Chapter 123: Cleaning The Intestines
Finally, under Su Ran’s tactful suggestion, Xiao Ju threw some of those fish back into the river.
Of course, the ones thrown back were all the live fish that were still flopping and able to breathe.
Even so, by the end, the amount of fish left on the river beach was still enough for Su Ran and the others to eat together for two days without finishing it.
Su Ran certainly couldn’t just leave these fish here; not only would it be wasteful, but after rotting, it would also make the place smell bad.
This place was not far from Su Ran’s home!
But it was simply impossible to process all these fish today.
Su Ran was worrying by herself here, while Xiao Ju couldn’t wait any longer, rubbed against her ear with mi wu mi wu sounds, urging her to hurry and make fish sausage.
Urged by Xiao Ju with no other choice, Su Ran finally sighed, turned around, and went to process the small intestines that had just been taken out from the prey’s body.
If there was really no way to handle these fish, she could only salt them all and take them back for Xiao Ju.
Today’s prey was two four-eared oxen, and the method was the same as always: make roast whole oxen.
But today, roasting just one would be enough for the four of them to eat.
Because A Jin and Su Ran had cooked white bean fruit, and white bean fruit was very filling, so they couldn’t eat much roast meat afterward.
Now, A Jin was already very skilled at the roast meat work and didn’t need Su Ran to intervene anymore.
Xiao Ju and A Jin were handling the fish meat over there.
Xiao Ju filleted the fish meat from the fish bodies, while A Jin chopped all that filleted fish meat into minced fish meat.
Meanwhile, Su Ran carried two ox small intestines to the riverside to clean them.
All along, Su Ran’s method for cleaning ox small intestines had been plant ash plus sea salt powder.
Now, the plant ash from the stove every day, Su Ran would save a bit and put it in an animal hide bag.
This plant ash could often come in handy, so she needed to keep some at home.
Su Ran first used river water to clean the outer walls of the small intestines, then put the small intestines in a wooden basin and used a wooden stick with a smoothly polished tip to turn the inner walls of the small intestines inside out.
Then she took an empty basin and put the turned-over parts into the empty basin to avoid dirtying the already cleaned outer walls.
Once the small intestines were fully turned inside out, she added water and salt powder to the basin, scrubbed them like washing clothes, but had to be careful not to break the intestinal casings.
After scrubbing once, she added fresh water and used plant ash to clean them again; at this point, the inner walls of the small intestines were basically cleaned spotless.
But Su Ran still wasn’t reassured and would repeat the salt powder and plant ash process once more.
Only after cleaning twice would she take the clean intestines to make sausage.
When Su Ran finished cleaning the ox small intestines and walked over to Xiao Ju and A Jin, they had already chopped three large basins of fish meat.
This made Su Ran once again sigh at the strength gap between herself and the beastmen.
Taking advantage of the time while the fish meat wasn’t processed yet, Su Ran climbed to the bird’s nest in the tree behind and took down a small bag of finger onions.
Because the bird’s nest didn’t get much sunlight and the air was relatively cool, now Su Ran kept all the fresh fruits and vegetables at home stored in the bird’s nest.
These plants transplanted behind the house, as long as they successfully took root, all grew very well.
Like finger onions, chili fruit, and vinegar fruit, which were mature plants transplanted over, they immediately started bearing more fruit after surviving.
So much so that now many new fruits went bad before Su Ran could eat them.
With no other way, she could only pick them all and store them in the bird’s nest behind.
But in just a few days, new fruits would grow again in the vegetable garden.
After bringing back the finger onions, Su Ran began her painful journey of chopping onions again.
This time, she didn’t plan to add the onions into the fish meat, so she didn’t need to chop them too finely.
But unable to withstand the large quantity of onions, she was still choked to tears, so after chopping, when Xiao Ju saw her, she thought she was crying for some reason and hugged and rubbed against her for a long time!
This time, the onions were only chopped into a small half basin.
After chopping, Su Ran added water to the basin with the onions, then let the clear water soak out the onion flavor.
Because she had previously made fish sausage with minced fish meat added onions, Su Ran felt that the onion flavor would actually affect the fish meat flavor, so this time she wanted to try the effect of adding onion water directly.
Xiao Ju and A Jin quickly finished chopping the fish meat; when they finished, there was still half the pile of fish left at the riverside.
The finally chopped fish meat amounted to a full six basins; although the basins varied in size, the smallest was as big as the mixing bowl from Su Ran’s previous home.
However, even though there was already so much, Xiao Ju and A Jin were still not satisfied, but they stopped only because there were no more extra wooden basins at Su Ran’s home.
But it was impossible to make all this minced meat into sausage, because the two oxen small intestines weren’t enough.
Su Ran stared blankly at the fish meat mince, finally deciding that the excess mince would all be made into dumplings!
Although she had flour on hand, the noodle dishes she made before were all simple foods like gnocchi soup and boiled noodles; she hadn’t had a proper noodle dish here yet!
Thinking this, Su Ran started working the mince!
She evenly poured the soaked onion water into several basins of fish meat mince, then added salt and ground dried seafood powder to the meat mince, along with sweet juice pressed from small peach fruit, and began stirring.
After stirring, she first stuffed the meat mince into sausage.
At this time, A Jin’s roast meat was almost done roasting.
It walked into the room and saw Su Ran and Xiao Ju cooperating to stuff sausage, while A Jin squatted to one side tending the fire.
At this moment, the pot was already boiling a large pot of already stuffed sausage.
When it saw the remaining full three large basins of fish meat, A Jin seemed startled too!
It stared at the three basins of fish meat on the table for a good while before turning to look at Su Ran: “Ran Ran, this, too much fish meat?”
Su Ran turned to glance that way, showing a helpless smile on her face: “Those, in a bit make fish balls, and some dumplings.”
“Dumplings…”
A Jin’s brows moved, and it nodded.
It didn’t know what dumplings looked like, but knew Su Ran would make them soon, so it didn’t keep asking her.
Instead, Xiao Ju at the side, upon hearing, mi wu mi wu nonstop at Su Ran.
With Xiao Ju’s help, the remaining sausage was quickly stuffed too.
And at this time, the first pot of sausage was just coming out.
After the sausage came out, Xiao Ju and A Jin couldn’t hold back anymore.
While Su Ran used chopsticks to pick the sausage bit by bit into the wooden basin, their eyes were already glued to the sausage!
Almost wherever Su Ran took the wooden basin, their gazes followed right there, making Su Ran secretly laugh.
