In winter, besides processing food at home, Wen Qian would also make some snacks, mainly from recipes she enriched herself on the road.
She would follow the cookbooks to prepare delicious dishes using the new ingredients she had acquired.
For instance, with the lingonberries, a kind of small berry she had only had in the form of cookies before.
These fresh berries were ones she had picked along with blueberries after arriving here.
They were a bit sour, but after washing and boiling them with sugar, they could be made into delicious jam.
Meanwhile, she had not forgotten to try making those small cookies herself, experimenting with different flour and sugar ratios a couple of times.
After drying these berries into dried fruit, she could add them to make the kind of cookies she had eaten before.
Wen Qian spent some time making dried fruit and small cookies, keeping part of them at home and storing most of them in her space.
Since she did not have an oven or a large homemade kiln, Wen Qian could only bake in the small oven that came with the hearth.
Thus, the process was relatively slow, but it did not matter.
After all, she spent little time outdoors and mostly stayed at home, eventually baking quite a few cookies.
She wrapped them neatly in wax paper and put them in the old cookie tins and plastic food containers.
For some other fruits, after checking, Wen Qian would try to eat them fresh if possible.
If they were not suitable for eating fresh, then she would make them into jam or candied fruit.
As the New Year approached, she also fried some small fish, sweet potato balls, fish balls, and meat balls for herself.
In winter, without the space, these things could actually be kept for a long time.
By making an ice box outside with a few large ice blocks, various foods could be stored inside.
But Wen Qian did not bother with that, storing them in her space instead, hanging what she wanted to eat on the beams.
She also stir-fried a small amount of peanuts and seeds, and fried potato chips from potatoes.
Even when it snowed, Wen Qian did not stay confined at home entirely. She would go to the nearby mountains and set up small traps, to see if she could catch anything.
In the traps she set, she did have some catches, frozen stiff, including some she did not recognize.
But looking at their smooth fur, her first reaction was that they must be weasels.
Although she had never worn a weasel fur coat, she knew there was such a creature.
However, she did not know how to process the fur, nor whether the meat of this animal was edible, so she later looked for answers in books.
Skinning was a technical task, and preserving the fur was an even greater challenge. Wen Qian decided to store her prey in her space until she had time to study it further.
At other times, she would regularly go out to check her traps for any prey.
The wall around Wen Qian's house had a very narrow door.
She had embedded a large iron gate collected from outside into the wall and used the small door within it to go in and out.
And as the snow accumulated deeper, the narrow path she had previously shoveled out became her only route in and out.
She did not go to other areas due to unfamiliarity with the terrain, fearing getting stuck in snow drifts and being unable to move.
In this wilderness, one needed to be cautious in all seasons. In winter, there might not be bears, but dangers still lurked everywhere.
Starting over here, the winters were a bit longer than on the plateau.
But if it warmed up, the temperatures in other seasons would be higher than on the plateau, and there would be summer.
At this time, the mountains and valleys here were all covered in white snow, and the bare tree branches were also laden with snow, forming a vast snowy forest as far as the eye could see.
Under the assault of wind and snow, not a trace of green could be seen in the mountain forest.
Wen Qian waited for the snow to stop before leaving home to fetch water from the river.
In winter here, the river surface froze over, eventually forming a solid ice surface. If she knew how to ice skate, she would have liked to try gliding on the ice.
One could walk on the river surface while the water beneath still flowed. Wen Qian found a spot to chop through the ice and draw water.
As always, she took advantage of her space's convenience, filling the small buckets and pouring them into her large water tank.
Water stored in her space would not spoil, and she kept a small water vat in the kitchen filled with water for daily use.
However, she needed to clean it regularly, or it would become stale and grow mold.
The drinking water was kept separate from the water for washing, and no matter when, Wen Qian's standards for drinking water were slightly higher.
Over the years, Wen Qian had grown accustomed to using the convenience of her space. The initial mentality of having to do everything independently had been put aside.
Therefore, she now tried to remember the shelf life of relevant items, wanting to have a sense of expiration dates for the necessities of her daily life.
Previously, she had always worried that her space might disappear, so she told herself not to become too reliant on it.
Now that time had passed, she no longer admonished herself in that way, but still warned herself not to lose the ability to survive independently.
She could continue using her space, but she needed to keep track of what was required for normal living.
Without the space, she needed to know how much weight she could carry and how much food she would need to eat.
And she needed to have a rough idea of the shelf life of those foods.
Now she could make the most of her space, but if it ever disappeared, she would still be able to live well.
Thus, in winter, aside from the temporary food stocks in the kitchen, everything in the storage shed was collected into her space.
Because the insects and rats here were too ferocious, and there were not enough traps or cages.
At first, they might fall into the traps, but eventually, no more rats could be caught.
Wen Qian had those iron boxes, but she could not put everything in them.
Apart from her space, Wen Qian could not think of a better solution for now.
After fetching water and returning home, Wen Qian drank a cup of steaming fruit tea, with some small berries added to enhance the flavor.
No matter how warmly dressed when outside, her hands, feet, and face would still turn icy cold. Upon returning home, besides drinking hot water, Wen Qian also remembered to apply some fragrant balm and rub her hands and face to prevent frostbite.
She was reluctant to drink tea leaves. Wen Qian had encountered tea gardens herself while on the move.
Although she did not know how to process tea, she did know how to pick tea leaves, so she had stayed there for a day or two, very crudely picking a large amount of tea leaves before leaving.
But as for how to process tea, she still needed to learn slowly. Winter did not seem like a good time to do it, so she would leave it for spring.
Wen Qian planned to cultivate the land near the forest and her home the following year, preferably areas that had previously been farmed.
When clearing that land, the first thing Wen Qian thought of was planting soybeans, growing those in the first year, then diversifying into other crops in the second year.
At home, they would grow a few vegetables, and the rest of the time would be spent hunting in the wild or foraging.
After all, everything was just starting, so all tasks had to be taken slowly.
