“If you want to buy bottled beer, you need a specially approved liquor ticket. But if you want to buy it individually, you don’t need it. If you want to buy it individually, you have to go to a state-owned restaurant to buy it,” Wei Dai said.

Wen Jiajia was puzzled. “Huh? A state-owned restaurant? I didn’t see any state-owned restaurant in front of the pharmaceutical factory selling beer.”

Wei Dai smiled, went to the kitchen, and leaned against the cupboard. “That’s the state-owned restaurant outside the factory. To prevent your factory employees from drinking alcohol regularly, they are not allowed to sell beer.”

Wen Jiajia was curious. “If I buy beer loosely, do I need to bring a bottle with me?”

“Yes, you have to bring it. Most people bring a thermos, but an enamel^[1]is a glass-like substance that is fused to the metal through heating, making the basin durable and resistant to rust. basin is also fine.”

Wen Jiajia said, “We have a kettle at home. I can bring it with me tomorrow.”

She looked at the crayfish gurgling in the pot and smacked her lips twice.

It’s too early to cook it. You should cook it tomorrow after you get the wine.

When the water boiled, she added the chopped cucumber and cauliflower into the pot and cooked for a while.

The soup in the pot turned a little yellow, and the aroma of the minced garlic was particularly prominent. Combined with the crayfish, it formed a wonderful taste that was both fragrant and fresh.

The water mist floated in the kitchen. Occasionally, a gust of wind blew it away, but it was soon replenished with new water mist.

The fragrance was hidden in the mist, and as the wind blew it away, it was also taken away.

“Jia Jia, what delicious food are you making?” someone outside the house shouted. “I can smell it from far away.”

It’s strange, this one has never smelled it and is very domineering.

Wen Jiajia laughed. “Cooking the shrimp from the lake! The red ones. Sister-in-law, put more minced garlic in them and cook them together. I guarantee it will taste good.”

“Just use garlic?” The woman at the door stopped.

Wen Jiajia said, “Of course, you have to add other seasonings. If you want to make it, I’ll write you the method.”

“Hey, how can I be so embarrassed…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. This method is not expensive. You can figure it out by just thinking about it.”

That is, once they are given out, it will most likely become difficult to catch the crayfish in the lake.

The two children really know how to manage time. When the crayfish were almost ready to be served, they came back covered in sweat.

Wen Jiajia looked at Wen Chun for a while, then turned to ask Wei Dai, “At what age can a child be sent to primary school? Chun’er is already five years old, which means she is six years old. Can she go to school?”

Don’t hang out outside all day.

Wei Dai looked at her as if asking, “Are you crazy, or am I crazy?” and said, “She’s only five years old!”

“Yeah! She can sit still at the age of five.”

Decades later, five-year-old children are in senior kindergarten and can even do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. This shows that five is an age when children can learn.

Wei Dai hurriedly pulled her down. “Let her play more. Learning is a lifelong thing. She will have a lot to learn in the future. It’s just that she can relax in the few years before school.”

Wen Chun also acted coquettishly: “I don’t want to go to primary school.”

“Why?” Wen Jiajia didn’t understand. Don’t children all want to be like the older kids?

When she was a child, she always wanted to go to primary school.

Wen Chun frowned and said, “When you go to primary school, it’s easy for the teacher to call your parents. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want.”

“…Okay.” This was such a strong reason that she suddenly worried whether she would be called on by the teacher often in the future. After all, it was not like these two children could sit still.

Wait, how are the internet celebrity kids in short videos raised? Parents have to simulate a classroom environment for their children first, right?

Wen Jiajia fell into deep thought.

“What are you thinking about? Let’s eat noodles,” Wei Dai said. When a large pot of crayfish was served on the table, the noodles were also cooked.

The noodles were cooked in a big pot. When they were taken out and soaked in the crayfish broth, the watery noodles instantly became appetizing.

“Wow–” Wen Chun and Wen Xuan said in unison, supporting their hands on the table and putting their heads close to the crayfish.

“Sit down,” Wei Dai said, picking up one shrimp in each hand. “Do you want to eat noodles first or shrimp first?”

Wen Xuan smiled and said, “Uncle-in-law, I want to eat them all. I want to eat them together!”

“Where’s Chun’er?”

“Me too!”

Wei Dai served them both half a bowl of noodles: “If you don’t have enough, get more.”

Wen Jiajia started eating. She grabbed the big claws of a crayfish with her hands, separated the head and body of the crayfish, and then sucked the head of the crayfish before peeling the shell.

The shrimp shell can be peeled quickly. Grab the tail with the right hand and open the shell with the left hand, and the crayfish meat finally appears.

This was not enough. Wen Jiajia pinched the crayfish by the tail and swirled it around in the soup before putting it in her mouth.

“Hmm – so fresh!” she exclaimed. The crayfish grown in the lake are so fresh, the meat is especially tender, and if you chew it carefully, you can actually taste a hint of sweetness.

The garlic sauce is also well seasoned, fragrant but not spicy, and cooked until soft. When the crayfish meat is simmered in the soup, the garlic will adhere to the meat. The noodles are even more so; the noodles are more juicy than the meat. At this moment, slurping a mouthful of noodles and eating a piece of soft cucumber, the taste is so delicious that Wen Jiajia’s legs under the table can’t help shaking.

She was the same as someone who had eaten many kinds of crayfish many times, so there was no need to say more about Wen Chun and Wen Xuan.

Wen Xuan raised her chopsticks and vowed, “My favorite food from now on will be crayfish.”

She tilted her head and told Wen Chun: “Sister, if the teacher asks me what I like to eat the most in the future, you must remind me that it is crayfish!”

Her cheeks were puffy and her expression was serious.

Wen Jiajia chuckled: “Why do you need your sister to remind you?”

“Because I’m too sentimental.” Wen Xuan slurped another mouthful of noodles and chewed it, sighing, “I always fall in love with everyone I meet, and it’s easy to forget who I love the most.”

Just like when she was eating braised pork, she thought she loved braised pork the most. Then it became pickled fish, then pork with preserved vegetables, then chopped pepper fish head, and then fried chicken…

Now crayfish has become the number one in her heart. She loves it so much and absolutely cannot forget about it.

Wen Jiajia laughed so hard that even Wei Dai couldn’t help but cover his mouth to hold back his laughter.

The dinner was a bit messy. Everyone’s hands were dirty after the meal, and the table was full of crayfish shells.

Wen Jiajia was very full. She sat down on a chair with her big belly and said to Wei Dai, “You wash the dishes today.”

Wei Dai rubbed his stomach: “I’ll do it later on”

Neither of them had any desire to eat watermelon.

That night, it was drizzling outside the house. This rain came at the right time, as many crops in the fields needed rainwater for irrigation.

The same goes for the vegetable garden. If it didn’t rain, she would have to water the vegetables after getting home from work tomorrow.

Judging from the sound of rain, it shouldn’t be heavy.

Wen Jiajia woke up in a daze and heard Wei Dai closing the window.

“The rain is coming in?” He was half asleep and half awake, so he spoke incoherently.

Wei Dai patted her across the quilt and said, “Go to sleep.”

The rain did come in, not heavy, but the wind was strong.

The next day, Wen Jiajia brought two kettles to work.

She would go to the scrap collection station to buy scrap iron from time to time, and most of the time she could make a kettle.

Wen Jiajia also discovered that if you buy a discarded kettle, you can synthesize one that is now available on the market.

This made her search all over the scrap yards for discarded water bottles, but these things were very durable and even more difficult to find than scrap bicycles, so she visited three scrap collection stations before finding two. She only combined two water bottles that were available on the market.

One of the two kettles was sold to Sha Yue, and the other was kept for her own use. In other words, she now owns two kettles, which is quite luxurious.

She had to get some wine at noon. After lunch, Wen Jiajia rode her bike to the state-owned restaurant on another street.

Master He said that the beer in this restaurant is good. What’s good about it? Fortunately, the beer barrels are usually covered with lids.

What does it mean? It means that the beer barrels in other restaurants are open.

The dusty wind blew, the spit flew, and the water splashed…Oh my God, the beer was as dirty as it could be.

When Wen Jiajia heard this, she didn’t care that it took half an hour to ride a bicycle to get to the restaurant. She still thought that the food she ate must be clean.

As expected, Master He did not lie to her. The beer in this restaurant had a wooden lid on it, and after the wooden lid was opened, there was a layer of oil paper underneath.

“Two servings?” the waiter asked. “One liter serving. Are you sure you want two?”

Wen Jiajia smiled, unscrewed the lid, and handed over the kettle: “Excuse me, comrade, I want two servings. Please help me put them in two kettles. Both kettles are one liter.”

“Eight cents a liter,” the waiter said as he took the kettle and began filling it with beer. “You came at the right time. There are only about four or five liters left today.”

Wen Jiajia was surprised. “The wine barrel is so big, and there are only four or five liters left?”

The waiter raised his eyebrows. “Of course not. Beer sells well when the weather is hot. Our beer is the best-selling among the nearby restaurants. It’s not that hot today, otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to buy any now.”

Wen Jiajia took the kettle filled with beer and asked, “Is this beer only available in summer?”

“Yes. Beer is made from grain, and it can only be sold for a few months a year.”

As he spoke, he filled the second kettle.

At this moment, a guest approached. “Xiaoying, give me a glass of beer!”

The customer brought a canning cup—the kind left over from eating canned food.

Wen Jiajia looked around and noticed other people at the tables were also drinking from canned cups.

A table of people had just finished eating and drinking, screwed the lids of their cans tightly, and left with the cans.

Wen Jiajia couldn’t help but sigh at how nothing was wasted in this era.

Beer is quite tempting, especially for someone like her who hasn’t had it for nearly two years.

Wen Jiajia secretly took a sip, frowned, said “ah” silently, and quickly screwed the lid back on.

Not to mention, it’s quite fragrant and not bitter. It tastes pretty good and is smoother than most cheap beers made decades later.

She didn’t dare drink too much, because she was at work, and the factory prohibited drinking during working hours, including lunchtime. If caught, it wouldn’t just be a matter of fines, but it would go on record.

In the evening, after returning home, Wen Jiajia dealt with the remaining crayfish first.

There were quite a lot of crayfish in the bucket, and it seemed they could be cooked in two batches.

But the crayfish were getting thinner and thinner, and she didn’t want to ride her bike for half an hour to buy beer tomorrow at noon, so she did it today.

Wen Jiajia processed the crayfish as fast as she ate them.

She brushed the crayfish with a discarded toothbrush, pulled the shrimp vein, and then used scissors to cut the head of the crayfish, leaving only the roe. This is how you process a crayfish.

After half an hour of washing, scrubbing, pulling, and cutting, half a bucket of crayfish was cleaned.

The cucumbers and cauliflowers she picked yesterday were still there, so there was no need to go to the vegetable garden again. Another half an hour later, two large pots of crayfish came out of the pot, and the aroma was even stronger than yesterday!

Wen Jiajia divided one of the pots into several portions and sent one portion to each of the neighboring households.

“This is really… How did you make this thing, it’s so fragrant.” Sister Bao swallowed her saliva, unwilling to refuse, and went into the house to get four scallion pot stoves for Wen Jiajia.

Sister Bao stuffed them into her hand and said, “I made these for lunch. They’re a snack from my hometown. We don’t have them here. How about you take a few back and try them?”

“Okay! I’m just short of a staple food.” Wen Jiajia wasn’t polite. There wasn’t enough flour at home, so she didn’t make noodles to eat. These oddly shaped pastries were just right.