章節 54: CHAPTER 54: 1ST PROJECT 2
The process of making tomato sauce was not that complicated actually, as long as all the necessary ingredients, pots, and containers were easily available.
Tapiwa was planning on doing the project on a more long-term basis. Villagers owned gardens and farming fields for their crops.
Sometimes, they would plant grain crops in their fields when it wasn't the right time to officially plant crops since gardens were much closer to water sources.
So, vegetables like tomatoes, onions, beans and any sort of vegetables. That was something that could be found throughout the year regardless of weather.
If there was one thing other villages were blessed with, it was their arable soil, which was suitable for all sorts of plants. That it was impractically impossible to say that this can't be planted.
Maybe that could be applied only to certain plants that haven't been tested yet but all local crops like sorghum, rapoko, corn, sweet potatoes, and so forth, were just automatic harvests.
The next morning, Tapiwa woke up in a working mood. There was so much to do on that day going forward and the early bird always catches the worm.
The process of making the sauce was just a few simple steps. It's just that a lot of concentration and power was needed.
After eating some porridge before dawn, Tapiwa, Tambudzai, and the three girls all gathered inside the outside kitchen were busy washing the first batch of tomatoes diligently.
Tapiwa had purchased seven thousand and two hundred tomatoes from the villagers the previous day. And was planning on making the tomato sauce in three days.
And that meant that every single day of the three, she would be cooking a third of the tomatoes, which was hard work already.
The process, though, was still easy, and it required a simple following. Washing the tomatoes, was just the initial cleansing of any dirt. After all, so many hands had touched the tomatoes and it wouldn't be hygienic if they just cooked them like that.
After washing the tomatoes and removing all the calyx, leaving only the red fruits, the five of them began to score the tomatoes with an X on one end. The cuts weren't made too deep, but at least just an inch was fine.
After doing that process, which obviously took a very long time considering how many the tomatoes were. Tapiwa and Tambudzai naturally began to place the tomatoes in boiling water.
The tomatoes weren't placed in boiling water to fully cook them. They only observed them carefully until they started seeing the tomato skins starting to peel back.
If they were boiled for too long, the tomatoes would become very soft and difficult to handle.
After seeing them like that, Tapiwa and Tambudzai began to scoop all the tomatoes from the boiling pot to another pot, which had cold water hauled from the well. That process was done to stop the cooking process caused by the boiling water.
After cooling down the tomatoes, another irritating part of the process began once again.
Sitting neatly inside the kitchen, the five females began to peel the skins off and transfer the tomatoes to a huge wooden dish where they began to pile up.
And once another dish was full; they placed more tomatoes on the next dish until the process was done.
Following that, Tapiwa and Tambudzai's three daughters began to cut the tomatoes into chunks, the kind they always cut whenever they wanted to cook something.
That was another painful process that took a toll on everyone. In the middle of it, Tapiwa instructed Tambudzai to prepare a meal for everyone so that they may continue to have more energy to finish the job.
The meal was finished cooking and everyone took a rest to take a bite before resuming cutting the tomatoes once more.
In the afternoon, the cut tomatoes plus the onions, with some salt, sugar, and cooking oil, were all placed into a pot.
And since the cut ingredients were a bit too much, another fire was started outside where four more pots were placed to cook the tomatoes.
These pots would then be left for a gentle boil and this required constant monitoring of the fire.
The pots were also required to simmer for a couple of hours on low heat until the sauce was no longer watery.
Just like that, time quickly flew by, and soon the sauce looked good and no longer watery. The amount of sauce in the pots also reduced significantly compared to when they first started.
Seeing that the sauce was looking fine, all onions were removed since their purpose was to add some flavor. However, instead of discarding these onions, Tapiwa, who knew how hard life can be, decided to set them aside for future use.
There was no need to worry about keeping them cool or storing them in a deep freezer for them to last long. The existence of the store space was already a cheat and since the space could maintain food in its original state, the onions weren't going to be a problem.
There was no such thing as shelf life when it came to the store space.
After removing the onions, the five took wooden spoons to smash the remaining chunks of tomatoes to make a slightly chunky and thicker sauce.
And since there weren't any sort of herbs she had seen so far in her world that were easily available in her area, the sauce she had been wanting to make was finally done.
Instead of picking a difficult recipe for the sauce that required too many steps, Tapiwa picked the easiest one she could remember seeing in one of those worlds.
Around ten at night, the six pots of tomato sauce were finally done and everyone was just completely exhausted to the bone.
However, seeing all that thick sauce that she managed to make, Tapiwa was over the moon.
The sauce was transferred to a big barrel, which wasn't enough that Tapiwa took out another barrel to store the remaining sauce.
The sauce was then carried into the main building to rest.
After completing this tiring job, food began to be prepared while water for bathing was on the fire as well.
Since there were more cooking fire pits at the moment, it was quite fast to do all these chores at once.
Everyone went to bed around midnight, feeling very tired. Knowing that they were going to wake up early in the morning again to repeat the same process, made them anticipate the new day, and also carry complicated emotions.
After washing up inside her store space, Tapiwa felt refreshed, and it was more than ever.
'Although the sauce I made isn't on par with the ones the store gives me, in this era, this is still much better than nothing,' she mused as she sat on the bed.
It wasn't that there wasn't any sauce in her world. It was there, but it was also very costly. She didn't know what methods those people were using, but only the rich could afford it.
But when using the method that she did, Tapiwa was very confident that people would be rushing to buy her sauce. And as long as she uses cheaper containers for packaging, even the poor could buy some and have a taste too.
'Let's just hope that all will work well.'
-- 收到的禮物 
-- 推薦票
榜單 
-- 推薦票