Chapter 71: Gray, It’s A Wild Chicken!
In the following days, Su Ran gradually laid a layer of stone ground under the rain shelter using crushed stones.
Then, together with Gray, she collected a large amount of dry branches and withered trees, sorted them bit by bit into roughly the same length, and stacked them neatly under the rain shelter.
The stored firewood only occupied one-third of the area inside the rain shelter.
Although the area wasn’t large, the piled height was even taller than Su Ran. Even if she kept burning this wood without replenishing it, it would be enough for Su Ran to burn for a while.
And as the pace of summer gradually quickened, the growth of wild fruit and wild vegetables in the woods also underwent different changes.
First, the Youyou Fruit and red fruit began to become sweeter and sweeter, and also fewer and fewer.
Su Ran guessed that these two kinds of wild fruit were probably fruits that ripened in spring, and after this season, there should be none left.
So she took advantage of the fact that she could still pick these two kinds of fruit now, pulled Gray into the woods to pick a lot, washed them clean, put them in a winnowing basket, then fixed the winnowing basket between tree trunks to dry into dried fruit to eat as snacks.
Unlike the red fruit and Youyou Fruit, the change in the green soap fruit was that it continued to grow.
Its original size was as big as a coconut, but now it had grown two sizes larger than that time.
And when Su Ran cut an entire green soap fruit in half, she was surprised to find that the fruit flesh inside the green soap fruit seemed to be drying out.
She cut a piece of fruit flesh, tasted it, and found that the originally sour-sweet taste of the green soap fruit had faded a lot.
And the texture had changed from the original avocado-like texture to slightly hard and slightly dry, with a starchy, powdery feeling when chewing.
This texture was very much like eating raw sweet potato.
Sweet potato?
Su Ran suddenly widened her eyes.
She looked at the small piece of green soap fruit flesh in her hand and took a deep breath.
So this wild fruit should actually be eaten as a staple food?
But it was just entering summer now.
Su Ran guessed that the current appearance of the green soap fruit probably wasn’t its final matured appearance yet.
But no matter what, from the growth changes of the green soap fruit, the starch content in its fruit was increasing from less to more.
Thinking of this, Su Ran couldn’t help but feel joyful.
High starch content, doesn’t that mean she might be able to harvest flour?
Su Ran looked up at the entire green soap fruit tree in front of her, which was hanging full of huge fruits.
Calling it a green soap fruit tree, actually now the skin color of the fruits on the tree had started to slowly transition toward yellow, becoming yellowish-green.
And the huge fruits on the tree unexpectedly reminded Su Ran of an article she had read as a child.
She had forgotten the name and content of the article, but what the article mainly described was a plant that, in her childhood imagination, had always been very magical:
Breadfruit tree.
In her constant imagination, the breadfruit tree really bore soft and delicious bread like those in the bakery.
The children living there would climb up the tree to pick bread every time the bread on the breadfruit tree ripened, and then they could eat bread that was a hundred times better than in the bakery!
Although later when she grew up, Su Ran learned that it was probably the baobab tree growing in Africa, completely different from the breadfruit tree in her imagination.
But at this moment, looking at the green soap fruit tree in front of her, Su Ran suddenly felt that this tree’s fruiting method was just like the breadfruit tree in her childhood imagination!
Even those irregularly shaped, slightly yellowish green soap fruits looked really like large loaves of bread that had been brushed with oil but not yet put into the oven.
Su Ran picked a few green soap fruits to take back, preparing to try roasting, boiling, and steaming them respectively to cook the green soap fruit.
To see if the current green soap fruit could really be eaten like sweet potato as she thought, and if the fruit flesh really contained starch.
And the results of the attempts did not disappoint her.
Roasted green soap fruit was so loved by even Gray, who loved meat and nothing else!
The fruit that still had some moisture when just picked, after being roasted over fire, had very little moisture left in the fruit flesh.
Peeling open the shell that had become slightly hard from the fire, the fruit flesh inside looked just like steamed taro.
After tasting it, Su Ran joyfully discovered that the roasted green soap fruit was fragrant and sweet, with the aroma of dry loose flour in the texture, but the remaining moisture wouldn’t make the fruit flesh choke her throat.
Gray loved this way of eating very much.
Even now, every meal it had to eat two such roasted green soap fruits first before eating other things.
However, compared to the roasted green soap fruit, neither Su Ran nor Gray liked the boiled green soap fruit very much.
For some reason, the fruit flesh of the boiled green soap fruit was soft and mushy, somewhat thick like lotus root starch.
Although it had sweetness, that texture wasn’t liked by Su Ran or Gray.
And the steamed green soap fruit had a texture and taste similar to the roasted one, but the fruit flesh was a bit moister.
Moreover, the roasted green soap fruit had a smoky aroma after grilling, which was also why Su Ran and Gray preferred the roasted green soap fruit.
This day, Su Ran and Gray finished breakfast at the seaside.
But this time, the reason they came to the seaside early in the morning wasn’t for salt making, but because Su Ran wanted to eat seafood and also wanted to experience the thrill of beachcombing.
Just like the changes in the living habits of creatures on land, the animals in the sea also appeared more and more in Su Ran’s view after the weather warmed up.
Su Ran’s marine creature recipe had expanded from only scallops, oysters, and crabs to octopuses, abalone, and some small shellfish that she didn’t recognize but the beastmen did.
Su Ran walked and stopped at the seaside for a morning, and finally satisfyingly stopped searching when she saw that the backpack was already filled more than half with seafood.
She turned to Gray and said, “Gray, let’s go see if there are any more red fruit.”
The dried fruit that Su Ran had sun-dried was already stored full in a large jar.
The dried Youyou Fruit had even more concentrated sweetness, and eating it even felt a bit cloying to the throat; Gray didn’t like eating it very much.
But it liked eating red fruit, and so did Su Ran.
Because after drying, the unique fragrance in the red fruit flesh became even more intense, and it would linger in the mouth for a long time after eating.
But now the season for both kinds of wild fruit had come to an end, and the frequency of being able to pick them had become less and less.
As soon as Gray heard Su Ran say they were going to look for red fruit, it immediately jumped over from the seawater step by step.
“Red fruit, Gray knows where there are some!”
Su Ran was surprised: “You know where there are some?”
Red fruit was already very hard to find now.
Gray nodded heavily: “Knows, Gray saw it!”
After saying that, it pulled Su Ran and walked toward the woods behind.
However, just as the two of them reached the shrubbery at the edge of the woods, Gray suddenly stopped.
Its ears on top of its head erected, and its two eyes stared tightly at the grass in front.
Su Ran followed its gaze, and just as she spotted a faint white in the dense grass, that white shadow suddenly darted out from in front of Su Ran!
Su Ran was stunned, and two seconds later, she grabbed Gray’s arm, her eyes bursting with intense excitement as she pointed at the fleeing figure and said excitedly: “Gray, it’s a wild chicken! Quick, catch it!!!”
