Chapter 180: First Bowl Of White Rice 30,000 Years Later
In the dining area of the Staple Food Crops Department.
Most of the first year high school students have already been assigned seats by class, but the dining area of the Staple Food Crops Department can accommodate at most two hundred people, while the first year high school students plus the teachers total three hundred sixty people, so there clearly aren’t enough seats.
Fortunately, the employees of each department have already grown tired of the canteen’s food, and usually only a few dozen people from each department come to the canteen to eat, so the dining areas of the other two departments still have quite a few empty seats.
The Staple Food Department employees, who felt a bit awkward lining up to get food with the students, saw this situation and took the initiative to communicate with the neighboring Vegetable Crops Department, and after getting permission, guided those students and teachers without seats to sit in the neighboring department.
By the time the Staple Food Crops Department employees got their food, the entire canteen was packed full.
If the person in charge of the canteen saw the current situation, they would probably wake up laughing from their dreams.
The Class Eight first year high school students fighting on the front lines in the kitchen still enjoy some special privileges.
Manager Wu, who got food first, had arranged seats for them early on, and very nepotistically placed them right next to their own seat.
Students from other classes noticed these empty seats right away, but after learning they were prepared for the Class Eight first year high school students, they decisively went to find other seats. The reason was simple: one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds them, and the food in their hands was all made with the assistance of the Class Eight first year high school students helping the kitchen AI, not to mention the great contribution of A Bite of China Club. Even if their minds were thinking of protesting, their rumbling stomachs absolutely would not allow it.
The stomachs of ignorant modern people: For the sake of the next meal, don’t offend the chefs, please.
After students from other classes sat down, they all simultaneously reached their chopsticks toward the white rice.
No way around it! They’ve seen the other dishes to some extent at Yue Xiang Restaurant or the school cafeteria before, but they’ve truly never tasted this thing!
The cooked white rice has the fragrant sweetness of freshly steamed new rice and a soft, tender, and chewy texture, completely different from the pastries the students had encountered before.
However, compared to the other dishes, the white rice has a very mild flavor, and many people couldn’t really make sense of it.
A small number of true gluttonous youth at this moment had a flash of inspiration, picked up a piece of meat or vegetable from another compartment, placed it on the white rice, and then put it into their mouths together with the rice, chewing slowly.
After swallowing one mouthful of food and rice, their eyes flashed with hungry green light, and they began a formulaic action of one mouthful of vegetable and one mouthful of rice.
Their classmates from the same class, being gluttonous foodie connoisseurs, naturally noticed their actions, so with a mindset of trying it out, they also imitated one mouthful of rice and one mouthful of vegetable.
Immediately after, classmates from the neighboring class also saw the scene, so they gave it a try too…
By the time Xiang Chuan arrived late with the Class Eight crowd and sat down, the majority of those who had received lunch boxes had already mastered the essence of 21st century scooping rice.
Xiang Chuan, who had watched the whole process, was dumbfounded: Could this be the atavistic effect of Asian DNA engraved in the bodies of modern youth?
Some who ate quickly had already started lining up at the serving window for a second bowl of rice.
Foodies are this terrifying.
After sitting down, Xiang Chuan examined the lunch box in her hand.
Minced garlic stir-fried Chinese cabbage, sizzling beef, stir-fried tomatoes and cucumbers, minced meat eggplant, stir-fried tomatoes and eggs—barely half meat and half vegetable.
However, there are too many dishes, and just filling one compartment with rice probably wouldn’t be enough, so when getting food, Xiang Chuan specially pressed down the rice to make room for more bites of rice.
The soups include chicken soup with shiitake mushrooms and tomato egg drop dough drop soup. Although the dough drop soup is sour and sweet and very appetizing, considering that dough drops also count as starch-based staple food, in order to have a filling meal, Xiang Chuan decisively chose the chicken soup with shiitake mushrooms.
She picked up her chopsticks and first reached for the king of dishes to go with rice—stir-fried tomatoes and eggs.
She put a piece of stir-fried egg together with rice into her mouth. The egg had absorbed the tomato juice and a bit of salt, with a sour, sweet, and fresh flavor that, combined with the fragrant sweetness of the rice, greatly stimulated Xiang Chuan’s hungry stomach.
She couldn’t hold back and chewed a few bites in three or five gulps before swallowing. The satisfaction from the rice and stir-fried vegetables going down brought immense gratification to Xiang Chuan.
One mouthful of rice down was equivalent to sounding the horn for starting the meal, and Xiang Chuan’s chopsticks and cheeks never stopped after that.
Meanwhile, her Class Eight first year high school classmates around her followed suit closely, some carefully chewing and savoring the rice and some unfamiliar stir-fried dishes, others imitating Xiang Chuan with one mouthful of vegetable and one mouthful of rice.
For a moment, the students filling most of the employee canteen were completely silent, with only the sounds of chopsticks clinking against bowls.
Perhaps because the Class Eight crowd’s foodie eating was too focused, or maybe not wanting to disturb the students’ quiet meal. Manager Wu, who had finished their lunch box fastest (and even added a bowl of rice), sat in their seat staring blankly at the lunch box in front of them. They picked up a grain of rice standing on the lunch box with their chopsticks, looking at it curiously as if observing some new species.
The silent dining table meant eating efficiency skyrocketed.
Even though Xiang Chuan controlled her swallowing speed to avoid choking on the food, she couldn’t resist her stomach’s craving for the rice, and her chewing speed was more than twice as fast as when usually eating noodles or buns.
In less than ten minutes, the rice in her lunch box was gone.
She looked up toward the serving window, and sure enough, there was a long line.
Although the first year high school students had eaten breakfast before setting off, in order to avoid being affected by atmospheric pressure and other environmental factors during transport, everyone had eaten lightly for breakfast, basically just a bun or one or two noodles to pad the stomach, waiting to have a full midday meal inside the Production Escort Ship. As a result, they ran right into this lunch box of white rice plus five side dishes.
Students who originally had small appetites had their desire piqued by the sour and sweet flavors in the stir-fried dishes, and surprisingly also went to line up for a small half bowl more rice, still wanting more.
If not for the tireless kitchen AI used for business, which had to stir-fry vegetables, cook rice, serve food, and recycle lunch boxes and wash dishes, the aunties in a 21st century school cafeteria would probably have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.
So although the line was very long, the throughput speed was astonishingly fast.
Even so, Xiang Chuan still didn’t want to line up. She glanced at her classmates beside her: Ouyang Yating was still chewing slowly, but Ainuo and Liang Gong were already preparing to stand up for a second bowl of rice.
Without a word, Xiang Chuan shoved her lunch box into Liang Gong’s hands, gesturing with her eyes for him to get food for her.
Xiang Chuan: Lining up is impossible. After sixteen years as a student hitting the canteen for ten years of meals, and now being a corporate slave for a small half lifetime, how could she possibly continue lining up for food?
Decisively refuse to do it personally.
What’s more, she had three club members under her. Usually these three were unruly, treating her like a mascot. If she didn’t seize the opportunity to exercise some club president privileges, she really would become just a cooking tool.
