Chapter 231: Pork Feast
By the time the Chinese Cabbage Bone Marrow Bone Soup was served into the bowls of Class Eight, it was exactly dinner time on the Fourth Production Escort Ship.
Thanks to the word-of-mouth from cadres to employees across the entire Production Escort Ship over the past two days, even the front-desk staff in the Agriculture Department of the Fourth Production Escort Ship now knew: the First Canteen had good food, and it was gourmet food made by the recipe provider for Yue Xiang Restaurant.
They also knew: this provider was a student, and after the visit activity ended today, they would head back to the Main Ship first thing tomorrow morning.
This made them anxious. The employees who had tasted white rice, congee water, salad, and steamed milk pudding were anxious, and the vast majority of employees who had missed out on the gourmet food these past two days due to the distance from their workplaces to the First Canteen were even more anxious.
—The Yue Xiang Restaurant on the Main Ship still hadn’t opened its first branch store here, and who knew how long it would take for their own canteen to get recipe authorization! If they missed this wave today, there would be nothing to eat!
Thus, driven by longing for the rumored ancient gourmet food, or curiosity about the novel edible processing methods for ingredients, on the final evening of the Agricultural University Affiliated High School students’ visit to the Fourth Production Escort Ship, an enormous line formed in front of the entire First Canteen.
Xiang Chuan, following Class Eight’s large group to the Student Dining Area outside the canteen to find seats, was stunned by the sea of people in front of the canteen entrance.
“Why are so many people here to eat today? This canteen can’t seat all these people, right?”
Xiang Chuan stood on tiptoe to look in the direction the line extended. Good grief, it stretched almost to the rest area of the Staple Food Crop Production Department planting zone.
“When I came out just now, I saw Manager Wu and Chief Steward An Jing arranging meal boxes for packaging. They’ll probably let these employees who came to eat take the food to go.” Class President Lu Daiqing also glanced in the direction of the line and couldn’t help laughing. “This scene reminds me of the first day our school cafeteria got authorization for Yue Xiang Restaurant recipes. That day, the entire school rushed to the cafeteria to squeeze in for meals.”
“More than that. Someone took photos of the cafeteria dishes and posted them on social platforms. Apparently, quite a few diners from Yue Xiang Restaurants near the school desperately applied to the principal to eat in the school cafeteria.” Long Xiaoxian spilled the gossip, then muttered at the end: “If I’d known it would be like this, I would’ve quoted a higher price back then.”
This guy had made a killing in those few days after the cafeteria got authorization by acting as a purchasing agent for cafeteria dishes to off-campus diners.
Later, after Agricultural University and the affiliated elementary school also got recipe authorizations one after another, Long Xiaoxian’s purchasing agent business cooled off quite a bit. But now, he had turned his sights to the limited recipes of A Bite of China Club.
After all, only A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant and Xiang Family Kitchen could provide drinks like fruit milk.
Xiang Chuan turned a blind eye to this purchasing agent behavior from her classmate, because fruit was not yet being produced on a large scale, and A Bite of China Club’s juice and fruit milk were limited supply. Long Xiaoxian wanted to deal in them, but could only operate on a small scale.
However, Long Xiaoxian was still unrelenting. He sidled up to Xiang Chuan and mimicked the thumb-and-index-finger, middle-finger rubbing gesture he had seen in Xiang Xue Live Stream Room (Xiang Chuan: How did this thing become popular?), whispering to Xiang Chuan: “Classmate Xiang Chuan, look, this steamed milk pudding and salad dressing aren’t staple food or dishes to go with staple food. Why don’t we register usage rights in the name of A Bite of China Club and make them ourselves…”
“Stop, stop, know when to quit.” Xiang Chuan quickly interrupted this money-grubbing guy. “It’s not that I don’t want to make them myself, but think about it: sourcing raw materials, processing, food production, sterilization, packaging, storage, transportation, sales… We students don’t have the conditions to do all that. Think about our own current situation before you speak, OK?”
This was Xiang Chuan’s sincere thought. After she first made yeast and steamed buns and buns, she had gotten carried away and wanted to be like the protagonists in transmigration novels: start her own brand, build a gourmet food empire, then cross over into other fields and give modern people a real 21st Century shock. So, drawing on her many years of corporate slave experience, she started writing a project plan. But three minutes of enthusiasm was still just three minutes. She did finish writing the project plan itself, but when she saw the densely packed preparation work and precautions listed above, Xiang Chuan’s corporate slave heart from her previous life throbbed painfully—
I’ve become a lie flat, eat and wait for death second generation rich this lifetime! Why torture myself like this!
So she decisively tossed this project plan into the trash can on her personal terminal’s main page… next to the folder. After all, she had spent a whole night making it; deleting it outright would be too wasteful.
Xiang Chuan: Sometimes I feel utterly hopeless about the corporate slave genes in my DNA.
A Bite of China Club’s small restaurant hadn’t originally been in Xiang Chuan’s plans, but after seeing the club building completed and the sudden drop in her pocket money account, she decisively opened a restaurant to replenish her pocket money. Plus, the products made by Ouyang Yating and the others—outer appearances not quite up to standard but tastes just fine—could be sold at a discount to other students, effectively reducing ingredient waste rate.
After Yue Xiang Restaurant began opening branches everywhere on the Third Fleet Main Ship, Xiang Chuan’s authorization revenue shares started coming in steadily, and A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant’s turnover was also thriving, finally letting her relax a bit about her pocket money.
Now Xiang Chuan just wanted to be a lie flat person selling authorizations: make whatever she wanted to eat casually, then sell the authorizations to her dad’s Yue Xiang Group and wait for the revenue share.
Still that old saying: If you can make money lying down, why stand?
——
After the first-year high school students sat down in the dining area, the first thing they reached for with their chopsticks and spoons was the meat patty.
The meaty aroma wafting from the meat patties when they came out of the pot had set all the Class Eight students in the kitchen boiling with excitement, making students from other classes full of curiosity about this one pork dish they could get a share of.
In the ceramic-textured bowl, the meat patty dotted with bits of fat lay at the bottom. Xiang Chuan had sprinkled some black pepper on it before it came out to enhance the flavor, topped with eggs. Some students got eggs with beaten yolks, and they occasionally laughed and cursed toward the area where Class Eight was sitting. The most enticing aroma came from the meat juices seeping out during the steaming and cooking of the meat patty. Some students carefully scooped up the meat juice with a spoon and took a light sip: the fresh pork flavor and yolk smoothness blended into the juice, delivering a shocking impact that left them stunned.
More people couldn’t hold back and directly stretched their chopsticks toward the meat patty, picking up a small piece and eagerly popping it into their mouths. The meat patty, made of mostly lean minced meat, was very palatable. Egg white seeped into the gaps in the meat patty, making it firmer while adding a slippery texture from the egg white.
The students were surprised by the texture and characteristics of pork, which differed from beef and chicken, and even more surprised that this pork—actually had not a trace of fishy smell!
You know, the fishy smell of pork and the earthy smell of freshwater fish were the culprits that made all production escort ships in the fleet steer clear of these two meats. And even A Bite of China Club President, who had easily solved the earthy smell issue with freshwater fish, had repeatedly failed against pork until this morning.
And today, at this moment, the pork fishy smell problem, considered the most difficult to conquer, was just… solved like that?
Students from other classes whose family elders worked in animal husbandry or related meat processing looked toward Class Eight with complex emotions. They had heard their elders complain endlessly about pork issues at home, but today it felt… like no big deal in front of A Bite of China Club President?
Immune to the gazes around her, what was Xiang Chuan doing? She was using the megaphone built into her personal terminal to shout loudly in the area where Class Eight was sitting—
“Don’t just eat meat! Eat more green vegetables! I didn’t make this much meat just for you to eat only meat! Old Lu, you’re the class president! Set a good example!”
“There’s radish in the soup! Eat a couple pieces when you suck the bone marrow! Don’t just stare at the bone marrow bone—Man Man! You can’t bite the bone! Stop biting! Your teeth will chip if you keep going!”
“Too much pork gets greasy, eat more vegetables— Aino you bastard! Don’t take my pork liver!”
Xiang Chuan: Heart tired.
