Zhao Rong said.

Seeing that Zhao Rong's explanation was not detailed enough, Qin Congwen continued, "The flour you eat now is all refined flour. Our conditions were not good back then, so we ground all the edible flour together. At that time, corn flour was ground together with the corn cob."

"If you grind it together with the wheat bran, the flour you grind out is gray in color, so it's called gray flour. If it's even coarser, you mix flour with buckwheat flour to make it black, which is called black flour. The steamed buns made from that stuff are much coarser than the buckwheat buns we have today. They're really coarse, and people with a thin throat have to add water to it before they can swallow it."

"The gray flour your mother is talking about is considered a fine grain. The gray flour sold at that time was a mixture of flour and buckwheat flour, and its color was grayer than the flour that was ground properly."

"Do you remember the grandmother Zhang who lived across from your grandfather's house? According to seniority, you should call her Grandma Seven. She married here from Jin Province. The noodles she made were delicious."

"Every Chinese New Year, she would make noodles with ash flour and beat an egg. Her son would sit outside her house and eat the noodles. I don't know how many children cried because of their greed."

Qin Luo stared at his father and asked his soul: "Then Dad, are you greedy?"

Qin Congwen said he didn't remember whether he was greedy or not, and he felt like beating the child now.

Qin Luo had long been accustomed to his father's indifference, so he turned around and asked Qin Huai, "Brother, I think the gray noodles my father just said are delicious. Can you make gray noodles for me tomorrow?"

Qin Huai:?
Zhao Rong tapped the back of Qin Luo's hand with the tip of her chopsticks: "Don't listen to your father's nonsense. We had nothing to eat back then, so we thought it was delicious to eat something with white flour. Besides, where can I buy you gray flour now? Ask your father to go find that liar and sell him another batch?"

Qin Congwen said that if you want to scold your daughter, just scold her and stop dragging down her own father.

Qin Congwen stubbornly retorted: "That's not necessarily true. Gray flour can also be made into delicious food. Going back further, when our parents were young, the landlords couldn't afford white flour. Didn't my father often say that the landlord in our village went bankrupt and became a poor peasant because he loved to eat white flour buns. He ate all his family property with white flour every meal."

"Luoluo, Dad will try to get your grandfather to get you some gray flour in the countryside, and then make gray flour noodles for you in a while!"

Qin Luo: ...

Dad, I want to eat what my brother made. As a caring daughter, Qin Luo swallowed her inner thoughts and the steamed buns together.

In the next few days, Qin Huai continued to make buckwheat buns.

The discussion about gray flour at dinner that day reminded Qin Huai that it was not necessary to stick to mixing white flour with buckwheat flour when making buckwheat buns, but possible to mix in other flours.

Qinhuai mixed things with this and that, even adding flour made from boiled elm bark, and turned the buckwheat bun-making process into a bun innovation competition, but still failed to make Chen Huihui's dream bun.

Just when Qin Huai was thinking about whether to get some retro and nostalgic authentic gray flour mixed with wheat bran and pure corn flour ground with corn cobs to give Chen Huihui a little bit of coarse grain shock, Grandpa Qin's gray flour arrived.

Qin Congwen actually called home and asked Old Man Qin to get some gray noodles so that Qin Luo could have a bowl of gray noodles that would bring back the good old days.

Upon learning that Qin Congwen had actually gotten hold of this retro goodie, Chen Huihong ran over to watch. She grabbed a handful of gray flour and rubbed it carefully, sighing that she hadn't seen this thing for many years and had only eaten it when she was a child.

In order to celebrate Qin Luo's upcoming experience of life, Qin Huai decided to suspend the buckwheat bun tasting for one day, so that Chen Huihui could also taste Qin Congwen's craftsmanship and know that the buckwheat buns he made were really good.

Qin Congwen knows how to make handmade noodles.

The skill is not bad. It is said that he learned it from Grandma Zhang. When he became her apprentice, he paid a pot of oil, 30 eggs and an old hen as tuition. In view of such a generous tuition, Grandma Zhang taught her everything without keeping anything back.

The Qin Family Breakfast Shop was able to open thanks to Qin Congwen's noodles. However, as egg noodles became more popular, Qin Congwen's noodles were not very cost-effective compared to the cheap egg noodles, so the breakfast shop changed to only sell steamed buns instead of noodles.

Today, Qin Congwen felt it was time to show off his skills.

Qin Congwen was full of energy as he kneaded dough in the kitchen.

The people waiting outside the kitchen to eat the legendary gray noodles were also very excited.

Chen Huihong, who is now financially independent and can forget the hardships she endured in her youth, is very happy to have the opportunity to recall the good old days.

Zhao Rong, who almost forgot that her husband had the skill to make handmade noodles, happily thought that if Qin Congwen's gray noodles were good this time, she would ask him to make some more handmade noodles in the morning in the future to earn more money.

Qin Luo, who had never eaten it but wanted to eat it, loved to eat it and liked to eat it, couldn't wait.

I haven't eaten it either, and I want to try whether the texture of gray flour can be used directly to make buckwheat buns like the Qinhuai style.

Chen Huihui was very happy as she had been eating steamed buns for many days in a row and was in urgent need of changing her food.

Ouyang came over to join in the fun, thinking that it was free and he could eat at least one bowl, so he was ready to go.

Under the expectant eyes of everyone, Qin Congwen put the noodles into the pot calmly and confidently.

This feeling of everyone waiting for me to cook is something I haven't experienced in many years.

It turns out that I am still as good as ever, hahahaha!

(End of this chapter)