When the day was approaching, in order to prepare enough meat, Li Mengxi and Guan Yu counted all the livestock in the army. Except for war horses, except for female oxen and small animals that had not grown up, all other livestock, including mules that could pull carts and mills.

, donkeys, including the bulls among the cattle, including some disabled and old military horses, there were more than 1,600 livestock of all kinds, and all these more than 1,600 animals were slaughtered.

Guan Yu was also surprised when he saw that Li Mengxi wanted to kill so many animals at once.

Li Mengxi explained, "The military rations will be empty. Instead of slaughtering animals when the food is empty, it is better to prepare early."

Li Mengxi knew something about nutrition. He knew very well that if the animals were slaughtered after eating the grain, they would have to drink broth every day. Herein lies the problem. If you eat a single food for a long time, you will easily get sick.

Therefore, while there is still some grain, you might as well kill more animals, and then eat grain and meat together, so that the nutritional structure can be healthier.

There are 150,000 people in the army, and 1,500 animals are killed. On average, one animal is divided among 100 people. Assuming that one animal has 300 kilograms of meat, then the average meat distribution per person is only three kilograms.

As a minimum, three taels of meat per day can maintain the minimum consumption without starving to death. Then, killing all the excess livestock in the army can last for about ten days at most.

After ten days, it is necessary to kill the war horses and farm cattle. After killing the war horses and farm cattle, it can last for another ten days. If Liu Xuande's food and grass are not available after ten days, it will be over.

The key to its survival lies entirely with Liu Xuande.

Li Mengxi did some calculations. He didn't know exactly how much money Liu Bei took away, but after some calculation, Zhang Jiao swept through the entire Julu. It is estimated that Zhang Jiao collected almost all the money in Julu.

Now there are 150,000 people. These 150,000 people are obviously not the entire population of Julu, but a part of the population, or even a small part of the population of Julu before the turmoil.

So, one thousand carts of money is equivalent to Julu's entire wealth. If Julu's entire wealth is used to buy all the grain, it can probably afford the food consumption of everyone in Julu.

In other words, if the Julu government has the courage to spend all its wealth to buy food, it can help the desperate Julu people.

Unfortunately, the government pushed too hard and forced the people to rebel. The result was that the state capital was breached, officials were killed, and the money exploited from the people eventually fell into the hands of the people. In the end, they had to use the money to buy food and provide relief to the people.

It went full circle, and in the end, the cause of the turmoil was not so much that productivity was fragile and easily destroyed by natural disasters, but rather that it was actually a distribution problem.

More than a thousand animals had to be killed at once, and the army's butcher camp was not enough. There were not enough pig-killing knives, door panels for chopping meat, urns for blood, and baskets for meat.

Materials are in short supply, which is another problem.

Li Mengxi thought about it and finally decided to gather manpower to kill as many animals as he could.

After a military order, countless animals were led out and delivered to each team. People knew that a large number of animals were going to be slaughtered, so they guessed that they would be able to eat meat. The civilians and soldiers were very excited.

A war commander pulled a bull to the civilian camp under his jurisdiction. The war commander threw it at the civilians and said, "Who knows how to kill a cow? Come on, help me! Is there a door panel? Where is the urn? Bring it over and look for the rope as well."

.”

Supplies were scarce and we didn’t have a complete set of tools for killing cattle, so we had to make do with what we had.

An old man among the civilians looked at the strong bull and was a little reluctant to part with it. He said distressedly, "Master, are you going to kill the bull for plowing too?"

The soldier glanced at him and said, "Kill the general if he is told to do so, no matter what he does."

Having said that, the soldiers also felt that it would be fine if they killed the old bull. This big and strong bull was a treasure for the cultivated land, so it would be a pity to kill it.

The soldiers were hesitating when they saw Guan Yu passing by while patrolling the camp. The soldiers immediately ran over and asked Guan Yu if he wanted to kill him.

Guan Yu said, "Kill them. It's the New Year and we must have meat to eat. The military advisor will keep all the cows and kill the bulls."

Soldiers can only follow orders.

Li Mengxi deliberately threw away all the cows, female donkeys and other livestock, and only killed the male ones. The reason was that both bulls and cows could plow fields, but cows were more important wealth materials. Cows could give birth to calves.

Keep all the cows and kill all the bulls. It doesn't matter. There will be no shortage of food next year. Buy more than ten or twenty breeding cows from other places, and then you can give birth to calves in large numbers immediately. As long as the cows are kept,

The number of cattle can be doubled at any time.

This is a trade-off between killing livestock and preserving as much of the livestock's recovery potential as possible.

When there is no choice but to kill animals, the order of priority is: if you can kill mules, don't kill cattle, horses and donkeys; if you can kill old mules, don't kill young mules.

Among the mules, oxen, and donkeys, the mules kill the mules, then the donkeys, and finally the oxen.

Between bulls and cows, kill the bull first.

And so on.

Li Mengxi went to the wounded barracks. There was a tent at the corner of the wounded barracks. There was no one in the tent. There were only some fire pits. On the fire pits were some wheat for making maltose. There was also a basin of noodles placed there, which was used to make maltose.

As for the yeast, the live dough has been placed on the fire kang for a long time. I don’t know if it has fermented yet.

Li Mengxi went to check. He saw that the dough he had put in before had indeed changed. The dough had become thinner and softer. When he picked it up and smelled it, it had turned sour.

This is not quite right with Li Mengxi’s impression of leaven. In his impression, when the leaven is ready, it should be hard dough.

However, since the dough has become sour and pungent, it means that the dough has been fermented successfully, which means that a large number of microorganisms have grown in the dough.

Li Mengxi thought for a while and thought that maybe he could steam steamed buns and give it a try.

Li Mengxi carried the yeast out of the tent.

When Li Mengxi returned to the city lord's mansion, his younger brother Xiao Zhuan came back, bringing a group of children with him.

When Xiao Zhuan saw Li Mengxi, he immediately asked, "Brother, is it the Chinese New Year?"

"Yes." Li Mengxi replied with a smile.

Xiao Zhuan saw the noodles served by Li Mengxi and asked if he was making sweet and sour fish.

Li Mengxi said that the steamed buns would be eaten, which made Xiao Zhuan even happier, because Xiao Zhuan felt that as long as his brother made new things to eat, he would be able to make something delicious.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Li Mengxi put the yeast on the low table, went to the house and took out half a bag of white flour, found a wooden basin, picked up a bucket, and went out to bake

He brought in half a bucket of water.

When he was ready to bake the instant noodles, Li Mengxi said to Xiao Zhuan, "Brother, go and call Sister Ning to help."

"Oh!" Xiao Bian ran out immediately.

After a while, Xiao Bian called Zhang Ning.

Zhang Ning came and stood quietly next to Li Mengxi. Li Mengxi was very familiar with Zhang Ning. He told Zhang Ning how to make dough and how to knead it, and then Zhang Ning did it for him.

Li Mengxi found that his small arms and legs were not strong enough to knead dough, so he asked Zhang Ning to help.

Under Li Mengxi's guidance, Zhang Ning was busy. The girl's slender green fingers kneaded the flour added with water, and the flour gradually formed into a ball in the wooden basin.

Li Mengxi was on the side. When he saw that there was too much water, he took a handful of flour and sprinkled it on it. When he saw that there was too much flour, he took a ladle and added some water.

The younger brother and the children were jumping and making noises in the house. Li Mengxi told the children that they could sweep the house with a broom.

A large group of children were obedient and looked for brooms everywhere, sweeping the house.

When Guan Yu came back from patrolling the camp outside, he entered the house and saw a room full of children holding brooms and poking and sweeping here and there. Among them, Li Mengxi and Zhang Ning stood together, one by one.

The living noodles, one with water, were quiet and complemented each other, just like a beautiful woman. Guan Yu smiled and then quietly retreated without leaving a trace.

——

After a while, with the help of Zhang Ning, a large bowl of noodles was made.

After being busy for a long time, Zhang Ning's pretty face turned slightly red from exhaustion, and her hair stuck to her forehead.

Li Mengxi naturally wanted to reach out and lift the girl's hair from her forehead. When he reached halfway, he saw Zhang Ning's face turned red. Li Mengxi realized something was wrong and quickly took his hand back.

"Okay, Sister Ning, the noodles are ready, just put them in warm water and they'll be ready." Li Mengxi changed the topic at the right time.

After that, because there was no big iron pot, Li Mengxi could only find a larger wooden basin, then boiled some hot water, poured the hot water into the wooden basin, and then poured some cold water, and tested the water temperature with his hands.

When it's almost done, put the basin into the water basin.

According to Li Mengxi's knowledge, the principle of warm noodles is that a moderately warm temperature can allow yeast to multiply faster, but the water should not be too hot. If the water is too hot, the temperature will be too high and the noodles will be cooked.

This is the principle.

It took a while to make the noodles, so Li Mengxi and Zhang Ning just watched the noodles, sitting side by side, quietly watching the children in the room chasing and playing with brooms.

From time to time, Li Mengxi would reach into the basin to see if the water was cold. If the water was cold, he would scoop a ladle of hot water from one side of the jar and add it to keep the water temperature constant.

After a long time of this, waiting and waiting, waiting and waiting, finally when a bowl of noodles started to bloom, it became a big bowl full of noodles, and it swelled up and was about to overflow. Only then did Li Mengxi realize that his face was filled with tears.

If there is too much, half a basin of noodles will bloom, which is exactly one basin, but if a full basin of noodles blooms, it will definitely be too much.

After realizing the mistake belatedly, Li Mengxi quickly got up and called Zhang Ning to work together.

Li Mengxi grabbed a ball of noodles and smelled it. He could smell the sweet and fragrant smell of fermented noodles, which he felt was good.

Now that the dough is ready, the next step should be to knead the dough and make steamed buns.

Li Mengxi immediately found other tools. He moved another short table in the house, spread it with clean linen cloth, and then sprinkled some flour on the linen cloth to prepare the steamed buns.

There was a place to put the steamed buns, and then Zhang Ning took out a large ball of dough that had risen in the basin, and then kneaded it hard to make the dough firmer.

Li Mengxi held a ladle filled with dry flour, sprinkling some from time to time to prevent it from sticking to his hands.

Li Mengxi found that girls' hands are indeed more dexterous. Zhang Ning quickly mastered the skills from being unfamiliar with it and was able to knead the dough in a short time.

Li Mengxi thought about it, and if he wanted to make steamed buns, today would be New Year's Eve and tomorrow would be New Year, so he had to worship the gods. If it happened, he would steam big steamed buns for worshiping the gods.

So, Li Mengxi and Zhang Ning worked together to shape the dough into bowl-shaped nuggets.

After a while of busy work, a big basin of noodles was finally made into steamed buns. Zhang Ning was so tired that the hair on his forehead was wet.

Li Mengxi picked up the handkerchief and handed it to Zhang Ning. He was extremely grateful, "Sister Ning, thank you for your hard work."

Zhang Ning smiled sweetly and took the handkerchief.

This scene happened to be right when Guan Yu came back and saw it again.
To be continued...