Seeing the other party's speechless look, Su Qingluan couldn't help but chuckle: "Aren't these snacks made to be eaten? Do they have to be offered as a sacrifice?"
Liu Yunniang looked at the lotus cake and exclaimed, "Isn't this like the offerings made to Bodhisattvas and immortals?"
Having said that, when she saw Su Qingluan devouring the flower-like snacks in front of her without any courtesy or regret, her original heartache seemed to be relieved a lot.
So Liu Yunniang put the lotus pastry in her hand into her mouth and carefully took a bite.
"Crack, crack..." As the teeth gently touched the petals, the crispy and thin petals fried in oil shattered layer by layer, making a series of subtle and crisp sounds in Liu Yunniang's mouth.
Then the crispy crust mixed with the aroma of oil and a light sweetness scattered in Liu Yunniang's mouth, like a falling sweet snow.
"So crispy!" Liu Yunniang's eyes lit up, not even bothering to wipe the crumbs from her mouth. "And it seems to have a hint of sweetness—I thought it just had a strong oily taste."
Then she leaned in closer and looked at the pistil: "What is this? Coconut flakes?"
Su Qingluan nodded: "It is indeed coconut flakes, but with a little bit of other things added in it, it tastes pretty good." As she spoke, she slowly ate the remaining half of the lotus pastry, then picked up the hot tea in front of her.
Well, there is nothing wrong with this lotus pastry except that it tastes a bit dry. If it weren’t for the cup of tea that Liu Yunniang poured for her, it would probably be a bit dry in her throat.
It is impossible to tell what kind of tea this is - the tea leaves are all broken. In the words of my previous life, this is called "high-broken". It is probably the most ordinary green tea. You can taste the tea fragrance, but it is a bit bitter.
However, Su Qingluan felt that this tea could just relieve the greasiness of the lotus pastry and also help to relieve the throat-burning snacks, killing two birds with one stone.
While she was sipping her tea, Liu Yunniang had already reached the pistil. She opened her eyes wide in surprise, "This doesn't just taste like coconut... jasmine?"
"Yeah," Su Qingluan nodded, "I added a little jasmine tea powder in it. Does it taste good?"
"Delicious! So delicious!" Liu Yunniang couldn't help but take another bite of the pistil.
The sweet coconut flakes would be a bit greasy if you were to eat the whole thing. But after adding a little bit of jasmine tea powder, the fragrance of jasmine and the slight bitterness of the tea leaves instantly neutralize the sweetness of the coconut flakes.
However, Liu Yunniang herself loves sweets and didn't find the coconut flakes difficult to swallow. She simply said, "This dessert has a light sweetness and the scent of jasmine. Not only me, but even my father, who never eats sweet desserts, could eat two!"
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "I'm glad you like it. In this way, the resentment of making you work overtime before should be gone, right?"
Liu Yunniang snorted, "I'm grateful for what I've done to you. What else can I say?"
After coming out of the Liu family, Su Qingluan took a deep breath of the cold air of late autumn - although it was cold, it was clean, as if it could cleanse her soul from the inside out.
It was a rare opportunity to break away from the busy pace, and Su Qingluan finally had the mood to take a slow walk back.
On the way home, she happened to see a vendor slaughtering a live pig. Su Qingluan thought that the salted pork at home was running low, so she planned to buy another piece.
People were lining up to buy pork. When Su Qingluan got there, the line was already quite long. After all, it wasn't always possible to get a live pig slaughtered like this. Furthermore, with winter just around the corner, every household was preparing to store vegetables for the winter, so there would be even more people waiting to buy pork.
In the team, Su Qingluan also found many people from Huaxi Village. These people recognized Su Qingluan at once. Wu Dani even lined up at the front, and she was the sixth one.
Seeing Su Qingluan, she pulled her over without saying a word: "Line up here with me! Otherwise, there will be no good meat left behind!"
Someone behind who didn't know Su Qingluan was unhappy: "Hey, why did you let this little girl cut in line?"
It was the first time in Su Qingluan's two lives that someone had cut in line so blatantly. She felt her ears burning, so she whispered, "Sister Wu, I'd better queue at the back..."
"You're right here!" Wu Dani shouted, freezing Su Qingluan in her tracks. "Why are you cutting in line? Even if she's at the back, I'll buy her portion too. It doesn't matter if she's in front or behind, right? This is my relative. What's wrong with me buying her a piece of pork?"
The man was still not convinced and kept grumbling in the back, but the people behind him urged him, "Stop arguing, or the people in front who are buying pork will have already lined up!" When a few people looked, they saw that there were only three people left in the front, and there was a large space in front of Wu Dani.
Wu Dani was also annoyed by the person behind her and lost her temper. She waved her hand and said, "You go first, you go first. I'll let you queue in front of me, okay?"
When the man saw that he was able to move ahead of the others, he finally stopped muttering and became quiet. Su Qingluan's awkward feeling of being roasted on the fire finally disappeared.
"Isn't it just one more person?" Wu Dani said nonchalantly, "Is it really necessary to be so petty?"
As the beneficiary of "cutting in line", Su Qingluan decided to keep silent: in this situation, even if she disagreed with the act of cutting in line, she couldn't say it herself, otherwise wouldn't it be like taking advantage of others?
Unable to say more about the "cutting in line" incident, Su Qingluan looked at the increasingly long line behind her and wondered, "There seem to be an unusually large number of people queuing up to buy pork today?"
"Yes, there are a lot of them, and many of them are from our village." Wu Erni said, pushing Su Qingluan, "Here, it's your turn next!"
Su Qingluan quickly said thank you, then stepped forward and said, "I want a piece of pork belly with three fingers of fat, and a piece of lard!" As she spoke, she gestured to the size of the meat pieces.
The butcher said without raising his head or opening his eyes: "The price of lard will be five cents more per pound." Then he cut the pork deftly with an ox-ear knife.
Su Qingluan happily gave the money, and then she heard Wu Dani calling her: "Shopkeeper Su, do you want to go back to the village directly?"
"Maybe I'll buy some vegetables and then go back."
"Then wait for me, we're on the way." Wu Dani said, turning around to weigh the meat.
So, Su Qingluan and Wu Dani walked together on the road to Huihuaxi Village with their bags.
Su Qingluan looked at the stalls on both sides and then looked at Wu Dani: "It's not my illusion, I really feel that many people in our village are buying things in the town - it seems that there weren't so many before!"
"It's true there aren't that many," Wu Dani looked at Su Qingluan meaningfully. "Everyone is so hungry that they can't even eat the next meal. They just want to eat tree bark. If they have time, they go fishing in the river or picking fruit in the mountains. They don't have the time to go to the town or the market."
As for buying food and drinks in the town, that was even more impossible because I had no spare money.
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