CHAPTER 762: [744] BEAST WORLD FARMING 54 (2 UPDATES)

Every year, the pottery jars at home were filled with food storage for the Cold Season, ranging from large to small.

This year, while she planted millet, she had already planned on making vinegar. However, due to the low yield of millet from the previous year, she only made a small jar, which was long consumed. Even though she later used brown sugar and rice to make vinegar temporarily, the flavor produced from millet was more mellow, though taste preferences vary.

During the hottest period of the rainy season, she harvested buckwheat and sorghum. After grinding them finely, she mixed them with bran to form a base, then used molds to create yeast cakes which were buried in either bran or piles of wood and grass to ferment...

This was the process for making wine yeast.

With the yeast ready, making vinegar became much simpler. Simply put, she fried the grains (any grain would do), poured them hot into a vat and mastered the ratio of water to grains at four to one.

Seal it up and wait for three months—that was how the Hakka made rice vinegar.

You could also take cooled rice, add sugar and cold water, store it in a sealed jar, and after six months, filter out the clear liquid, add a little brown sugar, bottle it, seal it and let it ferment for another three to four months. It’s best to filter it once more to get a clear, fragrant rice vinegar.

She had tried this method when there was no millet available, but she still preferred the taste of vinegar made from millet.

Now, the kitchen was stocked with all kinds of seasonings, oyster sauce, shrimp sauce, crab sauce, soybean sauce, fish sauce, soybeans, and soy sauce, all fermenting. Brown sugar had also been replenished—everything was perfectly in place.

The chili bean sauce, spicy radish, dried plums, and various wild vegetables were all lined up in rows in the cellar.

Tangtang saw the full stock of supplies and felt that the hard work over this period was truly worth it.

Including the fruit Yin Ye and others brought back, she would clean them after meals each day to serve to the children and the Beastmen.

After they took a liking to mixed grain noodles, she steamed buns for three consecutive mornings, and in the afternoons, she rolled out noodles. Steamed buns were served with stewed dishes and small dishes (Korean spicy cabbage, yellow turnip, spicy radish), while noodles were made into seafood noodles and fried bean sauce noodles (for which she also made sweet bean sauce). Because the variety of flour-based dishes in Great China was so broad, even changing dishes daily, one could go a month without repeats. Although there was a difference between white noodles and mixed noodles, as long as they could be shaped and were edible, the texture was not as smooth as that of white noodles.

After fully satisfying their appetite, the Beastmen would occasionally go out to do some blacksmithing to digest their food and release their energy. Working was undoubtedly the best way and method for this.

Tangtang and Lili spent most of their time weaving. Fortunately, they had spent the entire rainy season and autumn dyeing; otherwise, they couldn’t have managed to dye in winter. It was because they had cotton that was dried and dyed that they had something to do during the cold winter months.

After several washes, the stench from the stinky fruit was not as overwhelming and, once worn over time, the smell would dissipate since the cotton fabric needed to be washed, and the cotton inside did not need cleaning but would lose its odor over time.

Thus, this was the reason why stinky fruit had been widely accepted. Of course, what did a little stink matter when it provided warmth?

Each shearing of the sheep was a healing process for her, watching their fluffy forms shaved down to bareness. It greatly alleviated her OCD, and their choice to raise sheep was precisely for their wool, wasn’t it?

Wearing beautiful scarves, hats, and gloves drew admiring glances from many females wherever they went.

But no one dared trouble the sisters, for the busyness of Tangtang’s family was there for all to see. If anyone wanted something, they could only come and ask, come and do it themselves.

Regarding the making of these items, their family did not keep secrets but shared all they knew.

And influenced by their family’s diet, the entire female population of the Nandi Clan began making various dried and pickled vegetables. However, their seasonings were not as comprehensive as hers. After all, not everyone had the patience and energy. She could wait by the seaside for a month for seafood. Could these people do the same?

Merely transporting grains was strenuous enough for them to occupy the entire autumn, not to mention other things they wouldn’t even dare contemplate.