Chapter 188: Pan Yue Moves
Furthermore, northern cellars were dug quite deep. Northerners loved to utilize this space, especially for storing massive batches of preserved vegetables. Thinking about her empty space, Sheng Wanyan decided to prepare several varieties for her own home: pickled radishes, quick-pickled cabbage, traditional northern sauerkraut, and spicy kimchi.
She was a woman of action. She immediately washed out her pickling crocks and retrieved all the necessary vegetables and ingredients from her pocket dimension. The first step for all these recipes required coarse salt to draw out the excess moisture from the vegetables. She brought out four large basins from her space to use right there in the courtyard.
They were perfectly sized for washing large batches of food. Moving a small wooden bench over to the well, she sat down and began scrubbing the vegetables, carefully peeling away the wilted outer leaves and chopping off the tough roots.
Traditional northern sauerkraut was fermented directly in massive pickling vats. In fact, these vats were essentially the size of standard water reservoirs—they had to be huge to hold enough food to last a family through the long winter.
Since she didn’t have any giant crocks on hand, Wanyan pulled an extra water vat from her space and lined it with a heavy-duty plastic bag. She sprinkled a thick layer of coarse salt at the bottom, then began arranging the napa cabbage in tightly packed layers, making sure to generously salt each tier. Once the vat was full, she tied the plastic bag tightly shut and pressed a heavy, clean stone down on top of it. It needed to cure like this for two days.
After two days, she would fill it with water, add white vinegar and high-proof liquor, and then weigh it down again to ferment properly for an entire month.
As for the spicy kimchi, she stripped away the old leaves, trimmed the roots, and sliced each head of cabbage in half. She rubbed them thoroughly with coarse salt and left them to marinate overnight, planning to mix the spicy chili paste the following day.
In total, she had brought out three hundred heads of napa cabbage, one hundred round cabbages, and one hundred large white radishes. She dedicated half of the napa cabbages to the traditional sauerkraut, saving the rest for her spicy kimchi.
Next, she peeled the radishes and sliced them into thick, finger-sized strips, tossing them in coarse salt to draw out the water. For the round cabbages, she tore the crisp leaves into small pieces entirely by hand—a crucial step for the right texture. The radishes and round cabbage only took about an hour to cure, so she used that time to prepare her aromatics and pickling brine.
She still had one empty pickling crock left, which she planned to use for pickled cucumbers. However, since fermented cucumbers had a relatively short shelf life, she decided to hold off and just make them in smaller batches whenever the craving hit.
Wanyan worked tirelessly for three days to finish all the pickling. The filled crocks and vats were incredibly heavy—far too heavy for her to haul down into the cellar by herself. Thankfully, she had a shortcut: she simply absorbed the heavy vats into her pocket dimension, climbed down the steep cellar steps empty-handed, and then released them directly into their designated corners. It saved her an immense amount of backbreaking labor.
The quick-pickled radishes and torn cabbage were already ready to eat; they only needed to soak in their brine for about four hours to fully absorb the flavor.
Standing in the cool earth of the cellar, Wanyan took a satisfying inventory of her winter stores. She currently had three hundred kilograms of rice, fifty kilograms of flour, a hundred heads of fresh cabbage, and twenty plump pumpkins. She also had a hundred potatoes and three hundred sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes were her favorite breakfast staple; she loved turning them into golden fried sweet potato cakes, sweet potato meatballs, or a comforting, warm sweet potato porridge.
A hundred ears of dried corn and twenty slabs of smoked bacon hung neatly from the wire mesh overhead. She deliberately avoided storing large quantities of fresh meat. Not only would it arouse Tingxiao’s suspicion, but in the lingering summer heat, it would spoil quickly. She planned to wait until the first heavy snows arrived to pull fresh meat from her space, using the frozen yard as a natural outdoor freezer.
She had also stocked fifty eggs, but held off on hoarding other delicate vegetables since they didn’t keep well long-term. She would just wait until a month before winter to slowly stock up on those. Furthermore, she had brought out a massive string of bright red chili peppers, which were currently drying in the sun out in the courtyard.
It was currently mid-July. The first snows in this northern region wouldn’t arrive until mid-October, meaning she still had a solid three months to fully prepare for the deep freeze.
After finishing her inventory, Wanyan gave the entire house a deep clean. She paid special attention to the backyard, which had been left littered with discarded leaves and vegetable scraps from her three-day pickling marathon.
Once everything was spotless, she packed a small jar full of the freshly pickled radishes and cabbage and headed across the lane. Grandpa Sheng, Grandma Sheng, and Pan Yue had officially moved into the vacant courtyard directly opposite hers a few days ago.
Grandpa Sheng had finally found a productive outlet for his energy and spent every day happily doing carpentry. He was fully capable of building heavy furniture, but Pan Yue worried the intense physical labor would be too hard on his aging body. As a compromise, Grandpa Sheng had agreed to focus his efforts on building smaller, practical storage racks instead.
Ever since she had seen the tall, organized shelving units and shoe racks in Wanyan’s house, Grandma Sheng had been itching to have a matching set. To support the project, Father Pan had asked a few of his logistics soldiers to chop and deliver a large bundle of fresh bamboo, giving the elderly man plenty of material to occupy his time.
In the evenings, Father and Mother Pan would drop by after their shifts to help out around the new house. On their very first day moving in, Wanyan had come over to scrub the new courtyard inside and out. Since Pan Yue was pregnant, she was strictly limited to light sweeping and wiping down tables. Wanyan, being young and agile, took on all the grueling tasks that required deep squatting or climbing up and down ladders.
From their old flat, Pan Yue and Wanze brought over their radio, sewing machine, bicycle, and all their basic furniture like stools and the dining table, so the new house was immediately livable.
Grandma Sheng had taken charge of turning the soil in the yard, eager to plant a quick-growing batch of autumn vegetables to harvest right before the frost. The primary focus, however, remained on organizing the kitchen and servicing the brick kang. Pan Yue was also determined to have an enclosed bamboo pavilion built over their outdoor stove, exactly like the waterproof, windproof one Tingxiao had built for Wanyan.
Such a structure would make cooking infinitely more convenient and safe during heavy rain or snow—especially crucial with elderly family members living under the same roof. However, heavy construction like that would have to wait until Wanze and Tingxiao returned from their mission.
In the meantime, Grandpa Sheng had already added small kitchen storage shelves to his list of daily carpentry projects. It was safe to say the entire household was just eagerly awaiting the return of the family’s two strong, able-bodied officers to act as free labor and make their domestic dreams come true.
Wanyan knocked firmly on the front gate, but the people bustling inside didn’t hear her over the noise. Stepping back, she called out over the wall, “Grandpa! Grandma! Sister-in-law! Open the door!”
In the backyard, Grandma Sheng paused her tilling, leaning on her hoe. Did I just hear my granddaughter’s voice? “Is that Wanyan at the door?” she called out to her husband.
Grandpa Sheng stopped sawing his bamboo and strained his ears, listening closely for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t hear anything.”
Grandma Sheng frowned. She dropped her hoe and hurried toward the front courtyard to check for herself. “I know my own granddaughter’s voice when I hear it!”
Such was the unspoken bond across generations; a grandmother could always sense when her precious girl was nearby. Unbolting the gate, her face instantly broke into a wide smile as she saw Wanyan standing there, holding a large jar of freshly pickled vegetables.
“Come in, come in!” Grandma Sheng ushered her inside warmly. “We were all busy working in the backyard and completely missed your knocking.”
“Your grandfather tried to tell me I was hearing things,” Grandma Sheng grumbled, immediately complaining about the old man. Wanyan just smiled in amusement as she followed her inside.
“Grandma, I brought over some of the quick-pickled vegetables I just made for you all to try,” Wanyan said, offering the jar.
Hearing this, Grandma Sheng gasped and slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh, merciful heavens! How could I have forgotten?”
“Grandma, why are you hitting yourself?” Wanyan asked, startled by the dramatic reaction. She thought something terrible had happened.
“Thank goodness you brought this over and reminded me, or I completely would have forgotten to start our own winter pickles!” Grandma Sheng sighed.
Over the past few days, she had been so entirely consumed by the excitement and chaos of moving into the new courtyard that several crucial seasonal chores had slipped her mind entirely.
“Don’t worry, Grandma. I fermented a massive batch. If you don’t have time to make your own right now, just come over and take some from my cellar,” Wanyan offered.
“No, no, there’s still plenty of time before the frost hits,” Grandma Sheng reassured her. “I’ll just ask your in-laws to help me purchase a few large water vats and pickling crocks from the market in the next couple of days.”
Wanyan nodded, setting the jar down on the table. Grandma Sheng bustled over to the thermos to pour her a hot, comforting mug of malted milk.
“Where’s Sister-in-law?” Wanyan asked, noticing Pan Yue’s absence.
Grandma Sheng sighed quietly and pointed toward the closed bedroom door.
“She’s resting. Let’s go talk in the backyard so we don’t wake her,” Grandma Sheng whispered.
Wanyan nodded, following her grandmother out back.
“Your sister-in-law hasn’t been able to get a proper night’s sleep over the last few days,” Grandma Sheng explained, her face creased with maternal worry. “She keeps waking up in the middle of the night to vomit. That little monkey growing in her belly just loves to torment poor Xiaoyue. Now that she’s finally managed to catch a nap, I feel a little more at ease.”
