After feeding Xibao, Feng Qingxue stepped out of the bedroom and didn’t find Lu Jiang, "Tianjun, where’s your uncle?"
She was sure she had heard Lu Jiang entering the room and unwrapping candy while she was feeding Xibao.
"In the kitchen." Lu Tianjun, mouth filled with creamy candy, did not want to talk, yet, being unable to avoid Feng Qingxue’s question, spat out two words quickly, then hastened to dissolve the candy in his mouth.
Etiquette in the Lu Family was ingrained in his bones, thus he was uncomfortable speaking with food in his mouth.
Feng Qingxue knew his nature very well, chuckled and carried her plump son, who was contented after being fed and changed and was happily playing with the end of her braid. She asked her nephew to help her draw the curtain aside. Mother and son stepped into the kitchen amidst the clanking sound.
"Ajiang, what are you doing?"
"I left two half-buckets of water outside yesterday, and they have frozen into ice blocks today. I didn’t have the time to chip at it in the morning. Now, I’m making a hole in the ice block for the meat, so it won’t go bad for a few days." Lu Jiang showed his wife the bucket with a hole carved out.
The winters then were far colder than those decades later, and water turned to ice almost instantly during the frozen December.
There was half a bucket of solid ice with a large hole carved in the middle. He put two pounds of pork in it, and there was still room to spare. Lu Jiang casually washed the large intestine a couple of times and coiled it in, placing pork bones atop the ice chunk.
Covered with a bucket lid, wasn’t it a natural fridge?
Winter had this advantage; you could freeze dumplings, and many types of food would keep for many days without going bad.
Lu Xibao, imitating his mother, peered into the bucket as if recognizing the bones. He pointed at the bones and made a sound.
"Does Xibao recognize bones too? Do you want to eat meat?" Feng Qingxue laughed. "Mom will make meat paste for you tomorrow and make noodles in big bone soup. Never mind tonight. Eating meat at night is difficult to digest, Xibao, be a good boy."
But the baby was not so obedient, pointing at the ice pick in Lu Jiang’s hand continuously and making "ya ya ya" noises.
The clanging sound heard made the little one wave his hands and feet uncontrollably.
Feng Qingxue nearly dropped him, "Alright, alright, Xibao, don’t move around. If you keep moving, mommy won’t hold you anymore!"
"Ya!" The little guy’s voice instantly fell.
Lu Jiang lifted his head and looked at his chubby son sucking on his fingers, looking wronged, "Wife, it seems like he really can understand us, just sometimes I don’t know if he’s pretending to not understand."
"I’m not him, so I don’t know." Feng Qingxue dismissed the topic cleanly.
Seeing her husband preparing to put the half pig head into the bucket, she quickly spoke up to stop him, "Don’t! Go heat some water. Later, you will clean the pig head and the large intestine. I’ll braise the pig head meat and large intestine tonight and stew it till midnight. Tomorrow we’ll have it as a side dish to our drinks."
His wife’s cooking skills were superb, and Lu Jiang unashamedly salivated. He then stuffed the big yellow croaker into the bucket of ice.
He’s just like Xibao when he drools! Laughter filled Feng Qingxue’s eyes.
Lu Jiang heated a pot of water, and under his wife’s guidance, he cleaned the pig head. The butcher had already removed the main bone from the pig, so it wasn’t weighed. He just had to remove the corners of the eyes, the ears, the lymph nodes, and cartilages. He also removed the unscorched pig hair, then cut it into two large pieces. In addition, he flipped the large intestine inside out and scraped its inner wall clean.
After finishing the cleaning and arranging everything in the dish and marinating the meat, Lu Jiang started to prepare dinner. He didn’t forget to make noodle soup with crucian carp for Xibao. Meanwhile, Feng Qingxue and Xibao were keeping him company in the kitchen, enjoying a relaxing time.