Returning to hometown to farm: The apocalypse system arrived ten years earlier?

Chapter 41 Digging winter bamboo shoots

Under the persimmon tree, Li Xiang was pickling salted duck eggs with his grandmother.

He knows how to pickle duck eggs, but he had only seen it when he was a child. This is his first time to actually do it, so he needs his grandmother to guide him on some details.

This is also a process of enhancing the emotional communication with grandma. Family happiness is nothing more than this.

Look, grandma is smiling happily, and she is much more motivated than when she usually pickles duck eggs herself.

"This yellow mud is still a bit coarse. Grind it finer and then sift it through a sieve." Grandma said after checking the raw materials.

His family's recipe for pickled salted duck eggs is an ancestral recipe from Lijia Village. The main ingredient is naturally green-skinned duck eggs, while the auxiliary ingredients are yellow mud, wood ash, salt and water.

The yellow mud was dug from a sunny hillside about three miles away from home. The hillside was covered with yellow soil. Li Xiang dug about twenty pounds of it, came back to dry it in the sun, crushed it, and then used a sieve to remove some impurities.

The wood ash is the new rice straw of this year, some wood cut from the mountains, and the ashes left in the stove when cooking. Wood ash is also a good thing. It is not only a very good fertilizer, but also can be used as medicine to dispel cold and swelling, eliminate symptoms and break up accumulation.

According to Ben Jing, it tastes spicy and slightly warm, and enters the liver and kidney meridians. Its other names are: winter ash, quinoa ash (Ben Jing), and firewood ash (Compendium of Materia Medica).

In addition, it is also a disinfectant raw material widely used in rural areas. It has a strong effect in killing pathogens and viruses, and its effect is similar to that of the commonly used strong disinfectant caustic soda.

The main purpose of adding wood ash to salted duck eggs is to sterilize and disinfect them, prevent bacterial contamination, and make the eggs less likely to deteriorate.

It is worth mentioning that the salted duck eggs pickled with wood ash are particularly delicious, the egg yolks are red and oily, and not too salty.

It is said that during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, a woman named Chen was selected to enter the palace at the age of 17. Although she was born in a humble family, she was deeply loved by Emperor Kangxi because she liked to make various local specialties. In particular, her pickled duck eggs were delicious and moderately salty, completely different from the salted eggs usually eaten in the palace. One of her secrets was to add wood ash and more than ten kinds of precious Chinese herbs.

Li Xiang's family was poor, so the recipe he passed down naturally did not contain any precious Chinese herbs. But even with ordinary wood ash and yellow mud, the pickled duck eggs were quite delicious.

The local duck eggs of his family are of very good quality, large, plump, and green-shelled. This kind of duck eggs is also called "green fruit".

The green color of the eggshell may be related to the breed of duck. According to some research institutions, the green color of green-shell duck eggs is mainly caused by the synergistic effect of two single base mutations upstream of the duck's ABCG2 gene.

These mutations bind to the transcription factor CTCF, preventing the upstream methylation signal from being transmitted downstream, thereby upregulating the expression of the ABCG2 gene, transporting biliverdin to the uterine tissue, and coloring the eggshell blue.

There are also studies that suggest it may be related to the ducks' diet.

Li Xiang's family has saved up quite a few green-skinned duck eggs, about a hundred in total, filling two baskets, but he doesn't know the exact number.

Following his grandmother's instructions, he sifted out about 5 kilograms of yellow mud and fine soil, discarding some fine sand, stone fragments, grass roots, etc., as well as large, hard lumps of soil. He put them aside for later use.

First, put one pound and two ounces of salt into the bucket, then add two tablespoons of mountain spring water, about two pounds, stir to allow the salt to fully dissolve and distribute evenly, then pour the five pounds of yellow mud and fine soil prepared earlier into the bucket, then add about one pound of wood ash, stir, and make it into a uniform paste.

The preparation of this mud is very important. It should not be too thin or too thick. If it is too thin, it will not stick well, and if it is too thick, the coating will be uneven.

The loess and wood ash slurry prepared by Li Xiang has moderate consistency, just right, and does not require secondary rework.

There is also a little trick to judge, which is to take a duck egg and throw it into the mud. If half of the egg sinks into the mud and the other half is exposed on the surface of the mud, it means that it is prepared well.

Li Xiang prepared a vat and began to pickle salted duck eggs. He covered the fresh duck eggs with mud, took them out and rolled them in dry ash, coating them with a thin layer of ash to prevent the eggs from sticking to each other. At the same time, the mud was slightly fixed, otherwise the mud would flow down due to gravity, resulting in an uneven surface, affecting the pickling effect and taste.

The salted duck eggs were carefully arranged, more than a hundred of them, just enough to fill up a jar. There was also a little mud left, which was also poured on the eggs. Then the jar was sealed with a lid. Li Xiang moved the jar to a cool, dry and ventilated room at the back for storage. It would be ready to eat after about thirty to forty days.

If it is pickled in summer, the time will be slightly shorter, about twenty days. If it is in winter, it may take fifty or sixty days.

Then, Li Xiang said something to his grandmother, picked up his hoe, carried a bamboo basket, and went to the back mountain to dig winter bamboo shoots.

His family has several bamboos on the hillsides, and there are a lot of winter bamboo shoots every year. But in the past, my grandmother was alone at home and didn't dig them very often, so she only took some for herself. Even if she did dig them, there was no place to sell them.

Giant pandas have been spotted in their area. Who wouldn't have a few acres of bamboo forest? They have more winter and spring bamboo shoots than they can eat all of them, so who are they going to sell them to?

Go to the county town to set up a stall and sell to city people?
Firstly, there are too many local winter bamboo shoots and they cannot be sold at a good price. Secondly, it is not convenient for rural people to go to the city and they are easily driven away.

Now that Li Xiang has returned to farming, he naturally has to harvest this delicacy and sell it. He now has over 100,000 fans, most of whom are active fans from all over the country, so there should still be a market for it.

Digging winter bamboo shoots is a technical job, just like digging black truffles, you need to look for them. Because you can't see them at all. If you see the bamboo shoots have already drilled out of the soil, they are old and not delicious. Such bamboo shoots are not wanted.

In order to ensure the quality of the winter bamboo shoots he sells, Li Xiang naturally chooses the bamboo shoots buried underground, which are the tenderest.

The bamboo leaves were green and rustled in the autumn wind. Li Xiang walked among the bamboo forest, searching carefully.

He has lived in the mountains since he was a child, so naturally he has mastered the tricks of digging winter bamboo shoots.

Many people may think that the older the bamboo, the more likely it is to have winter bamboo shoots under it, but this is not the case.

Instead, it is most likely that winter bamboo shoots will grow underneath the "mature" bamboo that has grown for two or three years.

The color of this bamboo is relatively dark, and its leaves are not bright green, but dark green, and some may be yellowish.

Then you can also observe the root nodes of the bamboo. If the bamboo has some larger bamboo shoots and is darker in color, there are probably a lot of winter bamboo shoots underneath.

This is called "looking for bamboo shoots".

In addition, the terrain can also be observed.

Plants need sufficient sunlight to grow. Although the winter bamboo shoots have not yet "broken the soil", bamboo is very "smart" and will let its offspring emerge from a place facing the sun. Therefore, you can look for winter bamboo shoots in sunny places that can get more sunlight.

Don't consider the northern hillside or the dark and damp corners on the south side. Bamboo is not that stupid. Even if there are some, the quantity is relatively small and it is not cost-effective.

Li Xiang harvested a lot in a short time. While he was busy working in the mountains, several elderly people from the village came to his home.

　感谢“书友20230303153044121”、“书友20220818054122692”、“书友20210301105353553002”、“书友160618082549530”、“书友20240706123785”的月票。

　　
　
(End of this chapter)