Qiao fruit was also known as Qixi fruit or qiao fruit. It was a food for the Qiao Festival.
Apart from eating it, women would also use colorful threads to thread the qiao fruit and throw it to the roof. On the night of Qixi, the magpies would carry the fruit and build a bridge. The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl would meet on the bridge.
The method of making qiao fruit was not complicated. The main ingredients were sesame oil, flour, and icing sugar. Of course, it would be better if honey could be added.
Xiao Huan had already told Li Yi how to make qiao fruit. First, the icing sugar, which was white sugar, was melted into syrup in a pot. Then, flour and sesame seeds were added. The dough was molded into various shapes and then fried in the sesame oil until it was cooked.
Flour and honey were common ingredients. As for sesame oil and icing sugar, they were more expensive. Ordinary families in the village would not have them all the time. Every year, only during the Qiao Festival or the New Year would they be willing to spend money to buy some.
These things were gathered by the unmarried girls in the stockade village with great difficulty. Only they would attach so much importance to the Qiao Qiao Festival. Li Yi glanced at the clay pot filled with sesame oil. "Isn't it just frying a qiao fruit? Do you need so much oil? What a waste! "
He took out an empty clay pot from the kitchen and folded it in half.
"White sugar … It's not good to eat too much sweets. It's easy to have tooth decay …" Just like that, the jar of icing sugar was also half empty.
"The quality of the flour looks good. If I shrink each qiao fruit a little, I should be able to save a lot … It just so happens that we're running out of food at home." About one-third of the flour was kept by Li Yi.
After all the preparations were done, Li Yi began to knead the dough.
He had already done the whole set of movements smoothly. After kneading the dough, he looked at the qiao fruit mold on the side … It was too ugly, no need!
With a thought, a modern instruction book on how to make pastries immediately appeared in front of him. Countless pieces of messy information poured into his mind. Li Yi closed his eyes and digested it for a while. Then, he cut off a small piece of dough and kept kneading it with his fingers. After a while, a jade rabbit model appeared in his hand.
With this heaven-defying cheating device in his head, the time needed to transform theory into practice was greatly reduced. At this moment, Li Yi was like a pastry chef with many years of experience. His hands moved very fast. In a short period of time, the dough in his hands would become a vivid little animal.
As his movements became more practiced, the figure of a woman in a palace dress gradually appeared in his hands. The woman looked up at the sky, her fairy dress fluttering in the wind, as if she would fly away in the next second.
Even the expression of the masked woman was very detailed. If one looked carefully, one could vaguely see that the woman's appearance was somewhat similar to Liu Ruyi.
It couldn't be helped. It was impossible for Li Yi to think of the image of a weaver girl out of thin air. There was no such thing as a baseless imagination in the world. He must rely on someone or something familiar. The people Li Yi often saw were Xiao Huan and Liu Sister Ruyi. Among the three, Liu Ruyi's temperament was more in line.
"Son-in-law, why is there so little sesame oil left?"
Xiao Huan, who had just walked into the kitchen from outside, saw that there was obviously too much sesame oil in the pot. She stared at Li Yi and asked.
"It doesn't matter how much oil there is, as long as there is enough." Li Yi finished kneading the last qiao fruit. He clapped his hands and touched the little servant girl's pretty face, leaving a white mark. He smiled and said, "Okay, you settle the rest by yourself …"
"Son-in-law …"
The servant girl's dissatisfied voice dragged out. Son-in-law sometimes had the temperament of a child, always teasing her … Xiao Huan's face was covered with flour. She was about to go to the side to wash her face when she saw the qiao fruit that Li Yi had just kneaded. Her beautiful eyes widened involuntarily. She stopped there and cried out, "Ah!"
"Xiao Huan, are the qiao fruits done?"
A few girls around her age walked in from outside. After a while, small exclamations sounded in the kitchen.
"These qiao fruits are really beautiful. I can't even bear to put them into the pot …"
"Xiao Huan, did you knead all these? When did you learn to do this?"
"This is the Jade Rabbit, this is Chang 'e, this … should be the weaver girl and the cowherd!"
"These are even more beautiful than the ones I saw in the market. The weaver girls that they kneaded do not look like anything. They cost five copper coins each!"
…
…
Rows of qiao fruits were arranged neatly on the chopping board. They were different from the molds that they had prepared. The animals and people were all brand new. Those animals were charmingly naive and were exactly the type that the young girls liked.
What surprised them even more were the vivid and lifelike characters. Not only did they have all kinds of clothes, even their expressions and expressions were extremely lifelike. The degree of exquisiteness was unprecedented.
Xiao Huan was already drowned in the praises of the crowd. Although she did not make these qiao fruits, the young miss had told her not to let outsiders know that it was the son-in-law who usually cooked. Even though the young servant girl was a little embarrassed, she did not open her mouth to explain.
The son-in-law was her son-in-law. Praising the son-in-law or praising Xiao Huan, it was all the same …
The young servant girl thought this sweetly in her heart.
"Hey, Xiao Huan, that … is that your son-in-law?" Just as Xiao Huan's heart was bubbling with happiness, a young girl suddenly moved to her side and pointed at the handsome young man who was reading in the corner of the courtyard. She asked in a low voice.
When the other young girls heard this, they all gathered around.
Recently, Xiao Huan's family had a very strong presence in the stockade village, so the young girl's heart was full of curiosity.
This was still an era where everything else was of low quality and only books were of high quality. Scholars were like the first-class protected animals in the country. You could not find a few even if you walked around the surrounding villages.
Young girls generally liked scholars. This was almost an unchanging rule in ancient times. Even if it was a poor scholar, there would be a lot of young girls in love who were willing to devote themselves to him. Nowadays, life was not important. What they valued was the potential of a scholar.
If one was lucky enough to pass a high school and be promoted to a noble, good days would come. Even if this possibility was very slim, it was enough to make many young girls fall in love.
Of course, the only scholar in the Willow Leaf Stockade, Mr. Qin, who was already over 60 years old, was not within the scope of the young girls' interest.
He was handsome, well-educated, and gave people a feeling of being genteel. He was not at all like those rough men in the stockade village. The interesting stories that he told the children had long been spread among the young girls' circle. Every time they heard something interesting, it made these young girls' hearts itch … For the young girls who had never seen a serious scholar, Li Yi almost fulfilled all their fantasies.
In the Willow Leaf Stockade, there were also many young girls who admired him.
However, no one dared to steal the husband of the stockade village chief. All the young girls could do was to hide in a corner where they could not see and peep with blushing faces.
"Achoo!"
Li Yi, who was holding a book in his hand, seemed to be reading hard but was actually in a state of absent-mindedness, sneezed for no reason. He scratched the back of his head in confusion and murmured, "It's only July. The weather has turned cold so quickly?"
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