It is a local custom to eat eggs during Qingming Festival, and some people even draw pictures on the eggs to comfort their children.
What children love more is the egg-bumping game to see whose egg is the hardest and will not break.
Zhou Guilan got up early in the morning and picked up more than twenty eggs and cooked them in a pot.
At this moment, Xu Shiqin, Su Anfang, and Su Anhua were drawing on the eggs with Xu Shiqin's flower-drawing pen.
Xu Shiqin drew a cat, Su Anfang drew a dog, and Su Anhua drew a naughty child, sticking out his tongue and winking, making faces.
Xu Haiyuan and Xu Jinping both sat obediently, watching their aunts painting intently.
"Wow, it's so beautiful." Xu Jinping took the egg painted by her aunt and exclaimed.
"Sister-in-law, please hurry up, my sister's paintings are all finished."
When Xu Haiyuan saw that his sister had a painted egg, his was not finished yet, so he got anxious and urged her.
Xu Shiqin painted the last part in a few strokes and handed it to Xu Haiyuan, "That's yours."
Xu Haiyuan took the egg and was very happy. "So beautiful, sister-in-law, you are so amazing."
"Okay, let's go eat. The remaining egg will be given to Xiaoyu when he comes."
When the weather gets warm, Ji Yufeng often brings Yang Haoyu to Xu's house to play with Xu Haiyuan's brother and sister.
Especially today, Xu Haiyuan's Yuhong class is on holiday, and Yang Haoyu will definitely come.
The brother and sister each held an egg in their pockets like a treasure, and followed their aunts to the east room for dinner.
In the morning, in addition to eggs, there are rice porridge, rice noodle cakes, pickles, sprouted green onions that just sprouted from the ground, and miso.
Xu Shiyan and his wife also ate here this morning. Each person shared two eggs with porridge and pickles. The food was quite delicious.
Brother and sister Xu Haiyuan were naturally reluctant to part with the painted Easter eggs in their pockets, as they were meant to be kept to show off to their friends.
"Wait a minute, touch an egg first and then eat it." Xu Haiyuan shouted when he saw the adults picking up the eggs and trying to break them.
While shouting, he quickly picked an egg from the basin and touched it with Xu Chenghou first.
"Grandpa, let's come." Xu Haiyuan and Xu Chenghou have a strong relationship. Whenever something happens, they will think of grandpa first.
Xu Chenghou smiled and said nothing, casually picked up an egg and pointed his head towards Xu Haiyuan.
As soon as the two eggs touched, bang, the egg in Xu Chenghou's hand was knocked out of a crater.
"I won, I won." Xu Haiyuan was so happy that he jumped up and down with joy.
"Grandma, grandma, come on, let's meet each other."
The victory in the first battle made Xu Haiyuan more confident. He took the eggs from his victory and went to find Zhou Guilan again.
Zhou Guilan also followed Xu Chenghou's example and used the big end of an egg to touch the small end of Xu Haiyuan's egg.
Everyone knows that there is an air chamber at the big end of the egg, which is empty. It is the weakest and easily broken.
Sure enough, Xu Haiyuan won again. He danced with joy and went to find Xu Shiyan again.
Xu Shiyan wanted to teach his son, so he touched the egg with its small end.
As a result, Xu Haiyuan was dumbfounded and the egg in his hand was smashed.
"Ah? Why did it break?"
Xu Haiyuan was very disappointed. He thought the egg in his hand was an invincible general, but he only touched two of them and they broke into pieces.
When Xu Chenghou saw his grandson's face wrinkled and unhappy, he immediately became unhappy and glared at Xu Shiyan.
"Look at you, can't you coax the child to play for a while? You still have to break an egg for him?"
Xu Shiyan just laughed, "Yuanyuan, do you know why my grandparents' eggs just broke?"
Little brat, there aren’t that many people to spoil you, so you have to be made aware of the cruelty of reality.
"Because, it's your grandparents who are letting you.
Come, let's open the egg and I'll show you what's inside."
Xu Shiyan took action, opened the egg, and then told his son the structure inside the egg.
Tell him that if he touches the big head with the small end of the egg, the chance of the big head breaking is higher.
"Let me tell you, when it comes to eggs, you should choose smaller ones with red skin. Most of these eggs have a slightly thicker shell.
The ones with big egg whites are the worst, they break when touched."
Xu Shiyan took two eggs, a smaller red-skinned one for his son, and a larger white-skinned one for himself.
This time, both eggs had small heads. The white egg was broken, but the red one was safe. "Do you understand?"
"I understand." Xu Haiyuan nodded. It turns out that an egg has so much knowledge.
"Dad, those goose eggs are white and big, so why aren't they easy to break?"
The little guy remembered that he had pickled salted goose eggs at home. He tried it once last year and it took a lot of effort to break them.
Everyone was stunned, no one expected that Xu Haiyuan would ask such a question.
"Eggs are incomparable to goose eggs. Although goose eggs are big, their skin is very thick, so they are strong."
Xu Shiyan touched the top of his son's head and said with a smile.
The little guy rolled his eyes and immediately smiled at his mother.
"Mom, cook me a goose egg later. I'm going to take the goose egg and challenge them to see who's better?"
Everyone at the table burst into laughter.
Is this a trick that a six-year-old child can come up with? If you try to use goose eggs to compete with other people's eggs, who can compare?
"No, please don't harm my goose eggs. I intend to hold the goslings for those goose eggs at home."
Su Anying smiled and waved her hands, "This son can't be fixed, he can come up with all kinds of ideas."
"Hold the little goose? How to hold it?"
Children's attention is easily diverted. As soon as Xu Haiyuan heard about holding a gosling, he was curious and asked about it.
"Just give the goose eggs to Lao Baozi and let him lie down on the nest to hatch the eggs. After thirty-one days, the goslings will come out.
At that time, you can pick vegetables and feed the goslings. When the geese are grown, they can lay eggs and eat meat." Su Anying patiently explained to her son.
There are many ways to hatch hatching eggs, including letting old hens lay the nest or artificial incubation.
Spread a small quilt on the kang, place hatching eggs inside, keep the temperature constant, and turn them frequently. When the time comes, chicks and goslings will hatch.
Most of the eggs on the farm are hatched this way.
But it’s not good at home because there are too many children.
The two elders were so naughty that they forgot to go to the kang one day, so they sat down on the quilt and broke their balls.
Not to mention the two younger ones, who are crawling all over the bed. Who knows where they can climb?
Wouldn't it be easier to just crush a few eggs?
The older one can at least remind them, maybe they can remember it, but the younger one, Si Liu, doesn’t understand, so it’s useless to remind them.
So Su Anying decided to use Lao Baozi as a nest.
The garden at home is so big, especially the bottom of the hillside is full of grass. We can raise a few geese to eat grass and other things.
The goose is stupid and cannot climb the steep slope, so it will not harm the vegetables above.
I no longer raise chickens at home. The house is too close to the back mountain. The chickens are prone to yellow skin and fly around, causing harm to the vegetable garden.
Anyway, there are a lot of chickens raised on the farm, so there is no shortage of eggs to eat. I just raise a few geese at home, which doesn't take much trouble.
When the eggs are laid, pickle some salted goose eggs and save them to bring rice to the mountains. They are better than pickled vegetables and slivers.