Chapter 26 Part Two Chapter Five Mother's Skills (1)

At six o'clock, my mother and Aunt Sissy came home.Francie was very happy to see Aunt Sissy.She was Francie's favorite aunt.Francie loved her, fancied her.Cici's life has always been colorful.She was thirty-five years old, married three times, and had ten children, all of whom died shortly after birth.Sissy used to say that she thought of Francie as her ten children put together. Sissy works in a rubber factory.With men she is unrestrained.Her eyes are black and shiny, and she looks forward; her hair is black, curly, and bright in color.She likes to wear a cherry bow in her hair.Today Mama wore her emerald green hat, and her skin was as white as cheese skimmed from a bottle.A pair of cotton gloves covered her rough hands.She and Sissy were talking and laughing when they came in, telling the jokes they had heard at the show.

Sissy brought Francie a present, a pipe whistle made of corn on the cob.As soon as you blow it, a hen will jump out of it, and the more you blow it, the bigger the hen will be.This pipe is from Sissy's factory.The factory makes some rubber toys, but it's purely for deception.The rubber products that are actually produced are something that people secretly buy. Francie wanted Sissy to stay for dinner.When Sissy was here, everything was so festive and lively.Francie felt that Sissy understood children.Others regard children as cute and hateful little debt collectors.Sissy treats them as real people.However, even though her mother also came to persuade her to stay, Sissy still refused to stay.She had to go back, she said, she had to see if her husband still loved her.My mother couldn't help laughing when she heard this.Francie laughed too, but she didn't know what Aunt Sissy meant.Sissy left, and before she left, she promised to bring the magazine with her at the beginning of the month.Sissy's current husband works for a pulp magazine.Every month he received all the magazine's publications: love stories, western adventure stories, detective stories, supernatural stories, you name it.The magazines had brightly colored covers, and they were still bound with new yellow string when he got them from the warehouse.Once Sissy got it, she would bring it to Francie immediately.Francie read it voraciously, and when she was done, sold it to the neighborhood stationer for half price, and put the money in her mother's tin piggy bank.

After Sissy left, Francie told her mother everything she had seen about an old man's disgusting feet at Roche's Bakery. "Nonsense," said my mother. "It's not a tragedy to be old. Unless there is only one old man like him in the world, then it is a tragedy. But he has other old people with him. Old people are not unhappy. What we want, they don't want. They just want to be warm, have something soft to eat, and then reminisce about the past together. So, don't be stupid. We will all grow old sooner or later, and no one can escape Let’s get used to this reality as soon as possible.”

Francie knew her mother was right.But...she was glad Mom brought up another topic.She and her mother began to plan how to use the moldy bread to prepare food for the next week. The Nolan family basically lived off this moldy bread, and Katie's ability to make moldy bread is amazing!She would take a piece of moldy bread, pour boiling water to make a paste, add salt, pepper, thyme, chopped onion, and eggs (if eggs were not expensive), and bake them in the oven.After it was baked and turned golden brown, she made another kind of juice. The ingredients were half a cup of tomato sauce, two cups of boiling water, and various condiments, then poured strong coffee, and then used powder to make it thicker, Finally pour the sauce over the bread.The taste is very good, hot, delicious, and endless aftertaste.The leftovers will be cut into thin slices and fried in bacon fat the next day.

Mom can also make a nice bread pudding out of moldy bread.She uses sliced ​​bread, sugar, cinnamon, and thinly sliced ​​cheap apples.When these are browned, she will melt the sugar and pour it on top.Sometimes they also do so-called WegGeschnissen.It's a poorly translated word, literally translated as "something made from crumbs that would otherwise be thrown away".These fried crumbs are dipped in a batter of flour, water, salt, and eggs, and then fried in a thick layer of lard.While they were frying, Francie went to the candy store and bought penny rock candies.The rock sugar is crushed with a rolling pin, sprinkled on these crushed bread crumbs, and sprinkled before eating. At that time, the rock sugar will not melt, and its taste is infinite.