The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 374 Alfalfa as the Mainstay

Spring plowing is in full swing.

Really busy.

Apart from children who can't walk and elderly people who are bedridden, there are hardly any idle people in the entire garrison.

Using teenagers as adults.

Married women were used as men.

Young and strong men were used as livestock.

Don't tell me you're a centurion or chiliarch, or how many battles you've accomplished in the past.

Except for those on patrol duty, everyone else had to plow the fields.

More than 30,000 mu of arable land cannot be cultivated in just ten or eight days.

There are also hundreds of acres of vineyards and thousands of acres of melon fields that need to be prepared!
At the same time, people should be sent to Huozhou to dig up grape seedlings and buy melon seeds.

Even five- or six-year-old children like Fatty had to help herd sheep, cattle, and take care of pregnant mares and camels.

The elderly women took on the chores of cooking and cleaning at home.

With food, cooking becomes easier.

The mutton that was frozen before the Lunar New Year is still not finished.

There's a severe shortage of vegetables.

Over the past four months of winter.

Aside from chamaegu, some dried mushrooms, the only vegetables that General Gan brought back before the Lunar New Year were carrots and scallions.

Oh, and bean sprouts too.

However, the amount of these vegetables distributed to each household is limited.

Spring has finally arrived.

The old ladies then went off to search for wild vegetables all over the place.

As they searched, they soon came across Xiaojiashan, a small hill covered in mulberry trees, and it was all green.

original.

After the mulberry seedlings were transplanted, 600 jin of alfalfa seeds were sown on the pasture from the mountainside to the foot of Xiaojiashan.

The sown area is about 120 mu.

The soil quality in the low hills of Xiaojiashan is quite good.

Not only did the mulberry seedlings thrive, but the alfalfa seeds also sprouted quickly after breaking through the soil.

In less than a month, the alfalfa sprouts had grown to seven or eight inches long.

So fresh and tender!

Once anyone takes a liking to it, they can't look away.

Many elderly women came to Ms. Luo to discuss the matter:
"The doggrass on the eastern pastures has grown, so the livestock in the garrison have plenty of grass. But this old man hasn't pooped in seven days. Madam, are the alfalfa sprouts from Xiaojia Mountain safe for people to eat?"

Alfalfa sprouts are familiar to everyone.

Luo immediately asked her daughter-in-law.

Gan Minglan's original purpose in having these alfalfa seeds sown was simply to have a bite of spring vegetables in the spring, wasn't it?

These days, Xiao Jin is training in the wild.

The little guy has never flown in nature before.

Once released, it was almost impossible to take it back.

Gan Minglan raised it for so long, not so that she would release it into the wild.

There's still a long way to go before we can teach Xiao Jin some of the rules for summoning eagles.

After working from dawn till dusk for half a month, I completely forgot about the alfalfa crop.

Immediately, he waved his hand.

"Eat up, eat as much as you want! 120 acres of alfalfa is enough to feed more than 20,000 people for two or three months."

So, the old ladies from the garrison ran towards Xiaojiashan in groups.

Fresh alfalfa sprouts can be picked in half an hour.

This work is not tiring at all. Looking at the lush greenery covering the mountains and fields, I feel great.

They also exchanged recipes for various alfalfa dishes, among which two recipes became the mainstream.

One method is very quick.

Simply wash and chop the alfalfa sprouts, add a little salt and a few spoonfuls of flour to make a vegetable paste.

Then, using a pan with sesame oil, cook the vegetable batter into pancakes over low heat.

One good thing about Kansai is that sesame is grown in abundance, and you can buy a large jug of sesame oil for just 100 sen.

Animal fats such as mutton fat and beef tallow are also used as supplements.

Women who used to be stingy with oil have become much more generous with their oil purchases since coming to Kansai.

Frying alfalfa pancakes with sesame oil not only saves a lot of flour, but also makes them incredibly fragrant.

Most importantly, even children who don't like vegetables are happy to eat them.

The able-bodied men preferred another way of preparing alfalfa.

Similarly, chop alfalfa sprouts into small pieces, knead them together with fermented dough, add some salt, and steam them.

The green vegetable pancakes, dipped in vinaigrette, have a slightly tart and refreshing aroma that evokes the feeling of lush grass and birdsong.

Men don't understand the romance of spring.

All I know is that four or five fist-sized vegetable buns are enough to fill you up in one meal.

Women are happy to make this kind of dish that combines the benefits of both rice and vegetables.

Anyway, ever since alfalfa sprouts became the staple food in the garrison, the consumption of flour has slowed down compared to before.

The body has a direct experience with the food we eat.

Some elderly people with severe constipation ate alfalfa sprouts for two consecutive days, and the accumulated stool in their stomachs was then expelled with a thud.

I feel so much lighter.

Gan Minglan's family also eats alfalfa.

Luo was very keen on picking vegetables at Xiaojiashan.

Granny Wang, who was in charge of the kitchen, was much more skilled at preparing wild vegetables than ordinary military dependents.

Her favorite thing to make is alfalfa and beef dumplings.

Simply blanch the alfalfa sprouts in boiling water, squeeze out the excess water, chop them finely, and add them to minced beef along with sesame oil, pepper, and other seasonings.

With her skillful hands, she makes dumplings that look like little gold ingots.

The blanched alfalfa sprouts lost their grassy sour taste but retained their bright green color, and together with the beef juices, they had a unique flavor.

I never get tired of it, I just can't get tired of it.

Granny Wang also loved to make vegetable pancakes with alfalfa sprouts.

But she would add a dozen or so pigeon eggs to the vegetable paste, so that the fried vegetable pancakes would be slightly yellow on both sides and much softer and tastier than those without eggs.

Actually, using eggs works just as well.

But isn't no one raising chickens in Ganluchuan?
Ever since Gan Minglan entrusted eight thousand pigeons to her personal guards to raise, pigeon eggs have become a tonic for the elderly and children of Ganluchuan.

Fearing the pigeons would freeze, the guards moved the nest to the greenhouse that had previously been used to make snow boots.

The indoor space was warm, and the pigeons were living quite comfortably.

I can find about 2,500 of them every day.

Besides the four pigeon eggs given to each of the personal guards in the main mess hall each day, the rest were sold in the garrison shops.

Pigeon eggs are not cheap, costing five coins each.

But there are no truly poor people in Ganluchuan.

Once the deliciousness and nutritional value of pigeon eggs were publicized, many people were happy to buy them to nourish the health of the elderly and children.

In any case, over the course of two months, he had saved more than five hundred taels of silver from selling pigeon eggs.

General Gan said that the money would be used as food expenses for his personal guards from now on.

They raised enough pigeons to support themselves.

Of course, the pigeon eggs provided to the head of the household are also free of charge.

The guards would bring the freshest pigeon eggs every day.

But in fact, there are countless pigeon eggs to collect in the Divine Tree Space.

To teach Xiao Jin how to hunt independently, we kept over a thousand animals in the space.

Little Gold ate them down to just over three hundred.

She simply couldn't pick them all up.

The temperature in Shenmu Space is much warmer than in Ganluchuan.

During the carving process, Gan Minglan did not enter the space to collect eggs for about twenty days.

They were dumbfounded as soon as they went in.

"Chirp chirp chirp"

Hundreds of baby pigeons, their bodies covered in golden down, were chirping and humming in turn.

(End of this chapter)