Chapter 132

By the middle of November, when they got up in the morning, the ground was already white because of the frost.

The frosty season was really cold. Xu Ran even wanted stay in bed every morning.

On the contrary, Tangtang and Guoguo was very spirited. They followed Gao Quan to go up to the mountain every day and learned some simple Kungfu moves.

But no matter how cold it was, they still had to get up and work. From now on, they could start to collect the chestnuts on the mountain. It was just the right time for that.

The people in the village weren’t too busy now. Most of Ge’ers stayed at home to make winter clothes. Some of the men also began to prepare to go to the town and find some short-time jobs to do before Spring Festival so that they could earn money for it.

The smarter ones started to hoard chestnuts early, and most of them sold chestnuts to Xu Ran last year.

For the division of labor, Xu Ran still planned to use the same method as last year. However, this year, the person in his family who would collect the chestnuts would be Shao Yu, and Gao Quan would go to other villages to collect chestnuts for him.

As for Xu Ran, he planned to look after Liu Tong at home, and start to look for a mid-spouse.

The mid-spouse was the person who specially help the pregnant man deliver the baby. They all had given birth to kids, so they were called mid-spouses, which meant the same thing as midwives, just called differently.

The clothes for the baby to wear were prepared by Shao Yu and Liu Tong long ago. Xu Ran didn’t know much all these things and only wanted the baby to have something to wear.

The child would be born in winter, so the house had to be prepared with hot water, otherwise it would be freezing cold if they had to wash the diapers with cold water.

Not only that, but also the hogs at home and the ones that were bought by Zhuo Yun’s family could be killed for meat now. Also, the bacon and sausages had to be prepared before next month. It would take some time for them to finish all the work.

Mid-spouse and pig slaughterer could be found in the village. As long as they were notified in advance, they would come on time.

Zhuo Yun also said that he would buy the hogs. When it was time, he would bring them to his house and then send them over to Xu Ran personally.

The thing that Xu Ran was busy with right now was to start preparing for the condiments. People would only buy the sausages if the taste was good, so it would definitely take time for him to work on that.

Xu Ran went to the town to buy a lot of ingredients as well as meat and then tried it one by one. If it was not good enough, he would roast the meat and gave to Tangtang and Guoguo.

Xu Ran toiled for two days to get the taste that he wanted, and Tangtang and Guoguo ate a lot of roasted meat in the past two days; both of them even had diarrhea.

They were lying on the bed and complaining about the stomachache so Xu Ran kicked himself hard for it, and then Tangtang and Guoguo actually had to comfort him in turn.

In that case, Xu Ran no longer allowed them to eat roasted meat. Even if he had to taste it, he would eat it himself. Fortunately, he finally got the right flavor.

Xu Ran has prepared three flavors for the sausages. The first one was spicy, which was suitable for people in their town to eat, and the second one was sweet, which was for the people from Guangdong and Guangxi. The last one was just salty, without many condiments. People in some places liked light taste, so a little bit salty should be enough.

Some other people also knew to make bacon. But sausages were a bit rare, especially because the meat should be smoked. As long as the sausages got smoked well, it would smell much better than the dried ones. The best practice for smoked meat was to use cypress branches.

Xu Ran figured that he couldn’t just smoke the meat at their house because the smoke would be too heavy, and it was bad for Liu Tong’s health. So he had to find another place.

When the construction team left, Xu Ran did not let them tear down the shed. He thought that if someone suddenly passed by one day, it would not be nice for him to take shelter temporarily. It was quite sturdy after all.

When Xu Ran thought about this, he went out to see check on the shed. The place to cook was also spacious. As long as he put on a shelf on it, he could put the meat and sausages on the shelf.

On the eighteenth, Xu Ran went to the town with Wu Mei to send some chestnuts to Zhuo Yun as well as Qin Family, and told Zhuo Yun to send him pork in the next two days to start preparing the smoked meat. He also specifically reminded Zhuo Yun to keep everything inside the hogs’ belly and send them to him if Zhu Yun didn’t know how to handle them.

Zhuo Yun heard Xu Ran say that the things in hog’s belly could be eaten, so he remembered this. He nodded as an acknowledgement.

Xu Ran also sent a lot of chestnuts to Mr. Chen. Last year, the chestnut chicken was sold very well, so Mr. Chen contacted Xu Ran since the beginning of November.

Xu Ran said to Mr. Chen, “Mr. Chen, you can buy some bacon for the next few days. Choose the kind of meat that are mostly fat with a little bit of lean. I will bring you some good stuff the next time I come. But you don’t have to buy too much. I’ll bring some of my smoked meat to you when it’s ready.”

Mr. Chen was very curious about the good stuff that Xu Ran planned to bring to him, but Xu Ran didn’t say what it was, which made Mr. Chen feel kinda unpleasant.

On the nineteenth, Xu Ran began to kill hogs. The pig slaughterer was hired from the village, and he would bring the helper himself. So Xu Ran just needed to prepare some boiled water.

Xu Ran got up early to boil water, and then sent Liu Tong out, asking him to go to Wu Mei’s house with the two children for a while. After killing the hogs, he would go to pick them up.

Xu Ran was mainly afraid that Liu Tong would be scared by the hog’s screams, and then it might further affect the baby. So Liu Tong didn’t refuse and left with the two children.

The two hogs were pulled out of the pigsty and sent to the stool. The chopper knife went in and out of their bodies and the screams were so loud that made people scared. There was also a huge pool of blood on the floor.

The blood that had been collected with a basin could become blood curds, which could be eaten after being boiled in the pots.

After the hog was killed, they started to put the meat into the boiled water, remove its hair and then take out its organs.

Wu Mei and the others went to the town to sell chestnuts, so they couldn’t come to help. There were only Xu Ran and Shao Yu who could work at home, so they ran around to help the pig slaughterers, and barely cut all the meat until noon.

They had to keep the things inside the stomach. The pig slaughterers were originally going to throw that all away, but Xu Ran stopped them, because those things in the belly could be eaten. Xu Ran asked the pig slaughterers to keep them, and then he instructed them to deal with those things.

It was a bit troublesome, but Xu Ran said that they wouldn’t bargain of the pig slaughter price.

Xu Ran also told the pig slaughterers that if other people had hog’s intestines that they didn’t want, he would pay three pence for a basket of that.

The pig slaughterers were naturally willing to do such a business with no costs. At this time of the year, they would kill four or five hogs every day in this village along with the other villages. It wouldn’t take much effort to collect many pig intestines.

Xu Ran took Liu Tong and the children back during lunch. Wu Mei and the rest had lunch at their house too. They had to invite people to eat the meal for pig slaughtering, but not everyone in the village, only some families close to them.

No one came to help cook today, so Xu Ran didn’t invite anyone else besides Wu Mei’s family and a few pigs slaughterers. There were around three tables of people in total.

After lunch, the pig slaughterers packed up their things and left. Wu Mei and the other Ge’ers stayed to help Xu Ran to prepare the meat. All the meat had to be sprinkled with salt, and they also had to cut off the lean meat that was about to be used in the sausages. There was actually a lot of work to do.

Wu Mei’s family and the other two families had only raised one hog for themselves to eat. So they would wait until the next month to kill it and the meat would still be fresh by the Spring Festival.

Xu Ran left one hog to make smoked meat for his own family, and the other hog’s lean meat was cut off by pieces for making the sausages.

The condiments that Xu Ran had been working on for two days could finally be used.

The smell was really great, especially after adding the pepper powder and chilli powder onto the meat, and roasting it on the fire for a while. It began to smell pretty nice.

Tangtang and Guoguo looked at the meat and wanted to eat, but Xu Ran reminded them seriously about the last time they had diarrhea. Then the two kids just reluctantly gave up and went out of the door hand in hand to avoid the temptation.

Liu Tong also wanted to eat, but Xu Ran still didn’t let him. “I’ll roast some for you after you give birth.” After thinking for a while, he promised, “It’ll definitely be better than this.”

Liu Tong smelt the meat again, thinking about the roasted meat that would be even better than this, and agreed. He just sat on the side, helped to pierce the prepared sausages with needle and put strings on them.

The tool that Xu Ran used to make the sausages was a bamboo tube. He cut down a small bamboo, took the hollow part in the middle, and smoothed it out. Then he put the small intestines on the bamboo tube and stuffed meat into the bamboo tube. Once the meat was enough it would naturally be filled into the intestines.

There were almost 250 kilograms of meat with the two hogs combined together, and there was a huge basket of intestines, just enough to be filled with one hog’s lean meat.

The five Ge’ers didn’t finish preparing the sausages until when they were so tired that they couldn’t even lift their hands. Of course, Xu Ran was very busy with running around to bring the tools, preparing the condiments and helping out.

By the time they were finally done with this, it was already dark outside. There were still leftovers of the lunch, so Xu Ran asked Wu Mei and the others to stay for dinner.

When they left, Xu Ran gave each one of them a piece of fat meat.

Xu Ran thought that apart from the twice-cooked pork, fat meat always tasted uninteresting, so he generously gave away his portion.

Xu Ran also left a helping for Xu Houcai and prepared to send it to him early tomorrow morning. The last time at the village head’s place, Xu Houcai told him to stop by some time, and he was not just saying it.

Xu Ran was still thinking about letting Xu Houcai go to the mountains and collect chestnuts too so that when he went to buy the chestnuts, he could pay Xu Houcai more money for respect.

However, Xu Houcai was not a young man after all. Besides, there was no one to take care of him, so Xu Ran was afraid that something might happen if he went up to the mountains. Therefore, Xu Ran never mentioned it.

He still had to think of some other ways.