After coming out of the gymnasium, it was only eleven o'clock.
On the road, pedestrians hurried along.
Sunshine shone brightly through the tree tops directly onto the ground, dappling the shadows.
Lvshan City was an old town shaped like a hillside. Big trees were planted densely along both sides of the roads, which rose and fell.
The flattest area was Binjiang Road along the river.
Xiao Qi felt completely empty as soon as she went out, hungry enough to eat an entire pig's leg.
She had originally wanted to go straight to the fast food shop at the gymnasium entrance to eat something quick, but the billowing smell of oil smoke made her unable to go in.
If she ate stir fry like yesterday again, Xiao Qi still felt it wasn't worth it - to eat nearly 100 RMB alone per meal was too extravagant, and it wasn't especially delicious either.
She finally decided to return to her aunt's dormitory.
She was too tired from her morning workout, and also needed an afternoon nap.
On the way, she thought about what to eat when she got back. She was very hungry already and wished she could eat immediately. She couldn't make anything too complicated.
Passing by a deli, the aroma smelled quite nice to Xiao Qi with no rancid oil smell. She went in and bought two jin of braised pig's trotters, then at the vegetable seller's cart in front of the hospital entrance, she selected a handful of water spinach, bought some fresh shiitake mushrooms, and a block of tofu.
Xiao Qi paid with her mobile phone. The water spinach cost 6 RMB per handful, the mushrooms 1.8 RMB, and the tofu 1.5 RMB, totaling just 9 RMB 30 cents. Xiao Qi didn't bargain, but the owner saw that she was a young girl and voluntarily waived 30 cents, making it just 9 RMB total.
The braised pig trotters cost 47 RMB.
Returning to her aunt’s dormitory, Xiao Qi first called her aunt to say she had come back to cook. Her aunt was busy and just made an acknowledging sound before hanging up.
Xiao Qi used her learning card to gain cooking skills, but it seemed the chef’s brain imprint was a foreign chef. There appeared to be many impressions of baking bread but nothing else. She could only make dishes she had eaten herself or seen her mother make before.
She felt that even after learning this skill, she still needed practice. It was like singing – she could only sing songs she had heard before, not conjure something out of nothing. Cooking was the same.
First she rinsed rice to cook it.
Rice from her family’s own fields was still very fragrant. The cooked rice was sticky and glutinous. With the autumn harvest approaching soon, Xiao Qi thought of the new crop rice that would come out and became even hungrier.
After the rice was steaming, Xiao Qi went to wash the vegetables. The water spinach needed to be snapped into sections – the thick stems removed so that each section contained one leaf and a bit of tender stem. Cooked this way with garlic sauce, it was delicious - the smooth, slippery leaves and the sweet, crisp stems. That was all that was needed for the water spinach, without any other ingredients.
She planned to use the mushrooms and tofu to make soup. These were all dishes she had eaten before.
She rinsed the mushrooms, sliced them, then squeezed out the water. The tofu was soaked in cool water.
Xiao Qi decided to make the soup first since the water spinach would cook quickly.
Cooking had to be done in the yard because the tunnel was too narrow for the smell and smoke to escape.
Xiao Qi first dry-fried the mushrooms briefly in the wok until their fragrance emerged, then added two large bowls of water.
Once the water started boiling, she fished out the tofu from the cool water. Gripping it in her hand, she directly cut it into cubes and added it to the pot. After the water boiled again, she used a little sweet potato starch to thicken it, then added salt, white pepper, MSG, and brought it off the heat when done. A bowl of thick, aromatic mushroom and tofu soup emerged, sprinkled finally with finely chopped green onion.
Next was washing the wok and heating oil. She threw the minced garlic in to sauté its fragrance, then added the snapped water spinach, quickly stirring to cook it all in one large batch until there was just a little left sticking to the bottom when the leaves had all turned dark green. She seasoned it and brought it off the heat.
With the dishes cooked, Xiao Qi also briefly reheated the braised pig trotters, then called her aunt in to eat.
Two vegetable dishes, one soup, and one meat dish – the large serving of braised trotter, green water spinach, thickened mushroom tofu soup all looked quite appetizing.
“Xiao Qi, your cooking is better than your aunt’s!” Su Simei had not expected her niece’s cooking to be unexpectedly good. Just the aroma already seemed wonderful.
Xiao Qi only smiled as she dished out rice.
Continuing to eat, as the rice entered her mouth, Xiao Qi felt she had added slightly too much water. Their homegrown rice was more broken grains, and too much water made it overly soft, plus this rice cooker didn’t really bring out fragrance either, so the rice had lost some flavor but was still quite sticky and glutinous.
After another spoonful of soup, she felt her soup was a little too thick from the starch, with visible particles still remaining. The white pepper was off – maybe it had been sitting for too long already.
The water spinach was undercooked, stir fried too long.
The braise sauce flavor of the trotters was pretty good, but the meat itself seemed not to have absorbed it well, with some fishiness remaining...
Xiao Qi had felt she cooked everything very nicely, and had not expected there to still be so many flaws. Watching her aunt wolfing it down, eating the soup bowl after bowl as if a pig eating feed – no, that was unfair to pigs, whose taste and flavor detection abilities are actually more sensitive and complex than humans’.
With such a simple meal, she had unexpectedly noticed this many problems.
Her aunt kept heartily praising as she ate with big bites.
“Delicious! Your mushroom soup is stewed like my old mother’s, with that kind of flavor. I’ve tried copying her many times but can’t cook it the same way.”
Su Xiaoqi: ...
“The water spinach is so tender and fresh too, not the least bit overcooked.”
Her aunt had left only a small portion of the dishes, basically upending the rest of the bowls into her mouth, eating with quite the uncivilized gusto.
Xiao Qi ate with decent speed as well. She had deliberately made extra rice to fill one large serving bowl that she and her aunt both finished entirely, with only a few pig trotter pieces left in the end.
Her aunt automatically took initiative to wash dishes while Xiao Qi tidied things up. After the meal, she already felt overwhelmingly drowsy. She had thought one shouldn’t sleep right after eating, but couldn’t resist the fatigue, immediately falling asleep as soon as she lay down on the bed.
Su Simei came in and found her niece already breathing deeply with limbs sprawled everywhere like a piglet, having kicked off her covers. Simei pulled the covers back over her, quietly closing the door as she left again.
The nurses and doctors napped during lunch break, leaving a more relaxed atmosphere on the wards. Su Simei liked to go up and chat during this time. If any patients temporarily under her care were up there, she would often just grab an empty bed to catch a nap there too, more relaxing than downstairs.
Patients also quite enjoyed joking and chatting with the bubbly, chubby caretaker. After all, stuck in the hospital daily, it wasn’t constructive to just cry and mope all day.
Su Simei had a very cheerful personality, always smiling radiantly. Her big, round face was quite charming. It was simply too bad she was too overweight, otherwise there would surely be hordes of old hospitalized patients trying to introduce her to potential partners.
“Xiao Su finished eating so quickly. Did you eat takeout again today?” an old lady asked languidly, one leg propped up on the bundled sling hanging above her bed.
“Takeout isn’t tasty. Too oily,” Simei shook her head. “My niece Xiao Qi cooked. After she finished cooking, she called me to eat. Doesn’t look it since she’s still a student, but she’s actually an amazing cook already, much better than me.”
Hearing her brag about her niece piqued the others’ curiosity. A caretaker having a niece in middle school was rather interesting after all.
Everyone immediately started chattering noisily, some lamenting their nearly thirty-year-old daughters still couldn’t even make sticky rice, though their expressions were quite proud about having spoiled their girls this way. Others expressed doubt – young girls these days still knew how to cook?
With cacophonous heated discussion in one patient room right next to Liu Anquan’s, his ward also received new patients. His old mother was now familiar with the hospital and no longer constantly dabbing tears. After eating and washing dishes, she also would amble over for some neighborly gossip.
Voices carrying noisily, intermittent laughter, Liu Anquan lying stiffly in bed still unable to get up could only prop himself up to peer out the window. The caretaker’s niece who could cook – he had seen her before, slicing ingredients quite adeptly.
Fumbling for his mobile phone, inside his Stone Savings app, the 15,000 RMB first-place donation... He didn’t recognize the name, just seven characters. He left a message of thanks but received no reply.
He strenuously flipped himself over to face the window and gaze at the trees outside, unknown blossoms releasing a faint sweet fragrance.
Under her cocoon of blankets, Xiao Qi turned over again, still deep in slumber.
