Ever since Su Qingluan showed off her cooking skills and let her family discover that she had a "talent for cooking", Yang gradually became willing to let her help in the kitchen.

Although her knife skills could not be fully revealed at once, Su Qingluan still thought of many other less suspicious ways to improve the originally not very rich diet.

For example, you can grind dried mushrooms and other spices into powder and sprinkle them on dishes together with salt as seasoning to enhance the flavor;

For example, washing the wild fruits picked on the roadside and adding them to the aged vinegar and soy sauce will give both the vinegar and soy sauce a fruity aroma and a subtle sweet and sour taste, making the soy sauce and aged vinegar softer and richer in taste.

For example, it is recommended that when mixing vegetables, Yang abandon the original method of stirring in circles in one direction, and instead pick up and mix from bottom to top, so that the mixed vegetables are more crisp and delicious...

Su Qingluan had already mastered these little kitchen tricks, and they weren't particularly profound. It was just that in this era, these were uncommon—at least for Yang, this was the first time she had heard of them.

Of course, when Su Qingluan proposed these techniques, she didn't directly act like a "master chef". Instead, she acted like a primary school student of the God of Death. She played dumb, beat around the bush, and even deliberately provided a few failed ideas. Therefore, Yang was not too surprised. She only sighed, "Children have so many weird ideas."

Gradually, the Su family discovered that no matter how ordinary the food was, in Su Qingluan's hands, it could be transformed into something magical and delicious. So no matter what food they ate, they would ask her how to make it delicious.

As Su Qingluan's strength gradually recovered, she began to take her younger siblings to the back mountain to dig wild vegetables, feed chickens and ducks, and do some simple cleaning while her parents were working on the farm.

That day, she was cleaning the chicken coop when she vaguely heard Su Xueyan crying. She hurried to the front yard and found blood on the little girl's tender lips.

"How did you get hurt?" Su Qingluan was heartbroken and blew gently on the broken part of the little girl's lips: "It hurts, Feifei!"

Then he asked Su Xuanhe who was following beside him: "Weren't you playing together? Did she fall?"

Su Xuanhe stood beside the little girl and rolled his eyes, looking a bit disappointed. "It's because she's greedy and ate too much 'sour hooks'. Mother said that if she eats too much, her mouth will be hooked."

As he spoke, he flipped his wrist and a small handful of orange wild berries was placed in Su Qingluan's hand.

Su Qingluan picked up a fruit. She had never seen this kind of wild fruit before. She carefully bit into it and found it was sour, sweet and refreshing, tasting very much like the passion fruit and pineapple she had eaten in modern times.

However, this fruit is round and plump, and it doesn't have any sharp thorns or prickly hairs like a peach, so how could it scratch your mouth?

When Su Xuanhe heard his elder sister's question, he scratched his head and said, "I don't know either. It's just that if you eat a little of this fruit, it's fine. If you eat too much, your mouth will sting and hurt. If you eat more, it will bleed."

Pain? Bleeding?

Su Qingluan narrowed her eyes: Could it be... what she thought?

"How many fruits are there?" Su Qingluan looked down at the two little kids.

"They're all over the hill behind us throughout the summer and autumn. I picked these yesterday," said Su Xuanhe.

Su Qingluan rolled her eyes and looked at the sky. It was only noon, and it would take some time before Yang came back to feed her.

She bent down to wipe away the tears of her third sister, who was still shedding tears. She held one of them by the hand and said with a smile, "Sister will take you to find something delicious and have a snack tonight!"

When the little girl heard that there was something delicious to eat, she immediately forgot to cry and kept asking questions like "Where are we going?" and "What are we eating?"

It was the first time that Su Xuanhe had Su Qingluan holding his hand like this. He felt that his sister's palm was different from the rough touch of his parents'. It seemed so soft, yet also very warm.

The little boy muttered awkwardly, "I'm a man now, I can walk by myself!" He pulled his hand away, but his face turned red.

"Hehe, you little brat." Su Qingluan pulled the bun on Su Xuanhe's head, turned around to lock the wooden door of the yard, and went to the river with her younger brother and sister.

Su Qingluan walked slowly along the river and finally found a river channel where the water was fast but the river was narrow. She broke off a branch and probed under the riverbed - well, there was sand, gravel and silt, so it was easy.

"Snow Goose, Black Crane!" Su Qingluan found a branch of moderate thickness and held it in her hand. "Let's play a game. There are prizes for winning."

When Su Xueyan heard about playing games, she immediately smiled and clapped her hands: "Play games! Play games!"

Although Su Xuanhe didn't say anything, his eyes lit up and he looked over.

"See this branch in my hand?" She waved the stick in her hand. "Within the time I give you, you must bring back as many branches like this as possible—thicker ones are allowed, not thinner ones. If you can bring back more than thirty, you win."

As she spoke, Su Qingluan drew a circle on the open space by the river, then roughly divided it into eight equal parts. She inserted a thin branch vertically into the center of the circle. "Look, the shadow is here now." She pointed to the mark where the shadow was and said, "When the shadow moves here, the game is over - so don't run too far."

As she spoke, she defined a range of activities for the two little kids, all within the area she could see.

“Let’s get started!”

Following Su Qingluan's order, Su Xuanhe ran away happily with his sister.

"Slow down! Don't fall!" Su Qingluan shouted at the top of her lungs and began to weave ropes with the long weeds near the river bank.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!