Traveling through the famine, I stockpiled supplies like crazy

Chapter 553 Buying a Cook

If you want to buy talents, it is more reliable to go to Guanya, because most of the people here are from the former owners whose property was confiscated, and there are all kinds of people in it.

It is different for private servants. The slaves in private servants usually sell themselves or are sold by their parents.

Or they might have made mistakes and were sold out by their masters. Most families would naturally hold on to good cooks and stewards tightly and would never let them go.

It was a coincidence that the two of them came today. They happened to encounter a batch of slaves that had just been transported back, and they just arrived last night. Among them was the talent that Xu Han needed.

Xu Han couldn't help but sigh that her luck was so good recently, she got whatever she wanted.

When the people of Wei Ya saw Lu Chuan and Xu Han coming, they asked about their needs and disregarded the rules and directly brought out those who had not yet recuperated.

Wei Yaren brought the people who had just been sent over yesterday and explained, "These people just arrived yesterday afternoon. They haven't rested well yet. They look a little bit unwell, but there is no problem. They just need to rest well in the future."

Xu Han looked at the person in front of him and found that he was indeed in poor condition. After asking him, he chose a male chef who was very good at cooking and a wife who was very straightforward and efficient.

It is said that this woman was best at making pickles and pickled vegetables, and she also worked as a side dish in the kitchen.

This person is exactly the talent Xu Han needs right now. In the future, the mountain product shop will definitely sell various pickles, and this just solves the manpower problem of making pickles.

Although nowadays every household pickles a lot of seasonal pickles every year, some people's pickles are not tasty, and the taste of pickles is different for each person.

It’s obviously the same method, but some people’s pickled food just doesn’t taste good.

Or if the pickles are accidentally spoiled, there will be no pickles to eat at home in the second half of the year, especially in winter when there are not many vegetables to eat.

Without pickles, there are fewer dishes to go with rice.

Pickling pickles is also troublesome. If pickles are sold in shops in the future, some people may not choose to pickle them themselves.

The most important thing is that Xu Han had never seen anyone selling pickled vegetables in previous years. She pickled them at home and ate them herself, so she sold pickles in the shop. Maybe she could make a lot of money by selling pickles in the future.

Let’s try selling some this year. If business is good, we can pickle more next year.

As for the batch of pickles made at home, Xu Han was not worried about not being able to sell them. There were many mouths to feed at home, so there was nothing to be afraid of. She could make as much as she wanted.

Let’s get back to the topic of why I bought that lady.

More importantly, this woman and the male cook happened to be husband and wife. They had no children yet, and their host family suffered a misfortune not long before they got married.

The reason for buying this woman was because of the male chef. Otherwise, considering Xu Han's tight budget now, she really didn't want to buy another one.

The two of them spent a total of 32 taels of silver, which was indeed higher than the price for ordinary people.

However, since they were hiring a chef, Xu Han did not simply ask. Instead, she borrowed Guan Ya's kitchen and asked each of them to cook a specialty dish. After tasting the dishes, the dishes made by the male chef were most to Xu Han and Lu Chuan's liking.

After paying the money, the couple took them back to their house.

On the way, Xu Han asked them their names and ages. The man was Wei Yan and the woman was Guo Daya. They were both young, only in their early 20s.

Although they are young, they have good skills. They have been helping in the kitchen since they were young and have been cooking for quite some time. The two people chosen this time are also very much favored by Xu Han.

After returning to the house and arranging their accommodation and all other issues, Xu Han and Lu Chuan hurried to the mountain goods shop.

When they arrived at the shop, they saw Li Wen training the store staff.

Because opening a shop was the idea from the beginning, when Xu Han bought Li Wen and the others back, the first task he gave them was to teach them to read and do math.

Some older servants don't have any requirements, all they need to do is to know how to do some simple accounting, which is very basic and almost everyone can do it.

Although they are just farmers who make a living from the soil, they also have their own set of accounting rules. They cannot calculate accounts that are too complicated, but they can still calculate the accounts that are frequently used in daily life.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t be alive today, and would have been cheated out of nothing.

After Li Wen’s simple teaching, their accounting skills have become even better.

The most important thing is that the servants admire scholars very much, and their greatest wish in life is to let their children learn to read and write, as long as they don’t have to work like them, facing the loess and back to the sky.

So when Li Wen started calling them, each of them learned very seriously, even Zhu Qiang and others learned their own names.

Some younger students study particularly hard, and everyone cherishes the opportunity to learn to read.

In just a short period of time, the teaching effect was remarkable, and Xu Han was quite satisfied with the result.

He also instructed Li Wen, Juxiang and others to teach the people below to read whenever they had time. He did not ask them to learn very well, but just required them to recognize the most basic characters used in daily life.

As for writing, there were no big requirements. Xu Han didn't even buy them paper and pen. Writing was not particularly important to them and they didn't come into contact with it in daily life.

Even if you really need to write with a pen one day, just use charcoal pencil, which is easier to control.

Under the influence of Xu Han, Li Wen now always carries a charcoal pencil with him when he goes out. Whenever he encounters something that needs to be recorded, he writes it down temporarily in the palm-sized notebook he carries with him, and then copies it down when he returns.

Look, Li Wen is now holding his little notebook and teaching them how to remember the price of everything.

Seeing this, Xu Han smiled and asked, "How is it? Do you remember it?"

Li Wen wiped the non-existent sweat from his forehead and said, "It's OK, but there are a lot of things in the shop, and it's easy to get confused for a while."

Xu Han suddenly thought of the labels on items in the supermarket in her previous life, and said, "This is not difficult. You can just hang a price tag on each item, and write down the price per kilogram. This will not only be convenient for customers who come to buy things, but also for you.

You can also mark the price on the place where the goods are weighed. If you can’t remember it, just take a look at it when you weigh it again.

If you still can't recognize all the characters, you can just write the numbers in the order of installation. When you change the items, just change the prices.

Otherwise, you can just run over to where the items are stored and take a look. "