Chapter 107: Field Training Shiitake Mushroom Challenge
Actually, Xiang Chuan acquiesced and even supported the Class President in implementing this form where everyone gathers ingredients together and makes dishes on the spot, just so she could carry a meal box and eat outside. For the past two days, to take care of her classmates’ feelings, she could only huddle in a room or tent with her own club members to eat. But after having freshly made soup, stir-fried dishes, and barbecue, everyone’s attention on her pile of meal boxes had already dropped considerably. After all, half the things in the meal boxes were things they usually saw in A Bite of China Club, so how could they compare to the allure of freshly steaming gourmet food?
Watching everyone start to share the food, Xiang Chuan put the roasted chicken leg in her hand into her square meal box, picked up the chicken soup that had cooled to a warm temperature, and downed it in one gulp.
Ah——comfortable——!
Xiang Chuan could now somewhat understand the feeling of an alcoholic tasting fine wine. Although it lacked ingredients like angelica, red dates, and yam, the chicken meat, raised to the perfect balance of fat and lean, after half an hour of stewing and careful skimming of the foam, produced a clear soup broth mixed with a slight spiciness and aroma from ginger and pepper, along with the fresh fragrance of shiitake mushrooms. For Xiang Chuan, who had been eating almost the same things for three consecutive days, it was like long-awaited sweet rain.
After getting home, she had to fiddle with a few clay pots for stewing soup! The 21st century southerner who loved drinking soup silently added this note to her upcoming plan.
But when she picked up a roasted chicken leg from the bowl to taste her classmates’ handiwork, she suddenly noticed something off: everyone was eating fish and roasted chicken.
She glanced around her surroundings. Classmates kept casting glances at the two soup pots, audibly gulping down saliva, but they just wouldn’t come over. And the carefully stir-fried chicken was completely ignored. Xiang Chuan was too tired from stirring to touch it for now, but she hadn’t expected the others to not even touch it.
What was going on?
Xiang Chuan turned to look at Ouyang Yating and the others sitting beside her. They too were silently eating fish and roasted chicken, occasionally picking up some meals from the meal boxes, but not touching the chicken soup at all.
“You all… don’t like chicken soup and stir-fried chicken?” Xiang Chuan frowned and asked. If it were at home normally, she wouldn’t bother caring if the people around her ate or not—if they wanted to eat, she could just have the kitchen AI make an extra portion without her needing to worry. But today, she had participated in nearly two-thirds of the processes for these ten chickens. As the person who had put in the most effort for this chicken feast, she had the power to know why these guys weren’t drinking the soup.
Hearing this, not only did the A Bite of China Club members stop eating, but the Class Eight students also ceased their clamor. For a moment, the entire camp only had the crackling sound of firewood sparks splashing out.
“It’s very simple…” Chou Manman said with a bitter face as she scooped up a shiitake mushroom with black outer skin and white fungal flesh from her soup bowl. “Everyone doesn’t dare to touch this…”
As soon as Chou Manman finished speaking, everyone nodded in unison, so uniformly that it was even more synchronized than the steps during their previous run at the training base. Xiang Chuan’s eye twitched wildly at the sight.
“You’ve all dared to eat chicken and freshwater fish, so how are you still afraid of a shiitake mushroom?” Xiang Chuan took Chou Manman’s spoon, put the shiitake mushroom into her mouth. The shiitake mushroom, soaked full of chicken soup broth, was extremely fresh and sweet, relaxing Xiang Chuan’s furrowed brows. She looked at everyone depressedly: “This thing is fully cooked, it’s edible!”
“But… isn’t this a collection of bacteria?” Liang Gong said weakly. “Bacteria can’t be eaten, right…”
“Fungi are a type of bacteria, but they’re not the same as bacteria, and…” Xiang Chuan picked up a bun, took a bite, chewed it for a while, and swallowed it. “You’re all so afraid of fungi, yet I don’t see you keeping your distance from buns and steamed buns. Instead, you’re all thinking of raiding my buns.”
Ah?
Ah???
Xiang Chuan’s casual complaint instantly caused an uproar in the entire Class Eight camp, and even the live stream room on the other side of the camera erupted in commotion.
What?! These buns and steamed buns are actually made of fungi?!
“Xiang Chuan… Xiang Chuan!” Even Ouyang Yating, who was usually composed, was so shocked by this truth that she couldn’t speak properly. She was holding a steak bun that she had eaten half of. Now she neither continued eating nor threw it away, frozen in place unsure of how to react, and could only shout: “You can’t just say things like that!”
“I’m not saying things carelessly.” Xiang Chuan opened her terminal, selected and copied the information she had looked up while researching yeast, and sent it to her. “According to ancient records, yeast is a type of fungus, and the production of noodle dishes like buns and steamed buns cannot do without yeast, which means buns and steamed buns themselves are an enlarged collection of fungi.”
She said the last sentence without much confidence herself, but the crowd, who were in a state of shock, didn’t notice. Everyone directly put down their bowls and chopsticks and crowded over to Ouyang Yating’s side to investigate, nearly squeezing Xiang Chuan so much that she couldn’t hold her bowl steady. This momentum scared Ainuo and Nancy, with one protecting Ouyang Yating and the other protecting Xiang Chuan, to prevent the shocked crowd from accidentally trampling them.
“Don’t squeeze! Don’t squeeze! I’ll send it to you all!” Ouyang Yating hurriedly shouted, casually group-sending it. The transparent document page fell onto the light screens in front of everyone.
Everyone silently read the text written above by the modern translator, and after finishing, fell silent again.
If asked whether the umbrella-shaped plants on a certain planet were fungi, there might still be room for discussion. But the document plainly stated in black and white (white screen?): Yeast genus is an important genus of fungi in the yeast family.
Fungi, not some cells or plant fibers, just plainly fungi.
The people in the camp who had been able to enjoy noodle dishes looked at the buns and steamed buns in their hands and fell silent.
The Class Eight students recalled the scene last week where they fought to eat buns and steamed buns, and fell silent once more.
Everyone was shocked by the truths that “fungi are actually edible” and “I’ve actually been eating fungi for so long.”
At this moment, Xiang Chuan calmed down instead. She knew that after the impact of the buns and steamed buns, everyone would no longer have that previous level of inability to accept shiitake mushrooms. They just needed some time to digest it, so she could just watch quietly.
The first to muster courage was still Chou Manman.
She turned off the light screen, picked up the small meal box in front of her filled with chicken soup. Thanks to the meal box’s insulation function, the chicken soup was still warm, emanating the sweet fragrance of chicken and shiitake mushrooms.
Everyone now noticed Chou Manman’s actions, one after another turning their gazes to her.
Chou Manman gulped, picked up the spoon to scoop up half a shiitake mushroom from the soup broth. To be honest, if ignoring the fungal “identity” of the shiitake mushroom, whether its smooth color or this special aroma, it was mouth-watering. After the eating experience with buns and steamed buns, her fear of shiitake mushrooms had greatly decreased. But under the premise of knowing this thing was a fungus, actively eating it still inevitably made her nervous.
She held her breath and put the half shiitake mushroom from the spoon into her mouth.
Smooth and tender, that was the first impression. The tactile sensation after her teeth bit down was between meat and vegetables, a completely new feeling. The soup juice in the shiitake mushroom burst in her mouth with chewing, more fragrantly sweet with shiitake flavor than the soup just sent in together. She chewed it repeatedly; the smooth and tender mushroom gradually bit into small pieces, into fragments, but Chou Manman still didn’t dare to swallow.
She didn’t know when it was best to swallow this thing.
So she looked to Xiang Chuan for help, but who knew Xiang Chuan wasn’t paying attention to her at all. Instead, she scooped herself another bowl of soup, just like her scooped up half a shiitake mushroom into her mouth, and swallowed after refusing no more than five or six chews.
Th-this, just this short chewing time is enough? Chou Manman was dumbfounded. The shiitake mushroom fragments in her mouth also slid into her stomach with the saliva she subconsciously swallowed. She touched her throat and belly; there was no strange reaction, nothing like the abdominal pain or headaches described in rumors about fungi.
So she scooped up another spoonful, imitating Xiang Chuan by chewing a few times and swallowing. Her mouth was filled with the sweet fragrance of chicken soup and the fresh aroma of shiitake mushrooms. After savoring the taste, she turned to the Class Eight crowd and gave a thumbs up: Delicious!
