Chapter 23: Staple Food From 30,000 Years Ago
[These green vegetables look really delicious.]
[Is that chicken? Chicken doesn’t taste good.]
[This beef looks pretty tough to bite through.]
[Xiao Xue, Xiao Xue, try that triangular-shaped one.]
[Why is the bottom of this plate next to it crispy?]
With yesterday’s experience, the live stream room’s comment section didn’t have much sense of surprise, and there was more discussion about the new food.
Since the freshly baked buns were too hot to eat, Xiang Xue was busy tasting each one and couldn’t reply, so they started observing the various buns on the screen. Since they had never seen the Xiang Family’s main meals, the beef bun and chicken bun still sparked quite a bit of discussion.
Especially chicken; among mainstream edible meats, fish is delicious but relatively expensive, relatively affordable beef is the most popular, chicken tastes worse in comparison but has a good texture, and chickens lay eggs, so chicken is at best a byproduct. The least popular is pork; even low-income families might not look favorably on pork-related food.
So that’s why Xiang Chuan’s attention to pork earlier drew so much complaining.
Xiang Family yay!
The family head is a director of a large group, the lady of the house is the director of cultural bureau, and the previous generation are said to hold important positions as well.
Why would a family that’s not short on money and has considerable power pay attention to pork?
Seeing the chicken that truly belongs to the commoner class, the comment section was egging on whether Xiang Xue would give her sister another “indifferent stare,” little did they know that Xiang Xue had already changed her view on chicken during the earlier hand grab cake, holding a beef bun in her left hand and a chicken bun in her right, exclaiming how delicious they were.
[By the way, haven’t these things appeared in Xiao Xue’s live-streamed TV dramas?]
As soon as this comment came out, the entire comment section exploded.
Many viewers had carefully watched the street scenes, so naturally someone remembered that passersby in the TV dramas had sold this thing.
What does that mean? Could the two soft white objects in Xiang Xue’s hands be products of ancient era technology?
The comment section had no shortage of Historical Research Institute members; ever since learning that the director of cultural bureau’s youngest daughter had produced footage of ancient people filming ancient era stories for real-time viewing, they had been in a frenzy these past few days. The institute director slyly hadn’t shared this on the space-time network with other fleets’ historical research institutes. After all, their Third Fleet’s strengths were only in agriculture and food, with nothing else noteworthy. Now with this opportunity close at hand, they had to enjoy it exclusively first. So yesterday, the Historical Research Institute director contacted Xiang Xue and Xiang Chuan through Lin Minzhi. After learning that Xiang Chuan had no intention of publicly releasing the video source for now, he settled for asking for limited authorization to capture TV drama footage from the live stream for research. In return, they could provide a government-dedicated server from the Third Fleet for Xiang Xue’s live stream room’s small team. Since it was just screenshots, Xiang Chuan had no reason to refuse and agreed.
This thrilled Xiang Xue’s friends responsible for maintaining the live stream room. With a larger server, they could add new features to this increasingly popular small platform, such as high-quality image restoration processors, or the emoji function for the comment chat bar that Xiang Xue (actually Xiang Chuan) had mentioned, and so on. The most exciting was the bullet comments function Xiang Chuan mentioned, where viewers’ comments scroll on the live stream screen. Some development members worried it might upset some viewers, so Xiang Xue mentioned it to Xiang Chuan. Xiang Chuan raised an eyebrow and said to add an option for viewers to turn off bullet comments themselves, along with functions to adjust font transparency and size, so that viewers who want to see bullet comments won’t affect those watching the live stream. So now the live stream room maintenance team was excitedly busy again, their enthusiasm making Xiang Xue break out in a sweat, and also making her want to ask: Have you all finished your homework?
She could already foresee how dismal her class’s homework completion rate would be after junior high department starts.
The topic returns to the Historical Research Institute members watching the live stream; the entire institute had shifted its research focus to the civilization of the ancient nation Huaxia due to the sudden appearance of this TV drama. Combining plot screenshots with the information currently stored in the institute’s network, the ancient culture society research department and ancient culture clothing research department had gained tremendous insights, making other departments in the institute extremely envious. So today, over 1,200 researchers and mid-to-high-level staff in the institute had come to watch the live stream. When someone mentioned that the things the three Xiang Family kids were eating were very similar to food that appeared in the previous TV drama, the ancient culture diet research department couldn’t sit still.
What they wanted most now was recipes for buns and steamed buns, but considering that the Xiang Family’s pillar industry is Yue Xiang, the Third Fleet’s largest food processing group, such behavior would be tantamount to cutting off their source of income. If they really did that, they might get the cold shoulder from the cultural bureau led by Lin Minzhi in the future. So they settled for the next best thing, hoping to get some physical food samples for research.
Lin Minzhi, who was watching the live stream in the cultural bureau lounge, received a message from the Historical Research Institute director at this time, hoping to get a few freshly made buns for their research.
Although it was just a small effort, and since it was only providing physical items rather than recipes, Xiang Weiguo and Xiang Chuan probably wouldn’t mind, but…
She, as the mother, hadn’t tasted her daughter’s new food yet!
Feeling indignant inside, she only replied “do your best,” which later made the Historical Research Institute director worry for several days.
The three had no idea so much was happening behind the live stream room’s comment section; now they just wanted to eat as many buns as quickly as possible.
Modern people basically only eat liquid food and solid food. Although digestion ability hasn’t deteriorated thanks to advancements in science and technology and medical technology, appetites are still small. Plus, each bun made by Xiang Chuan was as big as a whole palm, so after four buns, Xiang Xue already felt very full.
“Ah— I can’t eat anymore, I can’t eat anymore!”
Xiang Xue leaned back in her chair, looking at the pile of buns on the dining table like a small mountain, resentfully looking at Xiang Chuan:
“Sister, you made so many; what a pity if we can’t finish them.”
“Yeah, so many, and there aren’t many people at home. Even if saved for dinner, can we finish them?”
Xiang Qi was also worried.
“If we can’t finish, just put them in the refrigerator,” Xiang Chuan took a bite of the sugar triangle. For some reason, she didn’t like sweet buns much as a child, but now this bite still gave her a nostalgic taste from the same year. “Handmade buns can be refrigerated for a day or two, or frozen for a week.”
That long? Doesn’t that mean we can eat them every day?
Xiang Xue immediately cheered up.
Xiang Qi was still a bit concerned: “But making so many, won’t we get tired of them eating every day?”
As soon as he said this, he also realized something. Getting tired of food— a week ago, this was an unimaginable concept. The liquid food and solid food tasted similar every day, distinguished only by freshness, but this week they had tasted various flavors they’d never experienced, and for the first time learned that eating the same food long-term leads to “getting tired of it.”
This feeling was such a luxury in modern times.
“You’ll get used to it slowly; after all, this is staple food.”
Xiang Chuan picked up a steamed bun, tore off a small piece, dipped it in the small bowl of tomato egg soup brought by the kitchen AI, put it in her mouth. Mm, that familiar texture.
“Staple food?”
Xiang Chuan looked up to see her two siblings looking at her doubtfully. She was stunned, then accessed her “memory” that hadn’t been used much these past few days, and realized that modern times had no such term as staple food. If anything, all liquid food and solid food were staple food.
“Uh… meaning the main food that sustains the energy the human body consumes, like the hand grab cakes, egg pancakes, dough drops, and steaks we ate before, and the flatbread I made yesterday.”
“Staple food… is this how ancient people classified food?”
“Yes, the main things we eat at three meals are called staple food, while steaks, egg drop soup, and such are side dishes to accompany the staple food.”
“I see,” Xiang Xue picked up a bun and examined it closely, then suddenly laughed. “No wonder Sister Xiang Chuan you firmly wouldn’t let Dad add fried bananas and fried potato shred pancakes to the three-meal menu.”
“These are classified as snacks in ancient times; it’s fine to eat them after meals, but they can’t be used as main meals.”
Xiang Chuan huffed twice.
This conversation among the three siblings was naturally heard by the live stream room’s viewers, instantly making the Historical Research Institute members feel like they’d found treasure. The quick ones had already recorded their dialogue in real time. After all, while screenshots were allowed, audio and video recording had been refused authorization by Xiang Chuan.
“Sister, is the stuff in that gray bottle you’ve been messing with these past few days used to make these… uh, buns and steamed buns?”
“Yeah,” speaking of this, Xiang Chuan was very proud. “Impressive, right? This is made using ancient methods.”
“It is impressive, but…” Xiang Xue blinked her eyes. “Do we have to make this many buns every day?”
Xiang Chuan was suddenly stumped.
Looking at the small mountain of buns and steamed buns in front of her, thinking that these past few days had to consume a whole basin of yeast, she couldn’t help but hold her head:
Why did she make so much yeast starter back then!
