The rice cooker she bought was one of those commercial-grade large ones, able to steam 18 jin of rice at a time, roughly enough for forty to fifty people. She'd steam a pot and bring a pot, which was generally enough for selling.
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As for noodles, steaming a large pot would feed about sixty people, so if she could sell one hundred and fifty servings a day, it would count as a successful first step.
According to the spendings of the era, she planned to sell the vegetarian dishes for two yuan per serving and the meat dishes for three yuan.
If she sold a mix of meat and vegetarian dishes, she could make about three to four hundred yuan in an afternoon. If profits were to be split in half, that would be two hundred yuan. Making two hundred a day and stabilizing it would suggest the stall's rent wasn't a loss. The fear was that reality might not be as pleasant as her imagination!
Today, she purchased veggies that were easy to store, such as potatoes, lotus root, tomatoes, zucchinis, cauliflowers, scallion, ginger, and garlic, since freezers were expensive and there was no refrigerator at home for her use. Even in the late 1990s, not everyone had a fridge. The color TV in this house was one of those bulky types, either eighteen or twenty inches.
It was precisely because refrigerators and freezers were not cheap, and there was no telling how long second-hand ones would last, that it would be more economical to buy a new one if she planned to stick with this job for the long haul. But for now, she didn't have the funds to indulge in that expense.
To avoid food spoilage, she intended to buy fresh meat, tofu, and the like the next morning.
Xiao Xiao was now capable of doing many tasks: sorting and washing vegetables was entirely within her grasp. There's a saying that the child of a poor family takes on responsibilities early, and it holds true. She needed her daughter's help and was quite satisfied with her little helper's performance.
That evening, she and Xiao Xiao soaked and cleaned the kelp together, planning the cold dishes for the next day to be Sour and Spicy Seaweed Strips and mixed cold veggies.
After a day's toil, they took a hot bath together with her daughter, and went to bed early around nine, as they needed to get up early the next morning.
At five o'clock, the sky was already bright, and the sun was shining high; it looked to be another hot day. Her daughter was still sleeping, and to prevent her from waking up to find herself alone, she woke her up.
"Xiao Xiao, do you want to go to the market with Mom to buy vegetables, or would you prefer to stay at home and sleep?"
In a murmur, Xiao Xiao chose the latter. Gong Mingxia gave her numerous warnings and instructions and prepared snacks beside her before leaving on the tricycle.
Upon reaching the market, it was bustling with life and never quiet. Old men and women came out early to shop for groceries, and those doing morning exercises weren't rare on the streets. The place was crowded already; surely West Lake would be even more so. Breathing in air that was still somewhat fresh, Gong Ming silently cheered herself on.
The meat dishes for today would be potato stew with chicken pieces, braised pork with glass noodles, and Tomato and Egg. Since eggs were not cheap, they fell into the meat dish category. However, to keep customers feeling like they got their money's worth, she planned to fry some sunny-side-up eggs in advance. Anyone who got Tomato and Egg would also receive a fried egg on the side, making the deal feel fairer. She hoped that would count as being a conscientious seller, right?
She had bought potatoes the day before, so today she bought ten large chicken legs for three yuan per jin, amounting to about thirty yuan for the ten legs.
Pork is 5 yuan per jin; she bought three jin of pork and two jin of pig lard because lard was needed for steamed marinated noodles. Altogether, she spent twenty yuan.
Then, she bought five yuan's worth of soybean sprouts. They were also for the marinated noodles. Five yuan could get a super-sized bag, which could even be used in the pork and glass noodles dish.
She had already purchased glass noodles, tomatoes, and eggs yesterday. Considering how hot it was today, she worried she might make too much rice and not sell it all. Though she had planned to steam two pots of rice, she now decided to steam just one. People who eat rice would surely want soup, so she bought some tofu, tofu skin, coriander, scallions, and the like, spending only ten yuan in total.
Then she rode back home to start preparing the noon meal, as she had to rush from home by ten-thirty, so her time was quite tight.