Boiling the pot made Xiao Yunying sweat profusely. She wiped her brows casually with her sleeve and then sliced the washed eggplant and pork belly.
Eggplant tastes better when it's cooked with plenty of oil. I scooped a spoonful of lard from the jar into the pan and stir-fried some eggplant with meat slices using the lard.
I also shredded a carrot, added minced garlic, chopped cilantro, and appropriate amounts of salt, vinegar, sugar, chicken powder, and sesame oil. I mixed it all together and then plated it.
She had added cilantro to the dishes before, but when it was time to eat, she remembered that some people might not eat cilantro. The children accepted it quite well and ate with relish, so she just added it according to her own taste.
It took quite a while to bring the pot to a boil, and by the time the vegetables were cooked, the bones were almost done stewing. I added an appropriate amount of salt, placed a steamer rack on top, and heated up some steamed buns.
Once the steamed buns were heated through, Xiao Yunying ladled out some bone broth and tasted it.
She had never made such a big pot of soup before, and she hadn't put in enough salt. She added some more, stirred it, tasted it, and thought it was fine now.
The soup was first served in a large porcelain basin, and five bowls were filled with a large bone each, so that the children could wash their hands and eat it directly.
There wasn't much meat on the bones; the main thing to eat was the marrow inside. For a while, the main room was filled with the sound of people slurping up the marrow.
Xiao Yunying saw that Luo Li was getting a little impatient, his face turning red from holding his breath. He could only pry out half of the straw, which was as thick as the tip of a chopstick. She pretended to go to the kitchen and get a few more straws.
"Insert this and suck it in slowly, be careful not to burn yourself."
Luo Xin, holding a brightly colored straw, asked, "Mom, what's this?"
"This is a straw for drinking water. Insert this end into the bone and suck hard from this side, and the marrow will come out. Be careful, it'll burn you."
Luo Xin carefully took a sip: "It really came out, the big bone smells so good."
"Don't just gnaw on the bones, eat some vegetables too."
Luo Li, on the other hand, didn't care about anything else as long as there was food. With a big bone in front of him, he had no time to care what the straw was or where it came from.
There were no carrots here, and Xiao Yunying didn't know if they would like the taste of carrots. The children weren't picky eaters, and they ate the tomatoes and peppers they had eaten before quite well, which made her, the cook, very satisfied.
After gnawing on the bones, the children washed their hands with warm water before coming back to eat. I served them soup one by one before slowly eating myself.
She laughed out loud while eating. She had only been here for a few days, but she seemed to be quite good at taking on the role of a mother, always thinking about taking care of the child.
It seems that all women in the world have the same feeling of maternal love, whether they are married or have had children or not, it will come when it is meant to.
"Mother, what are you laughing at?"
Seeing the children looking at her with confusion, Xiao Yunying stopped smiling and said, "It's nothing. Eat your food, and Mom will tell you a story after you finish eating."
After finishing their meal and cleaning up, Luo Chen and the others were reluctant to go back to their rooms. They lingered and followed Xiao Yunying into the house to listen to her tell stories.
Even when it was getting late, they were unwilling to leave, especially Luo Li, who was no longer afraid of her and even wanted to stay and sleep like Xin'er. In the end, she was dragged away by her two older brothers.
Having climbed many mountain paths today, Xiao Yunying boiled a pot of water and took Luo Xin to soak their feet before going to sleep.
The next morning, Xiao Yunying was thinking about making breakfast, so she didn't sleep in and got up as soon as she opened her eyes.
After washing up, I went to the kitchen. One pot was boiling water, and the other was keeping the bone broth I hadn't finished last night warm.
The supermarket's deli section has small machines specifically for making noodles, dumpling wrappers, and wonton wrappers. The meat section also has machines that can grind meat, slice meat, and shred meat.
I cut a piece of pork belly with more lean meat than fat, washed it, and put it into the meat grinder. After studying it for a while, I realized that the buttons had labels, so it was easy to learn how to do it.
There were already prepared wonton wrappers at the noodle section; taking two stacks should be enough for them.
I had pork and chive wontons in bone broth for breakfast. It's getting a bit cold now, so having some hot soup in the morning helps to warm me up.
At the dinner table, Luo Chen was eating the thin-skinned, generously filled wontons when she suddenly thought of something: "Stepmother, are you still going up the mountain today?"
Xiao Yunying took a small sip of her soup: "Yes, is there anything I can help you with?"
She wanted to go up the mountain to pick up all the chestnuts, and also take the opportunity to bring out some more snow fungus.
“Ah Li said last night that he wanted to go to the river to catch fish, probably because it rained the day before yesterday and there were a lot of fish near the foot of the mountain in Xiaqu River yesterday.”
Luo Li looked up. He had mentioned last night that there were fish there, but he hadn't said he wanted to go. His stepmother had told him before not to go near the water, and he didn't want to get beaten.
"Do you want to eat fish?"
"Ali said he wanted to eat."
Luo Li: "I..." I don't want to eat it. Fish is fishy and has many bones, so it doesn't taste good.
Luo Yang gave him a look, and Luo Li buried her head in her bowl: "I want to eat fish, I really want to."
She doesn't know how to catch fish and doesn't know if she can catch one: "Do you know how to catch fish?"
Luo Li was delighted: "We'll know if we can catch them or not by trying. Yesterday afternoon, Shi Tou and Shi Zhu said they saw many people catching fish."
"Then I'll go take a look in a bit."
If all else fails, I can fish one out from the seafood section of the supermarket. The supermarket has electricity and the oxygen supply is not interrupted. I don't know if it's because it's refreshed daily, but none of the live animals in the tank have died.
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