Chapter 147 The emperor is not anxious and the eunuch is anxious

Chapter 146

After the sweet potatoes are dehydrated, they become dried sweet potatoes. There are generally two types of dried sweet potatoes. One is made by steaming and peeling the sweet potatoes, then cutting them and drying them naturally. The other is made from fresh sweet potatoes, which are cut into thin slices with tools.

Made by sun drying.

Dried sweet potatoes can be stored for more than a year, or even several years, as long as they are placed in a cool, dry place.

The dried sweet potatoes can be used to cook porridge directly, or they can be ground into powder and mixed with flour to make dried sweet potato noodles and steamed buns. They can also be used to make wine. This is how the famous sweet potato roasting comes from.

You can also smash the sweet potatoes to precipitate the starch inside, then boil a pot of water, add the sweet potato starch like noodles into the boiling water, and this will become vermicelli.

The vermicelli in Pork and Cabbage Stewed Vermicelli, a famous Northeastern dish, is made from sweet potato flour or potato flour. This kind of vermicelli can also have a shelf life of two or even three years.

The simplest storage method is to dig a cellar and store fresh sweet potatoes. They can be stored for half a year without deterioration. Sweet potatoes must not be placed in high-temperature environments, such as in the kitchen. Once they are exposed to temperatures above 25 degrees,

, the sweet potatoes will sprout.

Cheng Shijie did not tell everyone that this was indeed a current trade secret, just like the difference between white sugar and brown sugar is the use of lime as a clarifier. The production process of the two is the same, just adding white ash for clarification, forming white sugar.

White sugar is dozens of times more expensive than brown sugar, which costs 600 Wen per catty. Now there is a sugar factory in southern Liaoning. Since Liaonan does not produce sugar cane, it cannot directly make sugar. It can only use purchased sugar and buy it in large quantities.

Under such circumstances, the price is still as high as 280 yuan per catty. Just because of a simple process, the selling price has increased by more than a hundred times.

The sugar currently sold to Jiannu is twenty-eight taels of silver per catty. This is the value of technology.

From noon to evening, more than 5,000 military households plus 55 transferred from the field and 100 households, a total of more than 20,000 people started working, and finally harvested more than 40,000 acres of sweet potatoes, which is only the equivalent of Zhenhai City

There are slightly more than one-tenth of the sweet potato field, but the purchased sweet potatoes have piled up into dozens of hills.

These common people also learned to do it themselves. Some baked sweet potatoes, some boiled them, and some ate them raw. Because sweet potatoes contain a lot of starch and sugar, they were deeply loved by military households in the fields.

Countless refugees from Henan were crying while eating sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes had not yet had time to spread to Henan, and they were all crying.

If they had planted this kind of sweet potato earlier, they would not have to go hungry, and they would not have to starve to death so many people. Since the first year of Tianqi, Henan has been getting worse year by year, due to heavy taxes, drought, locusts, and this

Floods kill countless people to death almost every year.

Cheng Shijie was in a very good mood. He killed dozens of big fat pigs in one go, stewed the pork, cabbage and sweet potato vermicelli together, and invited everyone to eat this famous dish.

Everyone was very satisfied with this meal. It was so delicious and so satisfying that I really wanted to swallow it all on my tongue!

Sun Yuanhua pulled Cheng Shijie and kept asking: "How to store sweet potatoes for a long time!"

Cheng Shijie was so troubled by Sun Yuanhua that he had no choice but to give a rough idea of ​​how to store sweet potatoes.

Although sweet potatoes and potatoes are plants from the same order and different families, the processing methods are completely different. For example, sweet potato powder can be cut into slices, dried, and processed into coarse powder. This powder is not starch, but it tastes better than sweet potato starch.

Okay. But potatoes cannot be processed in this way. Potatoes cannot be exposed to the sun. They will deteriorate when exposed to the sun. If you eat the potato noodles made in this way, you will die.

There is only one way to process potatoes into flour, and that is to wash the potatoes clean without leaving any dirt, and then mash the potatoes into a paste to separate the starch inside from the potato skins.

The third step is to filter. Pour the mashed potatoes into a jar, add water and stir until they are saturated. The last step, which is also the most difficult step, is dehydration. Squeeze the filtered starch as hard as you can to remove the water, and then

Pour it into a container made of bamboo similar to a steamer and send it to the drying room to dry, so that it can be stored for a long time.

Gu Shizhang looked at the mountains of sweet potatoes, as if he were looking at the most exquisite beauties, with a green light in his eyes, almost as if he was in trouble.

"Master Jinglue, do you want to sell these sweet potatoes?"

"Not for sale!"

Cheng Shijie said resolutely: "You have also seen that such a high yield costs several kilograms per acre, and this thing is very hungry. A man with a big belly will be full after eating two or three kilograms. Sweet potatoes contain protein and starch.

Pectin, cellulose, amino acids, vitamins and various minerals are longevity foods."

"longevity?"

Fan Yongdou asked in disbelief: "Can you live longer if you eat this?"

"Of course, sweet potatoes not only have high nutritional value, but also have a sugar content of between 15% and 20%. They also have the effects of laxative, intestinal moistening, and phlegm resolving. Especially in the elderly, whose gastrointestinal function has deteriorated, and general food grams

It cannot be digested, but sweet potatoes are very easy to digest. If you boil sweet potatoes and millet together, you can live ninety-nine times with a bowl of porridge for each meal."

When the merchants saw this situation, they gathered around Cheng Shijie and said, "Master Jinglue, you have so many sweet potatoes anyway, sell some to us, and we can exchange them with rice. How about one stone for one stone?"

"One stone for one stone, what the hell do you want to eat?"

A sugar merchant asked: "Sir, do you think this sweet potato contains sugar? So sweet potatoes can also be used to make sugar?"

"This is natural. In the future, our sugar factory in southern Liaoning will use sweet potatoes to produce sweet potato gummies, malt candies, syrups, brown sugar, etc. If you need it, you can approach the Commercial Affairs Department of the Management Committee to discuss cooperation!"

The fat man, who weighed nearly two hundred kilograms, squeezed out of the crowd very nimbly and ran towards Zhenhai City. He didn't need Cheng Shijie to remind him, but he also knew that if you react quickly, you'll get meat, but if you react slowly, you won't be able to catch up with Rehu even if you eat shit.

.

Cheng Shijie looked at Fan Yongdou and said with a smile: "Brother Fan, don't worry, you won't miss a single grain of the grain you ordered. The wheat will be harvested in half a month at most. Once the grain is harvested and stored in the warehouse, it can be shipped."

!”

Fan Yongdou naturally knew that Cheng Shijie did not lack silver, only war horses and cattle. It was difficult to buy his things with money, but war horses were much easier.

Fan Yongdou smiled and said: "Master Jinglue has betrayed Fan. Fan's men are collecting debts from the Ordos tribe in Mongolia. They have a group of Hequ horses in their hands. They are not Mongolian horses. I wonder if Master Jinglue needs them?"

"how many?"

"Sixteen hundred horses!"

Fan Yongdou's batch of Hequ horses were naturally not from the Ordos tribe, but the army horses from Datong Town. Since Man Gui, the commander-in-chief of Datong, was killed in the Battle of the Capital by King Qin on December 16, the second year of Chongzhen, Datong Town

It quickly deteriorated, and more than two-thirds of the more than 460 forts had been corroded by Fan Yongdou.

In history, in the seventh year of Chongzhen, the Manchu Qing Dynasty broke through and invaded the Xuanfu and Datong areas of the Ming Dynasty. During this period, many places were conquered, nearly 200,000 people were robbed, and countless grains, grass and cloth were taken away. Among them, Fan Yongdou established

great merit.

Cheng Shijie thought for a moment: "Don't mention 1,600 war horses, even 6,100, I want them all!"

"Can we use sweet potatoes..."

Cheng Shijie said with an embarrassed look on his face: "Well, that's not very good. I have good grain, wheat, soybeans, and rice. Good Jiangnan polished rice!"

Seeing that Cheng Shijie was unwilling to buy it, Fan Yongdou lowered his voice and said: "How about one horse for ten thousand catties of sweet potatoes?"

"Don't even think about it, I'll give you money, twenty taels of silver for each war horse, thirty-two thousand taels of silver!"

"One horse, eight thousand catties of sweet potatoes!"

"How about continuing the grain trade? Twenty dan of grain for one horse!"

"Seven thousand pounds!"

"no!"

"Six thousand five hundred pounds!"

"This is impossible. We are brothers. If it can be sold, I will definitely sell it to you. I have a lot of use for these sweet potatoes!"

"Six thousand pounds!"

"Five thousand and five!"

"Five thousand pounds!"

Fan Yongdou lowered the price little by little, which made Cheng Shijie a little excited.

Sixteen hundred fine Hequ horses and five thousand kilograms of sweet potatoes. Is there anything so cheap?

The answer is yes, no.

Seeing Cheng Shijie a little moved, at this moment Yang Yuniang brought Zheng Jian, Zheng Qi and his daughter to come to see Cheng Shijie. When Zheng Qi saw this scene, she bravely said: "If Mr. Fan is not sincere, I don't have to take it lightly.

Yes, there are other merchants waiting to talk to us about purchasing surplus grain!"

Cheng Shijie simply shut up and let Zheng Qi bargain with Fan Yongdou.

I don’t see that she can still do business. In the future, Zheng Qi will be transferred here to be responsible for business negotiations. It is too unqualified to be placed in a bank.

Fan Yongdou couldn't figure out Zheng Qi's identity, but he had already seen that Zheng Qi was a woman, a woman disguised as a man. It was precisely because of the woman that it was even more difficult for him to figure out her identity.

Fan Yongdou and Zheng Qi started negotiations on the transaction of war horses and sweet potatoes. She and Zheng Qi were tit for tat and refused to give in. They were going back and forth with each other, one raising the price and the other bargaining.

Bargaining is one of women's natural hobbies. Cheng Shijie realized this deeply in later generations. Xiang Hui had an indifferent temperament and could be said to be indifferent to the world. As long as they went to buy clothes or other things together, Xiang Hui would

I can negotiate the price with the boss for half an hour.

Just like this time when I bought a house, the house in Binhe Garden was not for sale. The total price was more than 1.286 million. Cheng Shijie didn't say anything. Xiang Hui went from 128 to 119, which cost nearly 100,000 yuan.

Zheng Qi was very articulate and Fan Yongdou felt like his head was as big as a bucket.

It was related to Cheng Shijie's vital interests. Zheng Qi worked hard to get every copper he could get for him. After half an hour of fierce confrontation, the deal of sweet potatoes for war horses was finally completed.

"Six million catties of sweet potatoes in exchange for 1,600 war horses!"

Fan Yongdou compromised. No compromise is possible. Men are naturally at a disadvantage when bargaining with women. Fan Yongdou has never negotiated business with a woman. Of course, except for Cheng Shijie, in this time and space, many businesses are represented by men. Fan Yongdou really lacks the ability to negotiate with women.

experience.

Cheng Shijie was very happy, which meant that he had 1,600 more war horses. There were many places in southern Liaoning that needed war horses, especially the more and more post stations and more reconnaissance troops being built, all of which needed war horses.

.Even if Cheng Shijie is given another 10,000 war horses, he will not let these horses idle.

With the harvest of sweet potatoes, the most intuitive feeling is that the people of southern Liaoning have stabilized. More and more refugees are pouring in. The families of the Ning Navy officers who first entered the Liaoning people and the old people of Dengzhou Weizuo Qianhu Station

The subordinates felt uneasy. They opposed Cheng Shijie's continued recruitment of refugees and were worried that the refugees would eat up Cheng Shijie's food. Once the food was eaten up, they would also starve.

It's good now, the sweet potato harvest is good.

The harvested sweet potatoes are transported by trucks to factories in various places. From now on, the people in southern Liaoning have realized the freedom of sweet potatoes. They can cook, bake, steam, or stew sweet potatoes.
To be continued...