On the 9th, Zhang Meng's college entrance examination ended.

On the 10th, Wangkelai Hotel officially opened.

Early in the morning, Zhang Qingxiang, Zhang Meng, his son, and Li Shuangzhu went to the gate of the county's supply and marketing cooperatives to line up and bought meat, oil, rice, and noodles with the grain stamps and meat stamps that had been exchanged with others a long time ago; Wang Xiujuan and Chen Chunhua cooked noodles at home, packed up the prepared pots and pans, and put them in the cart.

As for the firewood, it was transported from Chenchen's grandmother's house, piled up outside the back wall of the restaurant, and wrapped tightly in linoleum.

After breakfast, Wang Xiujuan took Li Liang on a bicycle, Zhang Meng took his mother Chen Chunhua on a bicycle, and the four of them rushed to the restaurant with a few rags and a bag of laundry detergent, and they went over to clean up first.

Li Shuangzhu and Zhang Qingxiang pulled the materials on the board car and took their time behind.

Chenchen and Zhang Junjie also wanted to follow along, but today was the day to go to school to get the transcript, Li Liang couldn't pull away, and dragged Chenchen to study to help him get the transcript back.

When she arrived at the store, Chen Chunhua took out the key and opened the store, and eight rectangular tables were placed on both sides of the wall, two in each row, and four rows were neatly arranged.

The walls are painted with white plaster, and on the wall facing the gate, there is a portrait of ***. On the wall on the left hangs a large wooden menu, on which Zhang Qingxiang asked someone to write the menu and prices in red paint, which is refreshing and pleasing to the eye. On the wall on the right is the words "Serve the People".

There is also a vertical wooden billboard in the store, which is also Li Liang's attention. The same slogan was written on both sides of the billboard: "Wangke comes to the hotel, mass consumption, economical!" Li Liang moved the sign to the side of the road and picked up two stones to press the base of the sign to prevent it from being blown down by the wind.

Chen Chunhua and Wang Xiujuan took the basin to fetch water, ready to wipe the table and stools. Zhang Meng took Li Liang and the two of them rushed to his grandmother's house. A few days ago, Chen Chunhua had already explained to her two brothers in her mother's family, and asked them to help prepare fresh vegetables, dried bamboo shoots, dried fungus, etc. today.

Zhang Meng led Li Liang to his grandmother's house, the two uncles and aunts had already gone to work in the fields, and several cousins and sisters did not see anyone, only Zhang Meng's grandparents were eating breakfast in the courtyard with bowls. Seeing Zhang Meng and Li Liang enter the far gate, Zhang Meng's grandparents hurriedly beckoned them to breakfast. Two large baskets of fresh vegetables have been set up in the yard, including eggplant, bitter gourd, cucumber, water spinach, peppers, etc., as well as dried bamboo shoots soaked in advance. Dried bamboo shoots are an ingredient that must be soaked in advance the day before, otherwise they cannot be cooked.

"Grandparents and grandparents, we have already had breakfast! You are busy, Liangzi and I will move these dishes first!" Zhang Meng said.

"Well, your uncle and aunt have prepared them for you early in the morning!" Zhang Meng's grandmother said: "By the way, I heard that you still want fish, Chen Ze, Taotao and their brothers went to catch fish early in the morning, and I told them to send them directly to you later!"

"Okay, then grandparents, you eat slowly, let's go first! I'll send you the money for the dishes in the evening!" Zhang Meng said.

"Don't worry about the money for the vegetables, wait until you make money, it's all from your own field, it's not worth a few dollars!" Zhang Meng's grandmother waved her hand and said.

Zhang Meng and Li Liang stopped talking nonsense, and rushed to the restaurant directly with two large baskets of vegetables.

When a few people cleaned the inside and outside of the restaurant, Li Shuangzhu and Zhang Qingxiang finally arrived with a cart, and it was already about nine o'clock in the morning.

Wang Xiujuan opened the rice bag, scooped up about two or three catties of rice, washed it and put it into the cauldron between the stoves, and filled a large pot of water. Because it was the first day of opening, no one knew what the business would be, so she didn't dare to put too much rice.

At this time, there were no pressure cookers and rice cookers, and most of the people with few families used aluminum and steel pots to cook rice, and in many homes and restaurants, wooden retorts were needed to steam rice.

The general Mu Zhen practice is like making a wooden barrel, the master carpenter hand-crafts a piece of curved wooden planks, and then spliced into a circle, and then tied with iron wire or bamboo strips, so that it is not easy to fall apart, and each Mu Zhen will also be equipped with a hat woven of bamboo strips or reeds.

To cook with wooden grannie, you must first put the rice in a pot and cook it until it is half-cooked, and then take out the rice and put it in the wooden grannie to steam. The leftover water from cooking in the pot is not wasted by rural people, and most of it is used to cook some pigweed to feed the pigs. With the development of the times, Mu Donnie Yen has become more and more rare, and restaurants in later generations have basically used rice cookers or electric pressure cookers to cook rice. However, according to the elderly, the rice cooked by Mu Zhen is particularly fragrant.

Chen Chunhua washed the meat she bought in the morning and cut out a few bowls of large pieces of meat for braised pork, and cut the rest into shreds. Zhang Qingxiang and Li Shuangzhu went to the back of the house, and today they are very manpowered, and the two of them are going to split all the timber in the corner of the wall today, so that Zhang Meng and Chen Chunhua will not have to work so hard in the future.

After a while, Chen Ze and Chen Tao carried a bucket of fish and ran over happily.

"Auntie, auntie, my brother and I have brought you fish!" Chen Tao shouted loudly.

Li Liang and Zhang Meng heard the shouting and hurriedly went out to help them carry it up. There were a lot of fish in the bucket, Li Liang took a cursory look, and most of them were crucian carp, yellow eel, loach, and a few yellow and spicy dices.

Chen Chunhua took a rod from the house and weighed it out, a total of 7 catties of fish with buckets, 0.4 catties of buckets were removed, and the net weight was 6.6 catties. Then I weighed two baskets of green vegetables, soaked bamboo shoots, and dried fungus. Then he said to Chen Ze and Chen Tao: "Ze Ze, Tao Tao, the fish is a total of 6 catties and 6 taels, all of them are small miscellaneous fish, my aunt will count 2 cents and 5 catties for you, and the small miscellaneous fish will be at this price in the future;

Chen Chunhua didn't say anything to his nephew, and the prices quoted were the market prices of the county aquatic products company, and the pork belly in this period was only 6 or 7 cents a catty.

The two brothers Chen Ze and Chen Tao were a little stunned, in the past, they caught fish and couldn't eat them, and they would take them to the polder town to sell, but in the polder town, the small miscellaneous fish were sold for 1 or 2 cents a pound at most, and the price given to them by the aunt was really good.

They hurriedly said, "Well, this is much higher than the price we went to the polder town to sell." ”

"You have a hard time catching fish early in the morning! Do you know how to pay attention to safety when catching fish? In the future, if you catch a fish every day, you will send it to your aunt, and your aunt will thank you!" Chen Chunhua said with a smile.

"Got it, auntie!" replied the brothers.

Chen Chunhua counted out 1 yuan, 6 cents and five cents from her pocket and handed it to the Chen Ze brothers. Chen Ze took the money and carefully put it in his pocket.

"Auntie, you opened today, just tell the two of us to do any work!" Chen Ze said.

"Yes, auntie, there is something for me and my brother to do. Tao Tao also said.

"It's nothing, there are your two brothers, Zhang Meng and Li Liang, you two go to the house to sit and rest and drink saliva. I'll eat at my aunt's place at noon, help us taste it, and see how the dishes taste like my aunt's cooking!" Chen Chunhua said with a smile.