Chapter 134: Current Situation Of The Fleet’s Staple Food
After downing a bowl of noodle soup, Xiang Chuan’s craving for dried noodles, which she hadn’t tasted in a long time, was fully satisfied. The intake of hot soup and noodles made beads of sweat form slightly on her forehead, but Da Xing had already sensed the temperature change in his little master and brought a towel just as she put down her chopsticks to wipe her mouth.
“Thanks.” Xiang Chuan took the towel and wiped the sweat from her forehead, then happily savored the satisfaction of being full while holding the chilled apple fruit milk.
The usually lively dinner time was now filled with the continuous slurping sounds of noodle-eating.
Although eating the simplest chicken noodle soup in a high-tech style restaurant felt somewhat out of place in time and space, seeing familiar faces eating familiar chicken noodle soup gave Xiang Chuan the illusion of being back in her southern hometown.
During family holidays at home, they would take one or two home-raised native chickens from the family coop to make the most delicious white cut chicken. The remaining chicken soup from steaming the white cut chicken became the noodle soup that the three siblings craved most in their childhood. On the second day after the holiday, mom would take out locally bought chilies, chop them up, drizzle them with soy sauce, minced garlic, and hot oil, then fry an egg. Chicken noodle soup with fragrant chili soy sauce and fried egg would mesmerize anyone who saw it.
Unfortunately, the soy sauce wasn’t ready yet. Otherwise, if the chicken in the kitchen soup pot couldn’t be finished, it could be made into stir-fried chicken with shiitake mushrooms or stir-fried chicken with wood ear mushrooms, paired with steamed buns or noodles—which wouldn’t mismatch? She was already tired of stir-fried chicken with shiitake mushrooms seasoned only with salt.
So how should this chicken be processed? Thinking of this, Xiang Chuan frowned, then relaxed: she was overcomplicating it. Season some chili powder into chili oil, smash some minced garlic and chopped scallions with cilantro, sprinkle on some sesame seeds, and make a simple hand-torn chicken. Although without soy sauce seasoning the flavor might be a bit bland, it was better than nothing.
Liang Gong, who finished his noodle soup the fastest, turned his head and received iced juice and a towel from Da Xing, only to see his club president performing Sichuan Opera face-changing. He wondered inwardly: Was this some ancient popular facial exercise?
After dinner, Xiang Xue and Lin Ming both dashed straight to the entertainment room. Ouyang Yating and the other two knew they were preparing to live stream. Ever since receiving the invitation from Xiang Chuan, the three had been watching Xiang Xue’s live streams. Although they didn’t participate much in binge-watching discussions in class or the club activity room during the day, whether it was Empresses in the Palace or the recently premiered My Own Swordsman, from the first day they entered the live stream room, the three had never stopped their long binge-watching journey.
So it was absolutely impossible for the three to have no interest in Xiang Xue’s live stream site. If there was a chance, Ainuo even planned to ask if Xiang Chuan’s home had video files of the first dozen or so episodes of Empresses in the Palace.
Modern film and television entertainment had declined, to the point that even adolescent boys were starting to binge-watch Qing Dynasty dramas.
However, the three now had to pause today’s binge-watching plan. Visiting the Xiang Family and planning a short-term stay, they had brought quite a bit of luggage this time, plus messing with those soybeans during the day. After tidying the room, they still needed to take a shower.
Moreover, now at their club president’s home, it would be truly remiss of the three—not formally greeting Xiang Weiguo, the family head, and Lin Minzhi—not to honor the etiquette education they had received at home.
So after finishing dinner and dessert, Xiang Chuan watched the three head with conflicted expressions toward the elevator under Da Xing’s lead, preparing to go to the guest room. She wondered if the peach cake she had impulsively made today didn’t suit their tastes, but the cake had just been served and the three (in Xiang Chuan’s view) had wolfed down two plates.
Could it be that modern people’s stomachs couldn’t handle peaches? Xiang Chuan looked at her mom, who had eaten a quarter of the cake by herself, feeling doubly puzzled.
Like Empresses in the Palace, My Own Swordsman aired two episodes a day.
Although when My Own Swordsman premiered, contemporary TV dramas were only thirty or forty episodes long and wouldn’t be deliberately dragged out by traffic capital like now, because it was a sitcom with much lower costs than regular TV dramas, this show also had a length of eighty-plus-one episodes.
Xiang Chuan didn’t forget to store the eighty-first episode from the DVD collection into the storage of the live stream room’s big screen.
One major advantage of sitcoms was that when wanting to kill time by watching dramas, rewatching serious plot-driven shows would diminish the shock from the plot with repeated viewings until it became boring, but sitcoms for a laugh wouldn’t have this issue. The episodic format meant viewers could find fun no matter where they started watching.
So when Xiang Xue live-streamed Empresses in the Palace, Xiang Chuan had no desire to watch this drama that she had already lazily stopped rewatching during her corporate slave days. But when streaming My Own Swordsman, she would occasionally grab some snacks, open her sister’s live stream room, and find new fun amid the modern people’s excited bullet comments.
Of course, besides that, she had another focus: see what reactions modern people had to the food appearing in My Own Swordsman.
After watching for a few days, the audience’s biggest discussion point about the dishes on the dining table centered mainly on rice and pork.
Yue Xiang Restaurant was booming with franchise stores opening on various streets, and it was said that the project plan for opening branches on various escort ships had already received permission from the Administration for Industry and Commerce and was in tense preparation. The meals at Yue Xiang Restaurant gave Third Fleet residents the impression that ancient food had “diverse flavors, all delicious,” so they couldn’t understand why ancient people, who in their minds “created millions of gourmet foods,” loved pork so much, which was hard to describe when eaten.
Not only general viewers were discussing it; the Historical Research Institute and Agriculture Bureau were even more enthusiastic, with research on ancient people’s sense of taste reportedly becoming the Historical Research Institute’s latest topic.
As for rice, it was simple: general viewers were curious what this white shiny food was, and the Agriculture Bureau wondered why unground rice could be a staple food. For this, the Agriculture Bureau had openly and covertly asked Lin Minzhi to pass a message to Xiang Chuan to inquire. The boom of Yue Xiang Restaurant and Yue Xiang’s launch of storable buns, steamed buns, and other foods had become hot gourmet foods in the Third Fleet, causing demand for solid foods made from rice noodles to plummet. If not for the low price and assured nutritional value, other food groups in the fleet launching solid foods would probably collectively go bankrupt before autumn. If rice could be eaten directly with long-term stable consumption, the Agriculture Bureau, supporting local groups, could give the green light for these food groups to switch solid foods to rice sales. After all, launching plain white rice for the Agriculture Bureau was too easy; solid food production required special processing with other ingredients, but buying rice directly only needed very simple processing for modern people.
As a government senior cadre, Lin Minzhi naturally knew the Agriculture Bureau’s difficulties, so during a chat with her eldest daughter after dinner one evening, she vaguely revealed this.
After learning that 21st Century gourmet food was starting to impact modern food, Xiang Chuan also began planning for rice’s return to the dining table. This was one reason she prioritized soy sauce production.
But now it seemed it would take a whole quarter to fuss with it; she didn’t know if the Agriculture Bureau and other food companies could wait that long.
While Xiang Chuan watched her sister and the temporary resident boy laugh themselves silly at the TV drama, Ouyang Yating and the other two had finished packing and arrived at the study room led by Lisa and Xiao Ye.
Xiang Weiguo and Lin Minzhi had long known the three were coming to greet them, so after finishing their work, they waited in Xiang Weiguo’s study.
When the three entered the study, the couple was holding documents on soy sauce that Xiang Chuan had sent them and discussing something. Seeing the three enter, the two warmly welcomed them, paying more attention to the people around their eldest daughter regardless of the three’s family backgrounds.
Liang Gong, not very used to such occasions, was a bit nervous, but what about Ouyang Yating and Ainuo? They were family children dragged to various banquets as lucky charms by their parents since they learned to walk, with over ten years of experience making them adept at livening up the atmosphere. Ainuo’s deliberate guidance gradually relaxed Liang Gong.
As they chatted, the topic gradually shifted from recent situations in the three’s families to the soy sauce Xiang Chuan was messing with this time.
The Li Family behind Ainuo and Liang Gong’s mother and others learned from the children that the soy sauce to be made this time would be key to promoting the new staple food—after all, both families watched My Own Swordsman on the live stream platform and knew about white rice.
As president of Yue Xiang Group, Xiang Weiguo was very concerned about his eldest daughter’s activities, but learning today that this thing would take three months to make, he could only worry dryly in his heart. Since only his eldest daughter knew the production process for ancient food, plus privacy protections for information turbulence contactees, even as Xiang Chuan’s father, he could only sit and worry.
Hearing from Lisa today that these three kids had spent the afternoon messing with beans in the courtyard with his eldest daughter, he couldn’t help asking about it.
The three described the afternoon’s operation process in detail. First, Yue Xiang’s business didn’t conflict with their club or even the businesses of the families behind the three. Second, the club president had said these things made today were for family and club use; as for mass-market soy sauce on the market, let the elders in front of them worry about it themselves.
