Chapter 48 - 47: Oil and Salt Rice!

Chapter 48: Chapter 47: Oil and Salt Rice!

When she first hopped onto her bicycle for the ride back, the light rain began to fall in thin, misty threads again. Huai Yu felt the urge to let out a year’s worth of sighs all at once. She had to force herself to stay alert just to keep her frustration at bay.

But upon returning to her humble home, her mood settled down once more.

The few stalks of victory onions had broad leaves and were quickly washed clean in the basin. The wild garlic, however, was plentiful and a bit troublesome to deal with, so she set it aside for now. Below that lay the white mugwort. Its leaves grew in fluffy white clusters with a faint greenish hue near the base. It was cute and easy to clean; a quick swish in the basin to wash away the dirt was all it took. It looked like a massive bunch, but once placed into the stainless steel basin, it barely peeked over the rim.

Finally, at the very bottom of the basket, were the ground ears.

These things were wet and slippery, yet surprisingly fragile. When Huai Yu had gathered them, she accidentally scooped up a lot of dirt and broken leaves along with them. Now, dumped into the basin, even the slightest pressure would mash them into an unrecoverable mush. She had no choice but to give them a rough stir and toss them straight into the pot to boil.

The yellow-green and brownish ground ears floated in the water. As the steam rose and the water slowly came to a boil, their fragile, slippery texture gradually firmed up.

Staring at the pot, she couldn’t help but ponder her past once again. She knew how to build a house, how to cook, and how to identify wild vegetables. And looking at her notebook, her handwriting wasn’t half bad either.

"Wow! How do I know how to do everything?" she wondered. "Could I be highly educated? A professor? An expert? Or maybe I studied landscaping or botany? Surely it wasn’t an agricultural university? That would be impressive too!"

But no matter how hard she racked her brain, her past remained a fog. Huai Yu rested her chin on her hands, frowning in frustration, until the BUBBLE BUBBLE of the boiling water in the pot snapped her back to reality.

"Scoop them out!" she thought. "If I don’t scoop them out now, they’ll overcook."

In an instant, she tossed her unimportant past to the back of her mind. She hurriedly grabbed a small basket to strain and wash the ground ears, then jotted down another item to buy:

[Strainer basket]

The boiled ground ears were no longer so fragile, and their color had deepened significantly. Huai Yu sat on a blue brick with the basin, slowly picking through and washing them, but all she could focus on was how damp and freezing her butt felt...

Thinking about it, there were so many little odds and ends she needed to buy. If she had enough spare points, buying a small stool wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Just as she was pondering this, a sudden rush of warmth flowed downward. A terrible sensation, deeply rooted in her memory, made her spring to her feet. Standing there, Huai Yu froze for a moment before realization belatedly dawned on her.

"..."

Gloomily, she dug out the feminine hygiene products hidden at the very bottom of her storage bag and headed to the bathroom with a heavy sigh. No wonder she had been so easily depressed lately. Her period—which she had prepared for but completely forgotten about—had arrived.

Fortunately, aside from that, she didn’t feel any other discomfort. Still, Huai Yu adopted a cautious and conservative approach. When she returned, she didn’t dare sit on the icy blue brick anymore. Instead, she squatted there, mixing in some warm water as she slowly washed the ground ears.

As she washed, an even more terrifying question surfaced in her mind. She always felt that her mental age didn’t match her current youthful appearance, but how old was she really?

"Am I married?" she wondered. "Could I have already had children?"

She touched her stomach, her face turning pale green at the chaotic swarm of thoughts filling her head. She didn’t dare think too deeply about it.

Whether she thought about it or not, the ground ears were finally washed clean. Since nothing could be sun-dried on a rainy day, she simply set the pot back over the fire, spread the ground ears inside, and slowly roasted them dry.

Speaking of which, how did one build an earthen oven? Should she build one at the doorway? Otherwise, having only one pot was somewhat inconvenient.

Squatting on the ground was truly uncomfortable. After pacing around a few times, Huai Yu finally dragged the blue brick over, padded it with several layers of straw mats, and resumed processing the wild garlic. This stuff was sometimes called garlic and sometimes called onion. It was painfully thin, and the bulbs at the bottom were pitifully small.

Listening to the PATTER of the rain, she slowly prepared the vegetables. The two large, muddy, dusty clumps of glossy green wild garlic were gradually transformed into a clean, neat bundle. She left a small, dirt-covered cluster aside for tomorrow. As for the ones she had just cleaned...

Huai Yu took out her kitchen knife and chopped them all into small, fine pieces. She filled a bowl with them and set it aside. Noticing that the ground ears in the pot had been roasted dry to a hard, crispy state, she scooped them out and tossed the wild garlic in to roast next.

There were wild vegetables on the grounds of the Rose Mansion, but not many. After all, it was a planned, leveled plot of land, vastly different from an untouched, primal mountain forest. At the very least, she hadn’t seen a single patch of wild garlic here yet. If she didn’t want to hike up the mountain every time she wanted to eat it, this was the only way to preserve it.

The sweet, soft taste of the scalded dough flatbread seemed to linger on her tongue. Huai Yu stared at her harvest from noon and pondered, "What should I eat... for dinner?"

Plain dough drop soup with steamed white mugwort? Or maybe white mugwort steamed buns? Or scallion pancakes? Or perhaps she should use her purified rice, paired with scallions, a sprinkle of coarse salt, and diced pork cracklings, to steam a bowl of simple, unassuming lard and salt rice?

It was so hard to decide!

She was drooling, but she only had one stomach. She was trapped in a painful and difficult dilemma.

At six o’clock in the evening, the light rain outside stopped once again.

The surroundings were pitch black, and she could only faintly make out the layered silhouettes of the distant mountains. Huai Yu was already used to all this. By the dim light of the fire, she poured the roasted wild garlic out of the pot to cool, then began preparing tonight’s dinner. ℴ

After eating wheat flour for two consecutive meals, she decided to spread the love. Tonight, she was eating rice! Fragrant, steaming white rice!

If she had two eggs right now—whether to make scrambled eggs with ground ears, an egg pancake, or egg fried rice—Huai Yu could devour two bowls in a single breath! But the reality was that the dried ground ears could only be stored in a bag for future use, and she had no eggs.

She figured she should look for a book next time she visited the trading market. Otherwise, being cooped up in the house with nothing to do—to the point where she had to deliberately slow down her vegetable-washing just to kill time—was simply too boring. The days weren’t so bad; she could always find some chores to do. But at night, the firelight wasn’t bright enough. Aside from sleeping, there was nothing else she could do. And she no longer needed to sleep for over ten hours a day.

As she pondered how to pass the time, Huai Yu used her chopsticks to scoop a small, white dollop of lard into the pot. After three careful uses, the lard in the lunchbox had suffered a severe "flesh wound" at the corners. She sautéed the chopped wild garlic and diced pork cracklings in the lard until they became fragrant, sprinkled in some salt, and then scooped the mixture out into a bowl.

Next, she washed the pot and started cooking the rice.

Huai Yu executed this series of movements smoothly and seamlessly. Once the rice grains split open, she turned the heat down to let it simmer, then evenly drizzled the fragrant scallion oil and diced pork cracklings over the rice! She dug out a few stalks of victory onions, chopped them up, and sprinkled them evenly inside as well.

Steam rose from the bottom of the pot, and the firewood POPPED AND CRACKLED. A rich aroma washed over her face. Putting the lid back on the pot, Huai Yu was filled with anticipation once again.

Even though she had only added a few tiny bits of pork cracklings and hardly dared to use any oil—like a stingy landlord preparing a meal for his farmhand...

It smelled incredibly good!

The aroma of the rice! The scent of the sautéed fat, mingling with the unique allium fragrance of the wild garlic and victory onions...

For a moment, it felt like the entire treehouse wasn’t big enough to contain her eager anticipation.