【030】Cook from the 90s 30

Tangyuan, who had passed the test of life and death, felt that any hardship was sweeter than lying in a hospital bed resigned to fate, so as long as she could move, she could continue to fight.

On July 15, 1997, having all the paperwork in order and having picked up her cart from the Urban Management Bureau along with various types of permits hanging on the cart, and even the sign for "Xiao Xiao's Fast Food," Gong Mingxia breathed a sigh of relief. At last, at last, she could finally set up her stall tomorrow.

She had arrived in springtime and worked at a construction site for three months, and now it was the summer vacation of '97.

The stall was a fifteen-minute pushcart ride from where she lived, which was very convenient.

She left the Urban Management Bureau that morning, pushed the fairly lightweight cart back home, and the neighbors in the community all gave her different looks. She knew that discrimination against outsiders existed everywhere, so to those who were friendly, she responded with a friendly smile. To those who were unfriendly, disdainful, she chose to ignore.

After parking the pushcart in her yard, she rode the tricycle with her daughter to a nearby market to buy vegetables and meat, which cost more than 200 yuan, and then purchased two stoves for another hundred yuan.

Back at home, she found a place that sold coal balls and had them deliver five hundred of them. Coal balls cost twenty cents each, so five hundred would be one hundred yuan. If she were to fetch them herself, that was the price, but with delivery service, there was an extra charge of ten yuan.

If she collected them herself, she estimated she would have to make five trips, and it would be dirty and time-consuming, but others could deliver in one go. Considering the time, she chose to spend the money and have it delivered.

To prevent the coal from being stolen, she didn't dare leave it outside and had it unloaded at the base of her home balcony's wall. For this, she also posted newspapers and cardboard around it to avoid dirtying the wall.

After the coal was unloaded, she had basically acquired everything that was needed.

In '97, H city had already been supplied with natural gas (plot requirement, actuality unverified), so her cooking was much more convenient and clean.

Just the initial preparations had already reduced her wallet to six thousand yuan. From Beijing to H city, it was unbelievable that she had spent seven thousand yuan, which also proved that one could never have enough money.

Gong Mingxia chose to buy a noodle-making machine because buying ready-made noodles from the market was expensive, dried noodles tasted bad, and making them by hand was too tiring, so the noodle machine was the best choice. This type of noodle machine was manual and could press wide, thin, round, flat noodles as well as wonton and dumpling wrappers, as long as you prepared the dough beforehand and placed it into the mold.

Since she had rented a stall, she definitely planned to open it for the noon meal. As for the evening, she noticed in the snack street that among the myriad snacks, there was no porridge, and her stall was not suitable for making pancakes but was quite suitable for selling porridge. If the porridge was well made, she could also make it a success, so she wanted to try selling it in the evening.

Having cooked Big Pot Dish for so many years, making boxed lunches was extremely easy for her; she was very confident in her own cooking skills. People in H city liked rice, but there would definitely be outsiders who enjoyed stewed noodles, so she planned to steam a pot of rice and prepare a pot of stewed noodles. There was space beneath her stall to place them. As for the stewed noodles, one pot would suffice. For the dishes, three meat and three vegetarian, along with two cold dishes, would do.

Her food cart had ten slots, with two large ones for rice and stewed noodles, with the remaining eight for small lunch boxes. Inside the slots were stainless steel lunch boxes with lids, with water underneath the boxes, and underneath the water, there was space for a stove to heat them, thus keeping the meals warm. To ensure even heating, she had prepared two stoves for this purpose.