Volume 1: Reborn in the 1980s, selling lunch boxes with my mother Chapter 19 Finally Opened
After sitting at the entrance of the restaurant to rest for a while, Jiang Tian saw that the proprietress was quite enthusiastic, so she asked her if the store accepted anything else besides eels, loaches, fish and shrimps.
For example, snails or clams.
The proprietress frowned her long, thin eyebrows.
"There are too few pieces of meat. We were afraid that no one would want them after we cooked them, so the store never took them away."
In this era, most ordinary people could barely make ends meet, and when they invited others to dinner at a restaurant, they usually ordered greasy food, such as braised pork, stewed pork elbow, roast chicken, etc.
The reason why these restaurants along the provincial highway would go to the fishmongers to buy fish, shrimps, eels and the like is mainly because these truck drivers traveling back and forth from the south to the north, as well as the owners of long-distance buses are not short of money, and when they rarely stop to rest, they are willing to eat something rare.
But no matter how rare it is, there must be some meat. The snails look big, but when they are served on a plate, you can only eat a few bites of meat.
Not to mention river clams, no one here is willing to eat them.
Jiang Tian had no choice but to carry the eels and loaches with Hu Qiongfang and follow the path pointed by the proprietress to go to the vegetable market to reserve a spot.
They had to be at the intersection before three o'clock to wait for the bus back to the village. If they missed the bus, the mother and daughter would have to sleep on the streets tonight.
In those days, the provincial roads were still quite chaotic. By three o'clock in the afternoon, the goods had not been sold yet. Jiang Tian would rather not make the money than miss the bus back to the village.
In fact, there are now some small hotels converted from private houses along the provincial roads. If you miss the bus, it’s okay to stay outside for a night.
But the problem was that her mother had just become a widow, and with the gossiping of the village aunts and uncles, if Hu Qiongfang really "stayed out all night" and stayed outside, who knows how much gossip would be spread when she returned to the village the next day.
Well, she still had to find a way to make money quickly and move out of the village with her mother and brother.
Apart from anything else, living next to the provincial road will make it more convenient for her and Jiang Cheng to go to junior high school than living in the village.
It takes more than 40 minutes to walk from the village to the township middle school, but it only takes 20 minutes to walk from the provincial road.
Seeing Hu Qiongfang carrying a bucket and walking laboriously in front, Jiang Tian couldn't help but complain about her father in her heart.
In fact, her father works in a mine and has a very high income, so he can afford even a bicycle.
Their family did buy a 28-inch bicycle, but that bicycle was bought by her father specifically for Jiang Lesheng as a reward for getting into high school.
The reason is that Jiang Lesheng said there is only one bus from the county to the village every day. He usually lives in the school and wants to go home on Friday, but after school, the bus from the county to the village has already left.
How could Jiang Leping bear to let his brother walk for more than two hours to go home?
In the end, he spent half a month's salary to buy a "Forever" brand bicycle for Jiang Lesheng.
Because Jiang Lesheng lived on campus, the car was usually parked at school, and his family could only see it on weekends or during winter and summer vacations.
If their family had a bicycle, her mother wouldn't have to work so hard carrying buckets to sell eels.
Jiang Tian doesn't have deep feelings for her father, and a big part of the reason is that at times, her father doesn't seem like her and Jiang Cheng's biological father, but instead seems like Jiang Lesheng's biological father.
She could also understand that people in this era still believed that "the eldest brother is like a father". Grandpa Jiang died early, so Jiang Leping naturally treated his younger brother as half a son.
It's a pity that when Jiang Leping was so sincere to his brother, he probably never thought that his brother would kill his only son in order to keep all the money he earned.
But it doesn't matter. Jiang Tian secretly swore in her heart that in her previous life, Jiang Lesheng owed their family everything, whether it was a bicycle or her brother's life, she would get it back bit by bit!
"Hey, how much is one pound of your yellow eel?"
Jiang Tian looked up in surprise and saw a woman in a blue smock standing at the door of a small restaurant nearby, waving at them.
The store was closed when they passed by just now. They didn't expect that the owner had gone out to buy vegetables.
Jiang Tian quickly ran over and gave the proprietress a big smile.
"Madam, our eels are all caught with fishing hooks. They are all alive and kicking. They sell for one yuan per pound in the market here. We caught them at home, so I'll charge you 80 cents per pound."
"By the way, I have wild loaches as thick as my thumb. They're only fifty cents a pound. Would you like to have some?"
"Loach is the most delicious in this season. Stewed loach with tofu or braised loach are both nutritious and economical."
The lady boss looked at Jiang Tian in surprise: "You little girl, you can cook?"
Jiang Tian embarrassedly pointed at Hu Qiongfang who was following behind.
"I'm not good at cooking, my mom's cooking is delicious."
"Really?"
The proprietress took a look at Hu Qiongfang and found that although this woman looked a little disheveled, she had a good-looking appearance and did not look very old. She was immediately disappointed.
The proprietress's name is Li Guifen. She and her husband have been running a restaurant on the provincial road for almost three years.
Originally, the couple's small business was doing well, but who would have thought that the mother-in-law, seeing that they were making money from the restaurant, wanted them to help her husband's older brother's family.
Li Guifen was not a stingy person. She heard that her eldest brother had learned cooking from someone before . She thought it would be hard for her husband to work alone in the kitchen, so it would be nice to have someone to help.
But who knew that her mother-in-law never told her the truth!
It was not until her elder brother came to work in the store that Li Guifen realized that what her elder brother meant by "learning to be a chef" was that he had worked as a vegetable cutter in the commune canteen for a few days.
But the person is here, and he’s your elder brother, so you can’t send him back, right?
Who knew that not only did Big Brother’s skills suck, but his hands and feet were also so dishonest!
Sometimes when the couple was busy and there wasn’t enough food in the store, the husband would give money to his eldest brother to buy some.
As a result, every time I bought vegetables, the fish and shrimp were dead, the meat was not fresh, and the vegetables were wilted.
When I asked about the price again, it was exactly the same as at the morning market!
Is there anything else Li Guifen doesn’t understand?
From then on, Li Guifen tried her best to buy all the fish, shrimp, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits and other necessities for the day during the morning market. She would rather not sell anything and have some left over than let her elder brother go to buy vegetables again.
I thought that would stop it.
But not long after, Li Guifen discovered that the oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and some dried goods and bacon in the store were used up very quickly.
But when I settled the accounts at the end of the month, I didn't make much more money than before.
After observing carefully for a few days, Li Guifen discovered that her eldest brother would often take advantage of the time when they were not paying attention or when the store was particularly busy to quickly stuff things from the store into his bag.
Seeing her elder brother carrying two big bulging bags home, Li Guifen was so angry that she couldn't sleep for several nights.
