It's not that staying here is bad.

She regretted that she had worked tirelessly all year round, hoping to one day live a carefree life, but little did she know that life is full of disappointments.

If she had known she would time travel, why would she have bothered striving in the first place...?

Hindsight is always 20/20...

well!

However, she felt it was not bad here because she was loved by her mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, brothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

Tired, but happy.

...

Wang Yitong and Yingbao went to the kitchen together. Wang Yitong first boiled a pot of water, while Yingbao took out a lot of shrimp from her space. She estimated that there were about seven or eight pounds of shrimp. Yingbao first asked her mother, Wang Yitong, to clean the shrimp, remove the shells and heads, and keep the heads for later use.

It took Yingbao and her daughter Wang Yitong a long time to finish the whole thing.

Then Yingbao asked her mother, Wang Yitong, to devein the prepared shrimp by cutting along their backs, and then to use the back of a cleaver to smash the shrimp into a pulpy mess, the kind of "push-down mud that can't be plastered on a wall".

Why use the back of the knife to strike instead of cutting or chopping with the sharp edge of the blade?

It's because pounding with the back of a knife doesn't cut the shrimp's fibers, thus preserving its original flavor.

The most important point is that pounding the shrimp balls with the back of a knife ensures they have a more bouncy and silky texture.

Yingbao added an appropriate amount of salt to the shrimp that her mother, Wang Yitong, had pounded. Then, she took another cleaver and used the back of the knife to pound the shrimp paste again, allowing the salt to be better incorporated.

After finishing, Yingbao took out some pork from her space and asked her mother to chop it into pieces the size of rice grains. Then she took out six or seven eggs from the kitchen, cracked them, separated the egg whites, and put them in the same bowl with the seasoned shrimp paste, mixing them together well.

Next, she took out an appropriate amount of cornstarch, put it in and stirred it evenly. After that, she added the pork that her mother, Wang Yitong, had chopped and stirred it evenly as well.

And so, they stirred it back and forth, stirring it again every time a new seasoning or ingredient was added.

Finally, just like yesterday, squeeze the shrimp meat into shrimp balls by placing them between your thumb and forefinger. Once they are done, put them in a pot to cook until done, then take them out and let them cool.

While the shrimp balls were cooling, Wang Yitong took a small amount to make shrimp porridge for the mother and daughter's breakfast or lunch.

Yingbao picked up the shrimp heads she had saved and started fiddling with them, preparing to boil them into shrimp oil, because she wanted to drink shrimp porridge.

You should know that by boiling down the shrimp heads, you can extract the shrimp roe, which eventually forms a bowl of reddish-brown shrimp oil. Every time you make shrimp porridge, just a little bit is enough to make the porridge vibrant and fragrant, so delicious that it will make you want to swallow your tongue.

My mouth is watering just thinking about it...

Yingbao first removes the stomach from the shrimp's head to ensure that the shrimp oil produced is not mixed with undigested food from the shrimp's stomach.

Yingbao thought to herself with a self-satisfied air that she had done a pretty good job and made it very clean.

After praising herself, Yingbao poured a little oil into the pot. Once the oil was hot, she put the prepared shrimp heads into the pot and stir-fried them. Then she added the chopped scallions, ginger, and garlic.

During the stir-frying process, Yingbao kept pressing the shrimp heads with a spatula, because only in this way could the shrimp roe and shrimp oil in the shrimp heads be extracted.

Then she poured in a small amount of boiling water again and stirred it continuously.