While Wang Wenfeng was saving lives in Mincheng, Zhan Chunlan was not wasting her time in Haicheng either. The food factory received a new task: to process three tons of pineapples.

Due to a bumper pineapple harvest in the southern region, the raw material supply for canned pineapples exceeded the annual production plan, resulting in a backlog of pineapples that did not meet appearance standards.

To avoid waste, the higher authorities, treating it as a political task, instructed the subordinate Haicheng Food Factory to "internally process" the excess pineapples, requiring them to be transformed into new products to "make the best use of resources."

After the leaders took on this task, they held a special meeting to discuss how to maximize the value of these three tons of pineapples.

The production manager and experienced workers on the candy production line believe that since there were no pineapple-related products before, the simplest way is to make fruit jam directly. This is convenient to preserve, the production method is simple, and the factory has production experience, so there is no need for new research and development.

However, the factory leaders felt that this approach was too simplistic and crude, somewhat disregarding the special instructions from their superiors, and even wasting precious sugar quotas. With a wave of their hand, they decided to produce pineapple-flavored fruit candy, a new flavor that had never been produced before.

Moreover, a new technician joined the technical department this year. She has just independently developed strawberry-flavored fruit candy. Now that there are so many fresh pineapples for her to study, she should be able to develop pineapple-flavored fruit candy even faster.

Finally, the task was handed over to the technical department.

Then, they encountered a problem right from the start: pineapples contain bromic acid, which the technicians hydrolyzed during the sugar boiling process, producing a strong "stinky feet smell," making it impossible to proceed to the next step.

After a day of work with no progress, the other technicians remained in the lab to discuss things seriously, but Zhan Chunlan had already run back to the dormitory to walk Zhan Xiaoman.

Whenever she gets stuck on a problem, she doesn't like to dwell on it. She always believes that as long as she doesn't take the problem seriously, it will come to her with a solution on its own.

After walking the dog, Zhan Chunlan cooked a pot of noodles. She first picked out a small bowl of plain noodles for Xiaoman, while filling her own bowl with condiments—a typical way of eating noodles in Jiangcheng.

As a result, Zhan Xiaoman finished her own food in a few bites and then wandered over to Zhan Chunlan, blinking her bright, sparkling eyes as if to say, "Are you sure you don't want me to eat some more? Xiaoman isn't full yet."

Zhan Chunlan couldn't resist and reached out to pat its head twice: "No, Mommy ate too much salt. Puppies can't eat salt."

Zhan Xiaoman couldn't understand, so she tilted her head and twitched her ears, which was extremely cute.

Zhan Chunlan finished the rest of the noodles in a few bites; she knew she wouldn't be able to keep eating any more.

While she was washing the dishes, Xiaoman still squatted down beside her feet to keep her company. There was no other way; the dormitory was only so big, and there was nowhere else to go.

Zhan Chunlan, washing her hands, bent down to look at Xiaoman, her right hand's five fingers gathered together, thumb pressing down on four fingers, then with a forceful "hahahaha."

The water on my hand splashed all over Zhan Xiaoman's face. It was startled at first, but when it saw its mother smile, it grinned, stuck out its tongue, and tilted its head, looking extremely cute.

"Xiaoman is such a good girl. She said she couldn't eat it and she didn't. Next time, Mom will cook more. We don't eat salt, it's bad for us."

Zhan Chunlan held Zhan Xiaoman in her arms and explained in a coquettish voice.

Suddenly, she seemed to have thought of something.

"Salt?"

She recalled the pineapples she had eaten in her past life, all soaked in salt water, and then remembered reading in a book that bromic acid would be deactivated by salt and heat. Inspiration struck her like a flash of lightning.

Zhan Chunlan picked up Zhan Xiaoman and kissed its little black nose: "See, Mom is so smart. I knew the answer would come to me on its own."

"Of course, we still need to pay special attention to our Zhan Xiaoman. If it weren't for you, Mom wouldn't have remembered her for a while."

The first thing she did when she arrived at the lab the next day was to cut a pineapple.

Seeing her confident demeanor, everyone was curious: "Chunlan, have you found a solution?"

Zhan Chunlan smiled and said that there was no point in saying more before the results were in: "Let's try it first and see if it works."

Under the skeptical gazes of everyone, the female protagonist poured the pineapple chunks into a specially prepared 40°C light salt solution, precisely timed it, and after 20 minutes, opened the lid and carefully smelled it: "It seems that the smell is gone."

He scooped up a little bit with a spoon and took a bite: "Hmm, the taste hasn't changed much. The sweet and sour taste of pineapple is still there, but there's a lot of fiber compared to the sugar."

After hearing her explanation, everyone stepped forward to check: "Indeed, just soaking it in salt water solved the odor. Young people really do have sharp minds."

Hearing everyone's praise, Zhan Chunlan felt a little embarrassed, her face slightly flushed: "No, it's just that I was lucky to think of it first. Actually, everyone eats pineapple after soaking it in salt water. We were thinking of making candy at first and forgot about this. If you give everyone time, everyone will be able to think of it."

Zhan Chunlan's words made everyone around her feel much better.

She's only been here a few months, yet she independently developed strawberry candy, earned recognition from the leadership, and is now the first to solve the pineapple smell problem. It really makes them look like they're just sitting around doing nothing.

They were pretty good before she arrived.

The super sweet milk candy, chocolate-flavored milk candy, and coffee-flavored milk candy that foreign companies ordered last year were all developed by them.

All I can say is that young people are indeed quick-witted and think faster than them.

Ignoring their stares, Zhan Chunlan continued her meeting, adding pineapple pulp to 70°C and immediately pouring it into the machine. Through high-speed rotation, the cloudy pineapple pulp was separated into clear "golden juice" and sedimented "coarse fiber residue".

The purpose of this step is to remove the coarse fiber from the pineapple jam.

At this point, everyone in the lab thought the research was about to succeed, and that only a few more steps were needed to produce pineapple-flavored fruit candy.

They were about to step forward to help. Once the flavor of all the fruit candies was determined, the subsequent processes were the same, and they knew them by heart.

But then Zhan Chunlan suddenly used two sugar-boiling pots at the same time: one to boil syrup with an extremely high concentration of 75%, and the other seemed to be purifying pineapple syrup.

People began to murmur, "What is she doing? Doesn't she know what to do next?"

"How could that be? She even developed strawberry-flavored fruit candy before, how could she not know?"

"So what is she doing now?"

"I don't know, maybe that's how pineapple-flavored candy is made?"

Listening to the discussions around her, Zhan Chunlan took advantage of the waiting time to tell everyone: "This time, I don't plan to make ordinary fruit candies. We have so many pineapples this time, enough to support us to make candies with real fruit instead of using artificial flavorings. So I want to make filled candies with a transparent, golden-yellow crispy outer shell and a sweet and sour fruit jam inside. With one bite, you can taste the crisp sweetness of the hard candy and the fruity aroma of the pineapple."

Everyone remained silent; perhaps this is the attitude of young people.

When the factory leaders disagreed with producing pineapple jam and insisted on producing pineapple fruit candy instead, they were somewhat unhappy. After all, producing jam only required them to determine the recipe, while turning jam into candy required much more work.

But Zhan Chunlan not only solved the problems she had encountered before, but now she is going to upgrade her efforts and develop fruit-filled candies.

Is it really because they're getting old that they've lost the motivation to take on challenges?