"Thank you, Auntie," Qin Xiangnuan said with a delighted smile, showing her bright white teeth. In those days, with good air and good water, even without brushing, one could have white teeth.
She took the bun Aunt Hua had given her back to her own home, where she began to make noodle slices.
Making noodle slices was essentially making clumps of dough. She kneaded the dough into a ball, rolled it out casually, then cut it into slices and boiled them in a pot. She didn’t have much strength, but managing this much was already quite good. Then, she cut the noodles into slices with a knife, throwing them into the pot, adding some vegetables picked from their own home, salt, MSG, and such; that was the flavor. Her cooking always had this taste, and so did Hu Li’s; people in the village didn’t seek flavor but to be full.
She carried the pot with effort, walking towards the fields, until a villager seeing her struggle helped her carry it for a while before she placed the pot at the end of the field.
Qin Guohua came over for a meal, scooped a big bowl for himself, and there wasn’t much left in the pot, perhaps enough for a small bowl.
Qin Xiangnuan picked up the chopsticks, ate a few bites, and then passed the bowl to Qin Xiangyang. After the siblings finished their meal, they began to work in the fields. Qin Xiangnuan couldn’t help much, but her small hands could pull out weeds, saving Qin Xiangyang quite a bit of time.
In the evening when it was completely dark, a day-tired Qin Guohua, having eaten, had gone to sleep in the house long ago, his snores audible from afar, signifying how deeply he was sleeping.
Aunt Hua asked Uncle Hua to deliver twenty-five kilograms of flour overnight; indeed, it was a hefty bag of twenty-five kilograms.
Although Qin Xiangyang didn’t know what it was for, he smartly hid the flour in their home cabinet, stealthily storing it away. They couldn’t use too much of the kitchen’s flour, so Qin Xiangnuan was probably going to use this flour to secretly make some food for them.
Qin Xiangnuan didn’t say anything, and naturally, he wouldn’t ask. He thought about asking the neighbors if there was any work available after the busy period in the fields and then help out to earn some money. Dad wouldn’t give them money, and neither would their stepmother, so from childhood, they’d never had any pocket money. As long as they had food to eat and clothes to wear, their stepmother probably felt she was already too generous.
After a short rest, Qin Guohua and Qin Xiangyang went back to the fields and wouldn’t be returning for the night.
Qin Xiangnuan went to sleep at nine o’clock, waking up around one o’clock. According to her life in her previous life, three to four hours of sleep was enough.
She opened the cabinet, took out the bowl containing flour and oil. The remaining flour wasn’t much; if Uncle Hua hadn’t delivered so much today, she wouldn’t know what to do. If she stole more flour from home, Hu Li would probably notice.
She poured some more flour from the bag into the bowl, took it to the kitchen, started a fire to boil water, then kneaded the dough and began making scallion pancakes. The sales yesterday went rather well, so today she planned to make more, over a hundred. These might still not be enough to sell, considering the number of people, some even buying ten or more at a time. The food on the train wasn’t good, and it was expensive. Her pancakes, whether cold or heated, were edible and cheap at just ten cents each.