Chapter 55: The Muscular Man Who Loves Sweets
No salt was added when cooking, and seasoning was only started when it was out of the pot.
Zhao Yeqing added salt to the crab porridge and sugar to the pumpkin porridge. He tasted the saltiness with a small spoon and only brought the pot to the table when he thought it was just right.
The pickled bracken and smoked wild boar meat that I fried earlier are still a little warm and go perfectly with the hot porridge.
The porridge was too hot right out of the pot, and it was a bit uncomfortable to eat in this weather, so Zhao Yeqing took a few ice cubes from the freezer and threw them in.
Stir until the ice cubes melt, turn on the electric fan, scoop up a spoonful of porridge with a large spoon, lift it high and then pour it down, repeat this process repeatedly to cool the hot porridge down.
Mu Xi washed his hands and came over, took the spoon and served porridge to both of them.
Zhao Yeqing took out the toon sauce he made in the spring from the kitchen, scooped out a small half bowl of it, and then covered it with a lid.
The crab porridge tastes delicious, first salty and then sweet. Eat a few spoonfuls without any accompaniment and feel the unique deliciousness of the stream crab melting between your lips and teeth. Then add the spicy toon sauce to create a different flavor.
The unique aroma of Chinese toon mixed with the sweetness of stream crab can be considered a simplified version of delicacies from land and sea.
After being pickled for a long time, the bracken becomes tough and crisp, and the slight sourness just neutralizes the overly strong smoky flavor of the wild boar meat. Adding chili peppers has a light spicy taste, which is very delicious with rice.
Zhao Yeqing drank two bowls of crab porridge and managed to control himself, leaving some room for something sweet.
Pumpkin porridge uses a little sugar, and most of the sweetness comes from the sweetness of the pumpkin itself. If left aside for a long time, the porridge will be almost cold when scooped onto a flat surface.
The slightly cool sweet porridge goes in your mouth, removing all the complex aromas that just lingered in your mouth, leaving only a hint of the fragrance of pumpkin.
Dinner ended with a bowl of sweet porridge.
Mu Xi cleared the dishes away, but Zhao Yeqing was so full that he didn't want to move anymore.
After Mu Xi washed the dishes, he took a piece of firewood from the kitchen and lifted the lid of the stainless steel basin in the corner.
In the basin is the beehive that I brought back earlier. I cover it to prevent wasps from hatching inside, and use a wooden stick to pry it open to prevent wasps from flying out and attacking and injuring me.
Fortunately, there were still bee pupae inside and no wasps had hatched.
Zhao Yeqing was rubbing her belly on the bench, feeling a little bored. She raised her voice and shouted towards the kitchen, "Mu Xi, what are you doing?"
Mu Xi knew this person's temper very well, so he brought out the stainless steel basin and placed it on the table in front of her, "It won't be boring if you peel this."
The honeycomb is made up of hexagons and covered with a white film. Gently tear it open to reveal white and tender bee pupae.
This job is very suitable for her. She is the type of person who always has her hands free. She used to stay at home watching TV series. After a winter, her house would have five or six extra scarves, three or four pairs of slippers, and one or two sweaters.
Zhao Yeqing first tore open the film on the beehive one by one, then turned the beehive upside down and watched the bee pupae inside fall out. If they didn't fall out, she tapped the back of the beehive a few times with her hands. She was careful not to tap too hard, otherwise the residue of the beehive would fall on the moist bee pupae and get stuck, and she would have to tap them off one by one with her hands.
There are also some bee pupae that refuse to come down from the hive, so you have to pull them out of the hive with your hands.
The bee pupa was very delicate, and she was very careful when pulling it. It was almost as soft as tofu.
There are roughly three levels of bee pupae. The first level is a white and plump larvae that is round. The second level has almost grown into the shape of a bee, but is still white and relatively slender.
The final third level is almost becoming an adult bee, with wings and internal organs grown, and body parts turning a little black and no longer so soft. This kind of bee needs to be fried until crispy to be delicious.
Level 1 and 2 can be eaten in any way, they are slightly sweet, and my grandma likes to use them to make soup.
Zhao Yeqing personally prefers the second grade, which is more tender than the third grade but does not taste as worm-like as the first grade.
Three large plates of honeycombs were poured out to get a small basin of bee pupae. Zhao Yeqing sorted them out and put them in the freezer so that they can be preserved for a long time without deteriorating the taste.
Mu Xi was making a table in the yard. In order to facilitate transportation, all the wood had been turned into boards and strips in the forest. Now he was doing the splicing work. He hardly used any nails, and all of them were mortise and tenon structures.
Zhao Yeqing saw that the load-bearing columns she needed had been arranged and placed aside. There were grooves on the top of the columns and the bottoms were sharpened for easy insertion into the soil. For areas that were not large enough to make grooves, two small wooden strips were used to nail V-shaped supports.
Now the sun was almost setting, and Zhao Yeqing went to water the vegetable garden again.
Seeing that Mu Xi still had some final steps to complete, she returned to the kitchen, cleaned the pumpkin seeds, and placed them on a winnowing basket next to the dried peaches to dry in the sun. When the other pumpkins in the vegetable garden were ripe and there were more pumpkin seeds, she would fry them together. It would be a small snack.
Mu Xi assembled the table, moved it to the living room and made sure the legs were level and not tilted before moving it into the kitchen.
Zhao Yeqing couldn't wait to put the chopping board, knife rack and vegetable washing basket on the table. The cooking table connected to the cupboard was too narrow, and with so many things piled on it, there was almost no space left for a bowl.
Mu Xi lit the stove again.
"What else are you going to cook?"
"Boil the beeswax. The boiled beeswax can be used to lure bees later."
Zhao Yeqing felt impressed and walked to the kitchen door to watch him do it.
There's no way, the kitchen is too hot with the fire on.
Pour water into the pot and heat it up. Mu Xi pours all the beeswax with impurities left after squeezing out the honeycomb into the pot, covers it with a lid and cooks it.
Soon the beeswax melted in the water, and the pot of water turned black and yellow.
Increase the heat and continue cooking until a lot of water evaporates. Turn off the heat and let it sit for a while. At this time, a thick layer of beeswax will float on the surface, and all the impurities will settle underneath.
Putting the liquid beeswax into a large bowl, Zhao Yeqing took two popsicles from the freezer and handed one to Mu Xi, but he refused.
He just looked at her with a complicated look.
He didn't quite understand why the person who was touching his stomach and saying he was about to die of fullness an hour ago could start eating again now.
After Zhao Yeqing finished eating the popsicle, he didn't forget the pot of peach juice.
Mu Xi didn't refuse. Zhao Yeqing found that this person seemed to prefer sweets.
I noticed this last time when we were eating candied sweet potatoes. He ate a lot of them. I didn’t think it was strange at the time because his body looked normal when he wasn’t taking off his clothes.
After having the good fortune of witnessing it today, I felt that the contrast was truly too great. The way Zhao Yeqing looked at Mu Xi now was even more complicated than the way he looked at her just now.
Mu Xi raised his eyebrows slightly, and the corners of his mouth curled up into a frivolous smile, "Do you think your brother is handsome?"
Zhao Yeqing concluded that Mu Xi is now a shameless, muscular man who loves sweets.
There was a huge disparity in their fighting power. Zhao Yeqing was still afraid of being strangled in the back of the neck in the afternoon, so he smiled perfunctorily, "Yeah, yeah, it looks good."
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