The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 533 Another Way to Make Money
After Lu Ye and Hu Tou, along with fifty other personal guards, completed the handover, they slept for three days and two nights at General Yili's mansion before recovering.

These fifty people were also going abroad for the first time.

Even though his skills were highly proficient and he had more than 500 brothers from the vanguard battalion accompanying him, he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a year and a half.

They did not consider their mission complete until they had brought these 13,000 foreign merchants back to Bagua City.

Back in Yili, I finally feel at peace.

I slept like a log.

After waking up, they all started their crazy roasted lamb feast.

"The lamb from our Northwest is still the best, with absolutely no gamey smell!"

"I crave this taste no matter where I go. I never get tired of it, I'll never get tired of it!"

Before we knew it, the two pit-baked whole roasted lambs had been devoured clean by the fifty boys.

Tian Jiu couldn't help but gasp in astonishment:

"How long has it been since you've eaten meat?"

"General Tian, ​​you are a well-fed man who does not know the hunger of an starving man! If you want to talk about this long journey, the ones who will suffer the most are our mouths."

Although Venice is already one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, a tycoon like Marcoli usually served us sweet bread, cured meat, and salted fish.

"We're fine eating foreign food ten or eight times a week, but eating it for half a year straight is making us sick of it."

The foreign food they were criticizing was actually the aristocratic cuisine of Venice.

The staple foods were either corn porridge, black bread, and potatoes.

Thinking of potatoes, Lu Ye wiped the oil from her mouth and asked:

"General Tian, ​​before our western expedition, we helped our master plant a few acres of potatoes at the Zhenguo General's Mansion. I wonder if any of them survived?"

Tian Jiu slapped his thigh:
"They survived and had a bumper harvest! Potatoes are a really good thing! Like wheat, they can be planted twice a year, but the yield per mu can reach five or six thousand jin."

As a staple food, a few fist-sized portions are enough to make you feel full. As a side dish, it's delicious whether boiled or stir-fried.

"You wait here, tonight my head chef will make you a big plate of chicken. The potatoes in this dish are even tastier than the chicken."

"That's good! That's good! We bought a lot of vegetable seeds from Venetian merchants. One of them is an ornamental fruit called tomato. It has a sweet and sour taste and is delicious both as a fruit and as a vegetable!"

The reed leaves carried the aroma of tomatoes to the heavens.

Tiger Head retorted from the side:

"Only young ladies would love this sweet and sour flavor. I think the chili peppers taste even better, much spicier than the dogwood! After a few bites, you'll be sweating all over. A bowl of spicy soup in winter is really invigorating."

Tian Jiu: "."

He had never tried either of them before, so he really wanted to give them a go.

Unfortunately, he is now the General of Yili and cannot travel to Europe with a caravan like these young men to broaden his horizons.

It's a pity.
the next day.

Gan Minglan received a lot of vegetable seeds from the Mediterranean coast.

She really didn't recognize the seeds of most vegetables.

Only corn on the cob is recognized by everyone in later generations.

She was overjoyed to see the corn:
“Good lads, if you had brought corn back from Europe seven or eight years ago, His Majesty would have bestowed upon you a title.”

The two people who delivered the seeds expressed their confusion:
“Master, corn is a commoner’s food in Venice. It’s ground into chunks and cooked into porridge. It’s rough on the throat. Anyone with a little money will choose to eat black bread.”

"The yield is also poor, much lower than wheat! Growing this also easily attracts rats, so most farmers don't like to grow it! Its only advantage is that it is relatively drought-resistant."

They had certainly tried corn porridge before.

Even if you eat a bowl of this, you won't feel hungry for half a day.

However, in terms of taste and texture, it is far inferior to millet porridge and dumpling soup.

Anyway, ever since Kansai had high-yield wheat and rice, they have never gone hungry again.

Gan Minglan: "."

She couldn't explain it to the two of them.

Corn's greatest advantage lies in its drought resistance and versatility in various soil types. In bad years, farmers can use these coarse grains to survive.

As for the original corn varieties, their low yield and poor taste were not a problem for her.

After a dozen or so generations of optimization, I guarantee it will become a corn cob that everyone loves to eat!
"You brought these back from so far away, why don't you try planting them? Our oases in Kansai have plenty of fertile soil, you might just grow some amazing crops!"

Surprise.

You don't even need to wait several months.

That evening, Gan Minglan selected a few seeds from each variety to conduct an experiment.

Then she received lots of fresh tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, green beans, zucchini, and mustard greens.

These are all vegetables she loved to eat in her past life.

Many of these crops can still be planted for another season this time of year.

Hmm, there seems to be something wrong with these mustard greens!

She cut open the lump, which was bigger than her fist, to take a look.

It still has red flesh.

Sure enough, it wasn't mustard greens.

I sliced ​​it and tasted it.

It's somewhat like a raw carrot, but firmer and has noticeable fibers when chewed.

And Weiwei's too!
It was a new species that she had never eaten in her previous life.

It's not hard to guess.

It must be beetroot!

Even though the flesh of this beet is relatively bland.

But this is still a beet!

Where did the white sugar of later generations come from?
Sugarcane in the south, sweet potatoes in the north!
Xinjiang Province in the north happens to be the largest sugar beet producing area.

During the Yongtai reign of the 17th century, the only sugars available to the common people were: cane sugar (brown sugar), maltose, and honey.

Most of the cane sugar (brown sugar) was imported from the Southern Yue Kingdom, and it wasn't cheap!
You're asking about white sugar?

That's not true!
Rock sugar is considered a luxury item due to its time-consuming production process, and is often used in medicine or high-end cuisine.

Gan Minglan carefully tasted the subtle sweetness in the beet.

They believe there is still a lot of room for improvement in this sugar content.

Finally, she couldn't help but sigh:
"With favorable timing, location, and people, everything is the best arrangement, and it's destined that we in Kansai will make a fortune!"

Give her just two years, and she can grow sugar beets all over the snow-capped mountains!
With the help of the technical talents recruited by Marcoli, it won't be long before they can develop white sugar.

Speaking of technical talent.

The more than 600 shipwrights and two warship designers are already on their way to the Jiangnan Shipyard.

In the past two years, Japanese pirates and other piracy have not stopped harassing the region despite the growing strength of the Jiangnan navy.

They shifted from large-scale raids to small-scale attacks, and repeatedly evaded naval patrols.

The actions of the Japanese pirates thoroughly angered Commander Mao Yiyong, who had long been eager to attack the pirates' stronghold.

Unfortunately, the ships built by the Jiangnan Shipyard could not be used as warships.

Emperor Qianwu was well aware of his confidant's anxious state of mind.

After receiving Gan Minglan's report that she had "bought" more than 600 foreign shipwrights and several warship designers, a secret decree ordered her to send them all to Jiangnan.

As for the huge commissions paid for buying these craftsmen.

The Jiangnan navy can't fill this hole.

Let's use this year's Kansai trade tax for deduction!

Kansai Tax Office Chief Clerk: "."