Chapter 103: The Temptation Of Gourmet Food In Field Training
Prepare for two hours, dry rice twenty minutes.
No matter how plump the fish from the periphery of the nature reserve are, the Class Eight students who labored for two days can only be described as starving today. With such a grand feast right in front of them, let alone dozens of fish, they could probably eat twice as much. They’re just afraid they’ll get tired of it by then and won’t touch freshwater fish for months.
After the meal, everyone divided up the tasks to clean up the kitchenware and kitchen waste.
The boys were responsible for sweeping the leftover fish bones into the garbage pit and burying them. The girls’ group took out cleaning gel and started cleaning everyone’s bowls and chopsticks and the large pot used for boiling soup.
Xiang Chuan, as always, stood by slacking off. If she hadn’t been taught since childhood that one shouldn’t sit too long right after eating, she would quite want to keep sitting at the tent entrance right now. Unlike steamed fish that needs soy sauce or sauces for seasoning, grilled fish and fish soup emphasize the most primitive flavors. As long as simple de-fish processing is done, plus some salt and pepper, it becomes a delicious dish full of primitive flavor. The portions she didn’t get full on from the steamed fish were all made up on the grilled fish and fish soup, so she was quite stuffed right now. But eating too much is also quite tiring, so Xiang Chuan now looked quite listless.
The group passing by the tent entrance saw her like this and thought to themselves that she had made steamed fish and hosted everyone’s lunch today, so she was very tired, and they didn’t have the heart to criticize her current slacking off.
“Hard work, head chef.” Ouyang Yating walked over and tossed her a round thing.
Xiang Chuan instinctively caught it and took a closer look—it was actually an apple, but not the bright red kind from home; it was more like the green-red small apples sold by vendors at the 21st century vegetable market. She stared at the apple for a bit, then looked at Ouyang Yating with doubt, as if asking: Where did you find this thing?
“There was an apple tree on the road. Nancy shook the tree trunk and a few fell down, so we picked them up along the way.” Ainuo walked over and explained, “So, is this edible?”
“You guys haven’t even tried it?” Xiang Chuan looked at the two helplessly, placed the filter screen on the nearby water bucket, and washed the apple with the filtered river water. The nature reserve shouldn’t use pesticides or anything, and even if they did, modern pesticides wouldn’t harm the human body. But hanging on the tree for so long, exposed to wind and rain, and possibly visited by some birds, there was still quite a bit of dust. After scrubbing it three times, Xiang Chuan took a casual bite—it was actually pretty good. The sweetness naturally wasn’t as good as the packaged fruit from home, but the sweet-and-sour taste was just right for her after just stuffing herself.
Xiang Chuan gave the two a thumbs up. Ainuo got the hint and walked toward the riverside, shouting loudly as they went: “The club president said—edible—”
Hearing this, Xiang Chuan’s mouth twitched: This is using her to test for poison?
“Nancy is washing apples by the river. Don’t make that face; we’ll share some with you later.” Ouyang Yating looked at her amusedly, mainly because her puffed-up expression while chewing the apple was just too funny. “The main thing is we didn’t know if wild apples were edible either.”
“This is still using me to test for poison!”
Xiang Chuan got agitated and squeezed the apple in her hand until it cracked, startling the class president who had just come over. He looked at Xiang Chuan a bit nervously and quietly asked Ouyang Yating: “Is she okay? Is now not a good time?”
“Go ahead. The club president can prioritize properly, and besides,” Ouyang Yating looked at the light screen open in his hand, “you’re here to discuss the meal arrangements for the next few days with her, right? It’s better to prepare as early as possible. Today’s lunch was so abundant; if we go back to compressed food for dinner, it might make everyone listless this afternoon and evening.”
“True.” The class president nodded, inwardly complaining about how Ouyang Yating could tell he was here to ask about that. Was he that obvious?
“No no no no.”
Contrary to the expectations of the two, when Xiang Chuan heard the class president’s proposal of “hoping to arrange fish-based meals like today’s for lunch and dinner every day,” she shook her head furiously, her hair even whipping her face.
“Why? I just asked Fu Chengkai, and the camp here is organized very well today. The caught fish is enough for everyone. Now Mandy and the others say they’ll help pick up some branches along the way while patrolling this afternoon, so we won’t have to worry about firewood.”
“It’s not really a firewood issue…” Xiang Chuan swallowed the apple in her mouth and frowned at him. “First of all, catching so many fish this morning was pure coincidence. Without knowing the reserves of freshwater fish in this river, rashly making a meal plan centered on wild freshwater fish has too many uncertainties. What if one day the catch isn’t enough for everyone? Wouldn’t that leave people hungry in the afternoon or evening? And if we catch too many fish, I’m worried it’ll lead to complaints from the nature reserve and training base about us causing ecological damage. After all, fish are food for carnivorous animals.”
“Don’t worry about that. According to the map, this river doesn’t connect to areas with carnivorous animals. Most of the fish inside are kept for ornamental purposes, so no environmental issues.”
“Eating someone else’s ornamental fish still feels pretty unsettling…” Xiang Chuan muttered, then said seriously: “Besides, class president, don’t forget, we’re staying here for another four days. Four days of consecutive fish—even if the fish is ever so delicious—will make people tired of it. Based on my personal experience, at most three days, at least two days, and after eating like this for so many days in a row, someone will refuse to eat, which would actually affect health and fighting spirit more.”
“Then change the cooking method…”
“This is the wild, not our club kitchen.” Xiang Chuan looked at the class president helplessly. “Even if we change the recipe, it’s hard to completely alter the taste of fish. What’s more, with insufficient seasonings, I can’t make more flavors.”
“That’s not an issue at all.” The class president and Ouyang Yating looked at her with helpless eyes: This really was quite a luxurious worry!
You have to know that for most classmates in the class, this might be the first time eating so much freshwater fish. Compared to the liquid food and solid food they’ve eaten since childhood, everyone has curiosity toward freshwater fish no less than toward buns. Let alone three days—even ten days wouldn’t be a problem.
“But the catch quantity is indeed an issue, and the storage equipment too… Club president, your meal boxes…” As she spoke, Ouyang Yating turned her line of sight to the small mountain of meal boxes guarded by the nearby transport robot.
“Never tried it, don’t recommend trying.” Xiang Chuan refused seriously. Joking aside, cooking in the wild is just for fun; her own rations still needed proper planning. If the meal boxes ended up full of fishy smell, how to clean them? “Drying the fish could store it for a while, but in this season and environment, it doesn’t look like it could dry successfully…”
After going around, the topic returned to the starting point: What to do with ingredients?
“Sigh, if only there were chickens and ducks or cattle or something.” Xiang Chuan took a bite of the apple and stared blankly at the sky.
“Hm? There are.” The two said in unison, nearly choking Xiang Chuan on her apple.
“Cough cough cough! Cough… Wha… what’s going on?” Xiang Chuan pounded her chest desperately to swallow the bite of apple, then whipped her head to look at the two.
“This morning when walking around the south with Ainuo and them, we saw some wild chickens… probably not wild… right?” Ouyang Yating recalled the morning scene, frowned, and her tone was a bit uncertain.
“Maybe it’s the same flock you saw,” the class president smiled. “When I went out this morning, I saw a group of chickens pecking at the grassland in the bushes nearby. I was curious how there were chickens, took a photo. Classmate Xiang Chuan, see if these are edible?”
Xiang Chuan leaned over to look at the class president’s light screen. Goodness, not only livestock chickens, but ones fattened up ready to slaughter immediately. For no reason, Xiang Chuan recalled the past two days when she asked at the base if wild animals could be used for emergency food, and Instructor Ai Yalin’s horrified look at her and her own class students.
Surely… not, right? Xiang Chuan tilted her head.
Last night when sending, my head was a bit dizzy, and this morning I found the document hadn’t saved, so I angrily rewrote it all…
