After lunch, Lu Sheng rushed to wash the dishes. When he finished, the food still hadn’t settled in his stomach. He walked out of the kitchen, rubbing his round belly.
Glancing at him, Lu Yan thought for a moment and said, “Come up the mountain with me this afternoon.”
Lu Sheng blinked in surprise, then immediately agreed.
Old Lu opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but in the end said nothing.
This was the first time anyone had ever asked Lu Sheng to do something like this. In the past, whenever he tried to help with chores, his parents would always send him away with, “Go study.” It was as though anything other than reading was a waste of his time.
But in Lu Yan’s eyes, Lu Sheng looked far too young—just like an elementary school student. She simply couldn’t see him as a scholar preparing for the imperial examinations.
As far as she was concerned, children needed exercise to stay healthy.
After taking a nap at noon, Lu Yan first mixed another basin of dough. Now that she knew how long it took dough to rise with old starter, she had learned to prepare it four or five hours in advance.
Once that was done, she and Lu Sheng headed up the mountain.
Lu Village sat right at the foot of Dayao Mountain. A short walk would bring one straight into the hills, and the villagers often went there to gather things. Madam Xu had broken her leg only a few days ago while climbing the mountain to pick fruit.
As they walked, the two chatted, and Lu Yan finally gained a better understanding of the family’s finances.
Old Lu worked as a carpenter and earned thirty copper coins a day at the workshop. Before breaking her leg, Madam Xu did laundry and sewing for others at home and could earn another five or six coins a day.
Together, they made around thirty-five coins a day, or about one tael of silver a month—roughly twelve taels a year.
The family also had several acres of land. For an ordinary farming household, they were doing fairly well—not wealthy, but never hungry.
They even owned a donkey. Though they didn’t have an ox, simply having livestock meant their circumstances were better than most.
The problem was Lu Sheng.
He had been a sickly child since birth and was also a scholar.
His medicine alone had cost the family a fortune.
And in this era, studying was like pouring money into a bottomless pit. A single book cost several hundred copper coins, and buying the entire Four Books and Five Classics would cost at least seven or eight taels of silver.
All of Lu Sheng’s books had been copied by hand.
The tuition paid to his teacher was another major expense.
The family simply couldn’t afford it. After only half a year of formal schooling, nearly all of their savings had been spent, and he had no choice but to continue studying at home on his own.
Hearing this, Lu Yan couldn’t help sighing.
No wonder this dual-income household had managed to save only a few taels over so many years.
But asking Lu Sheng to give up studying?
Absolutely impossible.
Lu Yan was a modern person. She knew better than anyone how important education was.
You could let children suffer in many ways, but never in education.
Whether he could pass the examinations or not was another matter entirely, but he had to keep studying.
Even if they had to sell everything they owned, they would support his education.
At worst, she’d just earn more money.
As they talked, they climbed farther up the mountain.
Suddenly, Lu Yan’s eyes were drawn to several hawthorn trees by the roadside.
It was autumn, the season when the fruit ripened. The branches were covered in little red berries, making her mouth water.
“So many hawthorn trees!” she exclaimed.
“You mean these?” Lu Sheng pointed at the untouched fruit.
“This whole area is full of them. Nobody likes eating them—they’re too sour.”
It was true that hawthorn could be made into all kinds of delicious things: hawthorn cakes, dried hawthorn slices, candied hawthorns, sugar-coated hawthorn balls…
But every one of those required a lot of sugar.
And sugar was expensive these days.
Who would waste precious sugar on fruit that grew wild all over the mountains?
Without sugar, nobody wanted the sour things.
Even so, Lu Yan couldn’t bear the thought of all those hawthorns rotting on the trees untouched.
So she and Lu Sheng picked an entire basket.
Dried hawthorn could be stored for years, and hawthorn tea was excellent for aiding digestion and cutting through greasy food.
Then Lu Yan spotted patches of wild shepherd’s purse and immediately grew excited.
Shepherd’s purse was a treasure.
It sprouted again and again and could be harvested in three seasons of the year.
Mixed with minced meat to make buns, dumplings, or wontons, it tasted wonderfully fresh.
Just thinking about it made her crave some.
The two of them dug up another basket of shepherd’s purse before finally heading down the mountain, each carrying a basket on their backs.
Back home, Lu Sheng washed his hands and returned to his room to study, while Lu Yan went straight into the kitchen.
There wasn’t a scrap of meat in the house, but since they kept chickens, eggs were plentiful.
After thinking it over, she decided to make shepherd’s purse and egg buns for dinner.
The dough still wasn’t fully risen, so she set it aside and washed the shepherd’s purse first. After blanching it, she squeezed out the water and chopped it finely.
Then she scrambled several eggs, broke them into small pieces, mixed them with the vegetables, seasoned the filling, and set it aside.
While waiting for the dough, she took the fish paste from noon and stirred it until it became sticky and elastic, then made a pot of fish balls.
She also washed the hawthorns and laid them out to dry.
Sitting on a small stool in the courtyard and basking in the sun, Lu Yan felt that this entire day was almost surreal.
When she had first transmigrated, she and several other girls had been locked in a woodshed by slave traders. She had nearly lost the will to live.
Yet today, Old Lu had bought her, and somehow she had seamlessly returned to a life very much like the one she’d had before crossing over.
Judging that the dough had finally risen enough, Lu Yan went back into the kitchen to make buns.
Lu Sheng had also finished studying for the time being and wandered into the kitchen to watch.
Lu Yan kneaded the dough, rolled it into long strips, and cut it into evenly sized pieces.
Holding a piece of dough in one hand and a rolling pin in the other, she quickly rolled them into small rounds, spooned generous amounts of filling onto each one, and then deftly pinched and twisted them closed.
A bun was finished in seconds.
Each bun had seventeen or eighteen neat pleats, all evenly spaced and gathered into a flower at the top.
Seeing such beautiful buns, Lu Sheng couldn’t help exclaiming in admiration.
Lu Yan burst out laughing.
When she turned and saw his sparkling eyes, she pinched off a lump of dough from the main batch and handed it to him.
“Here, go play with this.”
Lu Sheng: “…”
Are you treating me like a little kid?
He snorted and stalked back to his room.
Lu Yan worked quickly and soon had all the buns shaped and steaming.
Before long, the aroma drifted into Lu Sheng’s room, making him unable to focus once again.
That evening, the shepherd’s purse and egg buns and the fish ball soup were just as well received as lunch.
The fish balls were sweet, springy, and delightfully chewy.
The buns, though meatless, were fresh and fragrant with shepherd’s purse and filled with large, tender pieces of egg.
They were every bit as delicious as meat buns.
Shepherd’s Purse and Egg Buns
The buns Lu Yan made were enormous, each nearly half the size of a person’s face.
Lu Yan and Madam Xu were full after eating just one.
Old Lu ate two.
Once again, everyone was reminded of the saying:
A growing boy can eat his father out of house and home.
Lu Sheng ate three buns and even drank every last drop of fish ball soup.
After dinner, he burped his way to the kitchen to wash the dishes, while Old Lu returned to his room.
The Lu family had three rooms. One had been used as a storage room because no one lived there, but after Lu Yan arrived, she cleaned it up and moved in.
Lying in bed, Lu Yan silently did the math.
They had spent no money today.
The tofu had already been bought before, the eggs came from their own chickens, and the fish had been speared by herself.
There were still six or seven buns left, half a basin of fish balls, and a basket of hawthorns.
Honestly, they could eat quite well without spending a single coin.
But Lu Yan still wanted to buy some meat.
After all, by saving the heroine from being sold, they had kept so much money in the family.
Surely they could afford a little meat.
Yes.
They needed to buy some meat.