From Chief to Ball

"I know this, but where can so many arrows be used?"

"You're not an official, how do you know these things? There are more than a dozen villages, and less than [-] arrows are handed over a year. If some bends are removed, there are not many left. The military camp consumes hundreds of arrows every day. After a year, there are not many arrows." There are four or five thousand sticks for war."

"Isn't the barracks all shooting at the target?"

Ji Yungang wanted to explain that there are plenty of arrows that can’t be found when shooting every day, but thinking of this news, he closed his mouth and shook his head and said: “In future wars, everyone who knows how to shoot arrows will need to bring thirty arrows to the battlefield. Are there a lot of ten thousand arrows? You also know that in addition to bird feathers and arrow shafts, feather arrows also need fish maw glue. Originally, the meeting discussed that you should also pay fish maw. If Ji Xia hadn't objected, you would have had more thing."

"Yeah, Jixia is very good. I hope that this winter's meeting will allow Jixia to continue to be the leader of the city. I don't know what it will be like if it's changed."

"That's it. By the way, you have to hurry up. Jixia has an order. Tomorrow, another batch of corvees will be conscripted. Your tribe will send out six men and three women."

"Why are they being recruited again? Our tribe's houses haven't been repaired yet, and the winter is so cold, so we can't sleep in a leaky house for the winter? Besides, haven't the houses in the city been repaired? They won't be reclaiming the land again, right?"

"No, Jixia said that they want to repair the nitrate field. I don't know what it is. In short, I will send people there tomorrow. This repair of the nitrate field is an additional requisition, and it takes up your time for reclaiming the land, so each person has [-]% per day. It will take about a month to dry eight catties of grain."

Catfish stretched out his finger and counted for a long time, Ji Yun smiled and said: "Don't forget it, there are two thousand catties of grain in total, throw away nine people to eat for a month, and there will be more than 1000 catties left, which is no less than the beans you paid."

"Then why bother?"

"The rules can't be changed. Don't look at the [-]th tax in the city, but our Ji family has paid tens of thousands of catties of grain this year, how much have you paid? This year, you have to pay a lot more. Tomorrow you will pay too much." Tell the kids, don't treat me like a bad person all day..."

While talking, the two of them counted all the taxes that needed to be paid. Apart from the birch shafts, there were also many unqualified feathers. Ji Yun selected them all meticulously.

Before the second batch of bird feathers arrived, Catfish ran over and quietly took out the incomplete feathers mixed in, and a little embarrassedly took out the good falcon feathers hidden in his room for next year.

After tossing until noon, a carriage came from Xiacheng with a lot of goods on it. The driver jumped down and found Ji Yun, whispered a few words in his ear, and stretched his neck to know the two people What did he say, but he didn't hear clearly.

Ji Yun straightened the leather hat on his head, went to the pottery drum at the entrance of the village and beat the big drum, calling everyone in Yucun to gather.

"Tomorrow is the Lidong Festival. Jixia has given you a lot of good things, so you can spend the festival well. Rules are rules, people are people, that's different. Last time when the Meteorite tribe was conscripted, although your tribe didn't go with them, you did. Ji Xia remembers that people guard the city. If you do well in the future, you will naturally be able to live in the city. Whether you are doing well or not, Ji Xia has a scale in her heart."

When he was about to talk about what the city gave these wild people, Ji Yun looked at the various goods on the cart, turned around and asked the driver next to him in a daze, and pointed in a low voice to the things that were soaked in water in a clay pot on the cart. The white square asked, "What is that?"

Chapter 32 Abandon fantasy and prepare to dig a hole

"It seems to be called tofu... It's also a specialty in the city. The new soldiers in the barracks have tried it, but I haven't tried it. Ji Xia said that we may have to wait until the bean harvest next year before we can eat it. Today is just a taste."

The coachman licked his lips. He had already eaten a piece before he came, and it was extremely tender, but each person got very little, so they could only taste it.

The eyes of everyone in Yucun also turned to the clay pots on the car, looking at the white squares curiously, their hearts were filled with curiosity and longing. The things Chen Jian made were always delicious.

"Tell me quickly, what have you given us? We will never forget Jixia's kindness. If it weren't for him, we would still be paying tribute to the Meteorite tribe... There is no need to say these things."

Ji Yun smiled and said, "There are a lot of things, two hundred catties of wheat flour, one head of sheep, and five rolling pins. I will let you eat mutton dumplings for the holiday tomorrow. Thirty earthen pots..."

"Clay pot? Is it black pottery from E City?"

Someone asked, and the angry catfish almost rushed over to cover the mouth of that clansman.Ji Yun is the same mother and younger brother of Chengyi Tao official Acorn, isn't it uncomfortable to ask this sentence?

Ji Yun shook his head a little embarrassedly and said, "No, but it's better than before. My brother's cooking this time is much better than before."

Catfish hurriedly said: "That's right, the black pottery in Echeng is so thin, just like eggshells, and it's easy to break. It doesn't matter if you don't want it. It's better to use our clay pots, which are not easy to break. It's the same for eating and holding water."

When Catfish said this, Ji Yun was immediately discouraged, muttered a few words without mentioning those common things, pointed to the pot of white things and said: "This is also given to you by Ji Xia, tofu."

A few people ran over, curiously poked the white cube soaked in the water with their hands, scratched their heads and said, "How do you eat this thing? What is it made of?"

Xiacheng’s word-making and grammar are simple, and Ji Yun confidently told everyone that it must be made of beans, because Xiacheng’s word-forming method is different from that of the Red Fish tribe, and you can guess it just by hearing the name. Make an estimate.

But Ji Yun's understanding stopped there, and he didn't know how to make it or how to eat it.He has been out of the city for more than ten days to collect taxes, who knows what happened in the city.

His guess is correct, this thing is indeed made of soybeans, in Chen Jian's view, a city with beans but no tofu is intolerable, in addition to the lack of this excellent vegetable protein, there will be less A lot of allegorical phrases, vocabulary and stories that he is familiar with.

When the beans were harvested, he asked the stonemason to make two small mills, and started grinding with the donkey he bought blindfolded.

The pre-technology of tofu requires spinning and weaving, boiling salt and brine, sawing planks, bean planting, and stone milling. All preconditions have been fully met by Xiacheng.

When tofu appeared in the previous life, because of the lack of a process, the taste was not good, so it took many years to become a popular delicacy. Dongpo Layman once commented: Tofu fried in soybean oil is delicious!

The lack of this process is actually very simple, that is, cook the soy milk... If you order tofu directly with brine without cooking, it will have a strong beany smell.

The beany smell is very bad. As the saying goes, chickens don't eat beans, nephews don't scold uncles, and even chickens dislike raw beans. It is generally difficult for people to get used to that smell.

Thinking about making tofu is not a whim for Chen Jian, but for the new army to have enough nutrition for training.

The dodo birds and geese he domesticated so far only lay a few eggs a year, and there is still a long way to go before they can eat eggs every day. There is no way to force them to lay more eggs. There is no shortcut for this, and they can only be artificially selected; Pig and sheep farming has just taken shape, and now every time I eat one more pig, I will eat two or three fewer pigs next year, and I will eat meat occasionally; hunting is too much time-consuming, and it is far better to dig the ground when I have this time.

Beans are rich in protein, so they can be cooked and eaten directly, but if you eat too much, you will feel bloated. After eating some beans a while ago, the rooms in the entire military camp would make noises one after another even when sleeping at night, and the doors were not closed at night when it was so cold.

There are not many beans harvested now, Chen Jian can only try his best to ensure that the new army eats them, or tell his sister how to make them far away in Echeng, so as to add some flavor to her wine shop in exchange for more beans.

The place where tofu is made is in the handicraft district of the city. He is not afraid of someone stealing his lessons, because he hides the brine for ordering tofu, and the people in the clan will only be curious about how white soy milk turns into tofu.Now he is doing everything possible to exploit his city, increase hidden taxes, expand public property and accumulate food for large-scale construction, so he even has to specialize in tofu.

A small tofu workshop was quietly established. All the property is two donkeys, two stone mills and a big house. It needs eight people in total and can produce [-] catties of tofu every day.

Two of the eight people were trained for E City. In the future, they will bring four newcomers to E City to open a shop, so they all choose trusted clansmen.

The soaked beans are crushed by a stone mill pulled by two little donkeys, wrapped in cloth to squeeze out soy milk, and then squeezed with water, leaving a pile of bean curd residue, which can be fed to cows.

Soy milk is boiled on high heat, and some waste brine from Yancun is poured in. The bitterness in the brine comes from magnesium chloride, which will cause protein denaturation and coagulation, and become tofu flower and separated tofu water.

Pour the water and tofu flowers into the wooden tank prepared in advance, cover with a layer of cloth, press a certain weight of stones to condense the tofu flowers into a block, fish intestines and swords, and the tofu is ready.

Because it avoided the mistakes of the previous life when the tofu was born, there is no beany smell and the taste is quite good.

The unsqueezed tofu flower is tender, boil a pot of salty topping with fern root powder, dried day lily, cucurbit shreds, or directly pour maple syrup. After tasting it, the Chinese in the city burst into laughter This is the first salty-sweet battle in the history of the world, and this time the salty party has the upper hand.

There are so many ways to eat early adopters, and then they will no longer be served in the city, and this rule will not be changed until the next bean harvest.

The new soldiers in the barracks eat it every day. The quota is half a catty of tofu every day. At the end of the ten-day period, two tofu can be given out as a military salary for a ten-year period. The new army can go to Fangshi to exchange with the clansmen. This is also a kind of welfare... Just a little shabby.

Making tofu this time also completely cut off Chen Jian's dream of finding saltpeter mines, so he had no choice but to recruit people to dig the saltpeter field honestly.

During the investigation and investigation to the salt village, in addition to bringing back a large amount of brine, I also searched for suitable minerals in the valley.

There are two kinds of saltpeter in the previous life, one is Glauber's salt and the other is Fire salt.The two are almost the same in length, and basically cannot be distinguished from the appearance, and most of the saltpeter mines coexist.

Glauber's salt is sodium sulfate. Can it participate in the chemical reaction to make gunpowder? Chen Jian pondered for a long time on the chemical formula and found it impossible. Moreover, it is easy to contain crystal water, so gunpowder is easy to get wet when mixed into fire salt, so it must be removed from fire salt. something to remove.

Fire nitrate is very soluble in water, and it is difficult to exist in non-arid areas. Only in deserts will there be large-scale mines.

The environment in the valley is a bit weird, it may be that the saltwater lake dried up tens of millions of years ago, there may be this kind of ore, and it is easy to distinguish the two kinds of saltpeter with previous life experience.

With the mentality of trying to pick up treasures, I turned around and found a lot of white powder and crystals.

After taking it back, I burned it with fire, but I didn't find a purple flame, basically it was yellow flame.Potassium purple sodium yellow calcium brick red, magnesium aluminum flameless color, Chen Jian despaired after reading it, this salt field is basically unlikely to have potassium salt.

After walking around resentfully for two days, he left with a batch of brine left by the temperature difference and solubility, leaving infinite regrets. Until he left, no one in the salt village knew what he was looking for.