Blissful Days After Widowhood - Chapter 86

Gu Yin followed Mrs. Wang to buy a dozen steamed buns and returned home. She also took out the meat skewers in the food box to share with everyone.

However, under the leadership of Officer Caotou, everyone refused to accept it, only saying that since they were ordered by the county magistrate, they were performing official duties. It was not right to collect things from the people.

When it was getting dark, the work on the kang in the rooms was nearly finished, but it had to be completely cooled, and may take several days before it was ready to sleep on it.

However, it was not difficult for Mrs. Wang. Before the start of construction, she moved her belongings directly to the next door.

Xu Qingchuan was on a short vacation. He helped Mrs. Wang to move things, and went back to the academy immediately in the afternoon.

Mrs. Xu’s house had one more room than theirs.

In that room, Gu Yin and the two children slept, while Mrs. Wang went to squeeze in with Mrs. Xu.

Because only the bedroom couldn’t be used, and the rest of the house was still used, so it was not particularly troublesome.

After sending off Officer Caotou and others, the two of them had dinner together.

At the dinner table, Mrs. Xu’s interest was lacking, and even Gu Yin’s hot skewers couldn’t make her happy.

After the meal was over, she went back to her room.

Gu Yin followed Mrs. Wang into the kitchen, while she pushed her straight with her elbow, “I don’t need you. It’s just a few bowls. You’ve been tired all day, go and rest.”

Gu Yin asked tentatively, “Mother, I don’t think Aunt Xu is happy. She had no appetite. Are we disturbing the tranquility of her home?”

“Why did she lose her appetite? She has eaten several meat skewers…When I said we can go stay at an inn, it was your Aunt Xu who asked us to just stay at her house. Anyway, Qingchuan only comes back once every ten days.”

“That ……”

Mrs. Wang turned her head to look around and made sure no one was there, lowered her voice and said, “Aunt Xu is not happy that I asked Officer Caotou to do the work. Didn’t I tell you already?!”

Gu Yin then remembered that Mrs. Wang had told her that gossip earlier.

“I thought you just said that casually.”

“Am I the kind of person who casually says such things?”

When she was in Batou Village, Mrs. Wang’s favorite thing after work was to hang out with the women in the village to gossip. She even came back and told Gu Yin that a family had lost a chicken.

So Gu Yin was silent.

“Well, I like to talk a little bit. But I can’t make up such things! I have evidence…”

“Hey, forget it, I won’t ask.”

Gu Yin made a silent gesture toward Mrs. Wang, telling her to stop gossiping about Mrs. Xu’s and Officer Caotou.

Gu Yin took the two children back to the room to wash up, and then stopped mentioning it.

The next day, Gu Yin still went to Wen’s house to work.

On that day, she saw that there were a lot of ingredients and spices left over from the previous day, so she was going to make hot pot for Old Master Wen.

The hot pot base was naturally fried-

The clear soup pot was simple to make, she only needed to boil pork bones in water slowly into a milky white soup.

Spicy base was more troublesome. She first put the dried peppers in a pot of boiling water and boiled them for ten minutes, then dried them, and then chopped them.

Then she washed the ready-made beef suet, cut it into pieces, boiled water in a pot, added the butter pieces, and slowly boiled them over medium heat. She stirred them until the water evaporated. When the butter pieces turned golden brown and floated, it was cooked.

She put the filtered butter in the pot, put the shallots, coriander, celery leaves, garlic, etc. and stir-fried them on high heat until it turned fragrant, then took it out. She added the chili peppers and some minced ginger, turned it over and stir-fried evenly. She boiled all the water over medium heat, and finally added the peppercorns and soybean paste, and boiled for a quarter of an hour.

The last step was to soak the spices left over from the previous day in white wine, add butter and stir fry evenly. Finally, she added some sugar and salt, and turned to low heat and simmered for half an hour. The homemade butter hot pot base was complete.

The old man played crazy the previous day and got up late that day.

Gu Yin thought that it was just right, after all, fried peppers were too choking, so it wouldn’t choke the old man.

But she didn’t expect that even though the doors and windows of the kitchen were open, the chili smell would still to the outside, shrouding the entire Wen family in a strong spiciness.

The old man and the eldest master came directly together.

The old man was woken up by choking, and his oldest son came over with his drooling saliva.

It was also a loss for them to come there early, because the second housekeeper came over while coughing and cursing. If it weren’t for the presence of these two giant Buddhas, Gu Yin’s hot pot base might not have been cooked.