Chapter 28: Butter Hot Pot and Tamarind Juice
Guo Xiaohua saw that in the basket, besides the secret sauce her brother had mentioned, there were quite a few other things beside it.
But since the prince hadn't said anything, she didn't rummage through the basket herself. Instead, she held the basket up to his nose, looking curious, "Prince, what's in this basket?"
Guo Baiwen had originally planned to open a shop.
I almost forgot about these things.
First, he handed the pair of cotton slippers wrapped in lotus leaves to Xiaohua, saying, "The chair stick was for Grandma, this is for you."
"What is it? Why are you being so mysterious—"
Before he could finish speaking, Guo Baiwen, as if he had foreseen it, covered his ears.
Sure enough, the next moment, a scream of surprise nearly blew the roof off the two-story building.
Luckily it's still daytime; if it were nighttime, the neighbors would come knocking on our door looking for us.
Guo Xiaohua was completely unaware of how loud her scream was; her whole heart and eyes were glued to those pink cotton shoes.
"These shoes are so pretty..." she murmured to herself as she reached out to touch the fabric of the fully upholstered cotton slippers.
But she quickly realized that there was still dust on her hands from cleaning, and she was afraid of getting her new shoes dirty, so she silently withdrew her hands and just stared at them intently.
Seeing her like this, Grandma Guo sighed, "She's really gone mad."
She turned to look at Guo Baiwen again, "You're not going to tell Grandma again that these shoes didn't cost much, are you?"
Guo Baiwen chuckled twice, deliberately snuggling closer to his grandmother in a friendly manner. He was almost a head taller than her, so his actions had a somewhat ostrich-like, subservient feel to him. "Grandma, you and Xiaohua made me cotton-padded clothes and shoes before—"
"It's almost Chinese New Year, so I should prepare something for you."
Upon hearing this, even though Grandma Guo originally wanted to say something more to him, she could only remain silent.
She actually knew that Wenzai had always been a very well-behaved child.
Although he had previously contributed a considerable amount to household expenses for his wife, he probably still had some money left for his own use.
When children grow up and go out to work, they need to have some money on them.
After all, he earned the money himself, and Grandma Guo never said anything about it. She even felt that he had left her too little money.
In terms of his love of spending money, Wenzai is exactly the same as his father, Guo Dace.
However, Wenzai likes to use his own savings to secretly buy food and other necessities for her and Xiaohua, which is much better than Old Man Guo, who only knows how to gamble on chess.
At least the money was spent, and the things I bought were brought back.
It can be touched and seen.
She knew perfectly well what was going on, but her face still showed a hint of disgust as she silently pushed Guo Baiwen's head away, saying, "He's so heavy, he's making Grandma's shoulders hurt."
"Hehe," knowing that he had passed Grandma's test, Guo Baiwen took out the rest of the items.
Today I went out of town to visit the tenant farmers in Xintian.
With the land deed in hand, the two families who sold the land before must have already spoken to them.
Hearing is never as good as seeing it for yourself. After seeing Guo Baiwen, the families who were initially worried about whether the new host family would be easy to get along with all felt relieved.
In particular, after hearing that although the land had been transferred to his name, the tenant farmers and the annual rent payments remained the same as in previous years.
Several families even chipped in some of their own produce to give him.
Some brought two handfuls of winter amaranth, while others brought three or four yams they had dug up from who-knows-where.
Others might have a large plate of homegrown pea shoots, a small jar of homemade pickled bitter greens, and a small half-basket of strange brown fruits.
These look like mutated green beans.
After asking around with his basket, he learned that this thing was called tamarind.
You can eat them raw. Ripe tamarind tastes sweet and sour, while tender tamarind can be eaten with chili powder for a spicy and sour flavor, which is also delicious.
This was the first time Guo Baiwen had ever heard of this fruit.
I took it out in front of Grandma Guo, intending to introduce it to her.
To my surprise, Grandma Guo's eyes lit up when she saw the tamarind, even more so than when she received the chair stick he had given her earlier. "Oh dear, how come there's still half a basket of tamarind!"
She loves the sour taste of tamarind. She weighed the amount in the basket and said that after picking some out tonight, peeling and removing the seeds, she would boil it with water and add some brown sugar to make a delicious sweet and sour tamarind juice.
Now we have all the vegetables and drinks for our hot pot dinner.
The meatballs that were originally promised to be promoted when the shop opened were naturally meant to be made at home first to try them out.
As he stood at the entrance of the butcher shop with the money in his hand, he thought about how it was a rare occasion for his family to have a hot pot together.
Although beef is hard to buy, we should at least buy some lamb to try.
So I bought half a pound of mutton, along with half a pound of minced meat (three parts fat and seven parts lean) that had already been chopped, and another half a pound of offal that had already been processed by the butcher.
Although it has already been rinsed once, it still needs to be rinsed twice more after being brought home to completely remove the smell.
Therefore, offal is considered the cheapest type of meat at the butcher shop, yet it still costs ten coins per pound.
It's still two coins more expensive per pound than a big bone that hasn't been cleaned of meat scraps.
Together with a slab of fresh tofu and dried tofu I bought from the tofu shop across the street, this pile of stuff cost me almost ninety coins.
The cost wasn't low, although half of the 90 coins were for the half-pound of mutton I bought.
But when Guo Baiwen took the things home, he was still thinking about how to cut the dried tofu and vegetables to make it look like it would be a larger portion.
As for dinner that evening, needless to say.
He didn't even use much base sauce. He first added a lot of dried chilies that he had dried himself. He specially used lard to stir-fry all the dried chilies before adding only half of the usual single serving of hot pot base. He also added some of the two kinds of chili sauce that his grandmother made herself and that he had bought before.
The intense clash of spices in this pot was more effective than him talking himself hoarse.
Guo Xiaohua, who was already convinced that her brother would be able to make a fortune from this business, became even more convinced after the meal that her family would make a lot of money with this secret sauce.
Even Grandma Guo, who wasn't initially optimistic about the business, ate her dinner without even looking up.
After finally putting down her chopsticks, Grandma Guo, without even wiping the grease from her mouth, nodded emphatically to the other two people in the room, "This smell alone tells you it's going to sell well!"
Although she had never eaten anything particularly good, in previous years, whether she went to the market or smelled the aroma in the county town, no other place could compare to the fragrance of this soup base.
Wenzai had said before that this was a secret sauce, but she didn't believe him.
They suspected that someone had brought something along by chance, intending to swindle money from their grandson.
But after this meal, the taste, the sauce—this isn't a scam, it's practically a living saint!
With just a little bit of sauce, the whole kitchen is filled with its aroma, so fragrant and irresistible that even ordinary pots and pans taste amazing.
She couldn't even imagine how appealing the pot of sauce would taste if it were filled with more sauce once it opened for business.
"Open a shop! We'll sell this!"
What to sell in the store is now completely decided.
But the remaining issues revolve around how to decorate the storefront, how to price different ingredients, and which supplier to source the ingredients from each day.
Which ingredients are best to eat now, and which ingredients should be used to replace them when the season is over?
We need to start thinking carefully about the menu and the name of the snack shop we'll be opening later.
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Author's Note: A little celebration for my first chapter that didn't reach 3,000 words! [Sprinkling flowers]
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