Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 456 Vegetable Soup

If you want to provide free vegetable soup, vegetables are cheap, but salt is expensive. If you want to provide free mint soup, you have to use boats to deliver it, which requires a lot of manpower."

Hualei paused and said, "It won't be a loss, at most it will break even. Think about it, the two kinds of steamed buns are priced at this price in the bun shop, and they are also sold at this price in the basin.

Vegetable soup is free in the bun shop, and it is also free to go to the basin, so there is no loss. As for mint, you can just go to the barren mountain and pick it directly, and we don’t need to spend any money at all.

As for delivering it by ship, it is our own ship, with only a few people at most, and the monthly salary is only a few taels of silver, so we won’t lose money.

Just do as I say, and take out all the big wooden barrels and steamers and baskets we used when we reclaimed the barren mountains, and put them on the boat for use.”

"Okay, then I'll go and knead the dough right away. But, approximately how many people do you want to prepare?" Mrs. Luo nodded and asked again.

"Tomorrow..., there will be about 250 people in the basin I supervise, so I'll prepare 150 steamed buns first.

Tomorrow is the first day, they don’t know yet, so there may be more cases, and in a few days, it should stabilize, and we can adjust then.”

Hua Lei thought for a moment and said, "We can prepare enough vegetable soup for one meal. Also, put some washed vegetables on the boat, as well as some salt, lard and other seasonings on the boat.

The amount for the afternoon can be cooked by the people on the boat in the afternoon so that it won’t go bad. The mint soup can also be cooked on the spot. The model is the same as when we were pioneering the land ourselves.”

Mrs. Luo nodded in agreement and turned to leave.

“Uncle Fu, you take care of this matter for the time being. Bring the boats with you tomorrow, and you can dispatch the needed manpower yourself.

The steamed buns and vegetable soup must be delivered to the reclaimed basin before 9:00 tomorrow morning." Hua Lei instructed Uncle Fu who was following her.

"Yes, Miss." Uncle Fu agreed and went downstairs to start arranging personnel.

The next day, Hua Lei rushed to the basin to supervise early in the morning.

At 3:45 in the morning, Uncle Fu brought a boat to the river not far from the basin. On the boat, dozens of steamed buns were already steamed, and there were several buckets of vegetable soup.

In order to steam buns and cook vegetable soup in the afternoon, Uncle Fu also brought a few large stoves, and stored several barrels of water drawn from the well, which were placed in a corner of the cabin and covered with wooden lids.

Considering the need for transportation, Uncle Fu brought with him only strong men.

After the boat docked, more than a dozen people hurriedly moved the cooked vegetable soup to the edge of the basin, and used a rack to move the steamed buns steamer over.

At 9:00 pm, Hualei stopped to rest, and then asked Uncle Fu to tell her about the steamed buns they were selling. Because today was the first day, no one knew about it, so the buns could be bought on credit, and they could just pay for the buns tomorrow.

In addition, even if you don't buy steamed buns, everyone can get a bowl of vegetable soup for free for three days. The mint soup on the side is free and everyone can take it as long as they keep it clean.

When the land reclamation workers heard that they could get a bowl of vegetable soup for free, they all stretched their necks, but no one came over for the time being. In order to dispel everyone's concerns, Hua Lei asked Gao Tiedan and others to line up first to get the vegetable soup.

Seeing that some people had received the soup but did not pay, some people came over hesitantly, especially those who had not eaten at home in the morning. Some of them began to salivate when they smelled the aroma of lard coming from the vegetable soup.

However, they did not dare to come up and ask for it directly, but just stood aside and watched. Uncle Fu took the prepared bamboo tube, scooped a spoonful of warm vegetable soup, poured it into the bamboo tube, and stuffed the bamboo tube into his hand.

Then I asked other people to come over and filled bamboo tubes with vegetable soup and stuffed them into their hands. I saw that some people really didn't pay and were drinking vegetable soup, and the aroma of the vegetable soup seemed to be stronger.

Then, another person came over and received a bamboo tube filled with vegetable soup. Soon, more people came over. Uncle Fu led a few people and quickly scooped up the vegetable soup.

For today's vegetable soup, Mrs. Luo cut the slightly sweet cabbage into fine pieces, fried it with lard, then added some diced oil residue and salt to make the soup.

Hualei tried it herself and found it tasted OK. It had oil and salt and was slightly warm. If you eat it with the cold steamed buns they brought, it would not be very delicious, but it should be better than drinking it directly with cold water.

Many people came to get vegetable soup, and soon, several large buckets of vegetable soup began to run out. However, not many people came to buy steamed buns, even though the black-faced steamed buns were only one penny each. And even though Uncle Fu said that they could buy on credit, no one came first.

This is really beyond the understanding of these ordinary people. In their eyes, they have corvee labor every year, and they have been doing it for more than ten or twenty years, but have never encountered such a thing.

Moreover, they were doing corvée labor in the middle of summer, so they wore few clothes and seldom carried copper coins with them. Even if they did, today they had to carry cold steamed buns with them.

Besides, in their eyes, Hua Lei was just an official, an unattainable person in their eyes. How could they dare to ask the official to buy steamed buns on credit?

Even the low-ranking staff would be avoided if possible. Therefore, even if Hualei only prepared 250 steamed buns, no one was interested in eating them.

Looking at the untouched steamed buns and the dwindling vegetable soup, Hualei was not in a hurry. There was still a meal in the afternoon, and some people might have only brought one steamed bun, and they might need it when they were hungry in the afternoon.

After the break, Hua Lei asked Uncle Fu to put the steamed buns in a cool place and move the empty wooden barrel of vegetable soup back to the boat for cleaning, as she needed to cook another bowl of vegetable soup in the afternoon.

The wooden barrels of mint soup placed around the basin were simply covered with wooden lids, with a few inverted wooden bowls and wooden spoons placed next to them for the pioneers to use.

He also asked Gao Tiedan and others to take care of them and told them to use the water without worry and that they would not be charged a cent. He also told them that drinking river water directly would easily cause diarrhea.

Because they had a bowl of vegetable soup for free in the morning, the pioneers were more receptive to the free mint water without oil or salt. Moreover, the weather was really hot, and drinking a bowl of mint soup was really refreshing.

So when someone was extremely thirsty and finished drinking the boiled water he brought from home, someone would carefully open the wooden lid, scoop a spoonful of mint soup into his bamboo tube with a wooden spoon, and start drinking it.