Courtyard House: My Wife is Xu Huizhen

He Yuzhu laughed and said, "If it's not enough, we can borrow from you, sir."

"I don't have any more money to lend you."

Yi Zhonghai didn't dare linger after saying that, lest He Yuzhu try to take advantage of him.

He Yuzhu sent all the money into his spatial storage and hummed a little tune.

He refused to lend Yi Zhonghai 200 yuan before, but now he obediently handed over 300 yuan.

The next day, after sending Yushui to school, I went to the grain store to buy some grain, and then to the vegetable market to buy meat and vegetables.

Although it's still a long time before the issuance of grain coupons, He Yuzhu has already begun preparing to exchange all his money for grain, meat, and vegetables.

From 1955 to around 1984, grain was subject to control for a full 30 years.

Now that they have money, they should prepare more food; He Yuzhu wouldn't mind buying as much as possible.

Upon arriving at the kitchen of Taifeng Restaurant, He Yuzhu chopped vegetables for a while. After lunch, he started working as a kitchen helper, assisting his master, Hong Henian.

Previously, my senior colleague Ye Xiangqun was a kitchen helper, where he could practice cooking some dishes and then serve them to the regular customers in the lobby.

When serving the dishes, they will inform you which dishes were ordered by the people in the private room. These dishes are usually prepared by Hong Henian himself.

After working for a while, Zhang Yong came in from outside and said, "He Yuzhu, stop chopping vegetables and go get the cold dishes."

Chapter 32 Sha Zhu, you can't build a house on this land, it belongs to the public.

"What? You won't let me do knife work anymore?" He Yuzhu asked.

"Yes, it's getting hot, and we're ordering more cold dishes. It would be better to have someone specifically in charge of preparing them."

Zhang Yong offered a few explanations.

Previously, no one in the kitchen was specifically in charge of cold dishes; it was done by several cooks taking turns.

Making cold dishes doesn't require any advanced skills; all you need is seasoning.

The seven main jobs in the kitchen are: water station, plating, cutting board, stove, steamer, pastry, and roast meat.

Preparing cold dishes isn't even a separate job. The seasoning in the system doesn't refer to preparing cold dishes, but rather to the level of mastery over all the seasonings in the process of preparing ingredients.

Zhang Yong could clearly sense He Yuzhu's improvement in knife skills, which had now subtly surpassed his own.

Although I am a member of the head chef's family, everyone in the kitchen earns their living through their own abilities.

If He Yuzhu were to train for a while longer and become even better at knife skills than I am, I would lose face. So I approached Zhang Zusheng, and since summer was just around the corner, I arranged for He Yuzhu to be in charge of preparing the cold dishes.

This is a job that doesn't require much skill. No matter how well you make cold dishes, it's not that special; you won't learn any real techniques.

"Alright, I'll take care of the cold dishes."

He Yuzhu asked, "But I only work half a day?"

“That’s easy. After you leave, let Wang Song take over.”

He Yuzhu was speechless.

Wang Song had a bitter face. In fact, by five or six o'clock in the afternoon, all the vegetables needed for the day had already been chopped.

Everyone else was busy at night, but he didn't have much to do.

Unless a few vegetables are used up and more are cut, they are mostly idle.

But if I take over preparing cold dishes at 5 o'clock, the whole night will be extremely busy.

After all, Taifenglou has a huge customer flow at night, and its business is mainly done at night.

Hong Henian, who was standing next to him, could also clearly sense that Zhang Yong was targeting his apprentice, but he couldn't say much about it.

Zhang Yong claimed that the head chef had arranged it, and he had no reason to object.

Hong Henian patted He Yuzhu on the shoulder and comforted him, "Keep doing this for now, we'll talk about it later."

"It's alright, Master, I can learn how to make cold dishes too."

He Yuzhu had helped pick up cold dishes before, and the system gave him some general experience for each plate he picked up.

This is similar to cooking; it requires experience, and the rewards are even greater than for knife skills.

After all, knife skills are just a preliminary preparation process. It takes 10 minutes of cutting to gain some knife skills experience, and an hour to gain general experience.

Making cold dishes is different from stir-fries; it's a complete dish, so the system only provides some general experience.

It takes only about a minute to prepare a plate of cold dishes, so accumulating experience in this way is much faster than improving knife skills.

He Yuzhu appeared somewhat reluctant, but inwardly he was overjoyed.

He Yuzhu's words only made Hong Henian feel more guilty, and he made up his mind to teach this apprentice well.

The cold dish area is at the other end of the kitchen, away from the stove, so that the dishes can be kept longer in the summer and won't get too hot.

After inspecting the items, He Yuzhu began preparations. Many of the vegetables had been soaked in advance, such as agar-agar and peanuts. He also chopped up some of the missing items.

After preparing all the necessary varieties, Wang Song came over at 5 o'clock with a bitter face.

"It's fine if you only work half a day, but this is the peak time for dining out, so I have extra work to do."

"Are you stupid? There's plenty of meat here!" He Yuzhu said, pointing to the cooked meat.

Of course, cold dishes can't just be vegetarian. After cooking, various braised dishes and offal such as beef, donkey meat, and pig's head meat are neatly arranged.

Previously, they took turns coming and could occasionally sneak a bite. But now it's become a special spot for the two of them. The other chefs are busy in the distance, and it's okay for Wang Song to sneak a bite here.

Just as Jia Dongxu could take bearings from the steel rolling mill, it was perfectly normal for someone working in the kitchen to eat meat and vegetables.

Wang Song chuckled: "That's true, we can eat whatever we want from now on."

He Yuzhu's life is very regular nowadays. After get off work, he goes to collect some fish but is not in a hurry to sell them.

After putting He Yushui to sleep at night, I went to the city wall, where there were many dismantled bricks piled up.

These old city bricks are bluish-gray in color, 48cm long, 24cm wide, and 13cm thick. Each brick weighs about 20 kilograms and was generally made during the Ming Dynasty, more than 300 years ago.

The bricks are engraved with the names of the kilns where they were produced and the craftsmen, but some of them are now blurred due to their age.

When they were dismantling the city wall bricks, they were very violent, and there were quite a few half bricks left.

He Yuzhu used his mental energy to pick out all the intact bricks in the pile. They had all been removed, and although each one was very heavy, they could still be easily stored in his space.

This continued for several days, and soon they collected a considerable number of well-preserved city wall bricks.

Actually, many residents could haul these bricks themselves; the government is even encouraging it now.

After all, it would cost them money to transport it away.

After He Yuzhu found out the truth, he spent money to hire a cart to transport the bricks several times, so that the bricks could be transported across the open road.

As for the bricks and pillars inside the space, they are not intended to be released; these will all become cultural relics in the future.

Many people were surprised to see He Yuzhu having these hard-working people transport bricks to the city wall.

Yi Zhonghai watched them unload the bricks into a corner, then asked, "Zhu Zi, your house doesn't need major repairs, why are you using so many bricks?"

“My side room was blown up, wasn’t it? I want to rebuild two side rooms.”

"this..."

He Yuzhu's house is a three-room house in the middle courtyard facing south, with a small door on the right leading to the backyard.

There is a 30-square-meter open space between the houses on the left and the houses in Yushui. The original side rooms were blown up before liberation.

This area was then vacated; previously, He Daqing had only built a shack with a wood-burning stove underneath.

If the side rooms were built, He Yuzhu would have six rooms, making him the family with the most rooms in the courtyard.

If there were a large population, it wouldn't be so bad, but now it's just He Yuzhu and his sister Yushui living there, and they have the largest living space of any family.

Why are you building so many houses?

He Yuzhu said, "If I don't repair the house, where will I have a kitchen? I'll freeze to death in the winter. I still need to repair the fire pit."

Having secured the loan, He Yuzhu now nominally had money and could proceed with the renovation and reconstruction of his house.

The commotion also alerted Jia Zhangshi in the west room. She followed Jia Dongxu out, and seeing He Yuzhu bringing so many bricks, her eyes lit up and she exclaimed:

“Shazhu, you can’t build your house here. This land belongs to the public.”

Chapter 33 Jia Zhangshi: What do you want to do?

He Yuzhu turned around and glared at her: "Try calling me 'Silly Zhu' again?"

"I..." Jia Zhangshi looked at Sha Zhu's murderous gaze and thought about how his face had been hurting for days, and couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

His voice was no longer as loud as before, and became much softer: "That piece of land belongs to the public, so you can't build on it anyway."

Jia Dongxu and Yi Zhonghai remained silent, letting Jia Zhangshi do as she pleased.

He Yuzhu said, "What business is it of yours if I build a side room outside my house?"

"It's none of my business. Anyway, I said you can't build it. If you dare to build it, I'll sue you."

He Yuzhu said, "Go ahead and sue us. When we bought the house, we said it was our land. It's none of your business if I build a house on my own land."

"Is it on the land deed?" Jia Zhangshi asked with a hint of pride.