Chapter 102: Fully Mature Green Soap Fruit
The weather was getting hotter and hotter.
Inside the woods, with the trees blocking, it didn’t feel like it yet.
Now at the seaside, after picking shellfish and blue worms on the beach for just a short while, Su Ran already felt dizzy from being sunburned by the weather!
And she already felt the weather was so hot it was unbearable, let alone Gray.
At this moment, its entire body was soaked in seawater, with only its head exposed outside.
Occasionally, it would flip over and dive into the water, and after a while, throw a fish up from the water.
Only now did Su Ran realize that the reason the beastmen went naked and refused to wear clothes was probably because they were inherently heat-sensitive and not cold-sensitive.
In the previous cold spring, Gray’s bare body felt scorching hot to the touch.
Now in midsummer, as soon as it was exposed to the sun for a while, Gray would quickly run inside the house or under the tree to avoid the heat.
At this moment, Su Ran also didn’t dare to stay under the blazing sun for too long.
She moved the place for making fire and cooking to the edge of the woods behind. Tall trees overhead cast shadows, perfectly blocking the scorching sunlight.
She also built a rain shelter here, slightly larger than the one at the river beach, just as she had imagined before.
Then she put all the tools that didn’t need to be taken back inside the rain shelter.
Not far outside the rain shelter, Su Ran also set up a stove for cooking food and boiling salt.
At this moment, there were two backpacks of green soap fruits in front of Su Ran.
Nearly three months had passed, and the green soap fruits had gone from being full of moisture before to slightly moist later, and now, the fruit flesh inside had become completely dry.
Once opened, even just gently scraping the fruit flesh with a nail would cause the dried green soap fruit flesh to fall off like powder.
This should be what fully mature green soap fruit looks like.
Because of building the house, Gray had rarely flown to the seaside to find food during this time, so Su Ran and they hadn’t eaten green soap fruits much either; even if there were any, they were only the ones Gray had picked and brought back after selecting.
Although Su Ran knew the green soap fruit flesh had been drying all along, she wasn’t clear what it would ultimately become.
So when she first saw the current state of the green soap fruit flesh, Su Ran was stunned!
Later, after scraping off a piece of fruit flesh that had turned into a white powder block with her nail and tasting it, the expression on her face instantly turned to shock!
This state of the fruit flesh!
This powdery texture!
Isn’t this flour!
The fruit flesh of fully mature green soap fruit was so dry it had no moisture left!
Similarly, the sweetness originally in the fruit flesh was now almost gone.
If one ignored the original appearance of the green soap fruit and directly crushed this white fruit flesh into fine powder to compare with flour, now there would be no difference at all between them.
Su Ran, who discovered this change in the green soap fruit, picked a backpack of fruit and brought it back that same day.
After returning, she placed two tables on the grassland outside the house, and spread a clean animal hide on the tables.
Then she knocked open most of the fruit and put them on the animal hide.
For the fruit that still had some undried parts inside, she first left them on the animal hide to continue drying in the sunlight.
And for those that were already fully dry, she used a wooden spoon to dig out all the fruit flesh inside that had turned into dry powder blocks.
The skin of fully mature green soap fruit was very thick, its color had turned somewhat yellowish from green, and it felt hard to the touch, a bit like a coconut shell.
After digging out all the green soap fruit flesh, Su Ran directly found a round thick wooden stick, sawed it to a length of over twenty centimeters, then used the wooden stick to first smash the fruit flesh into pieces and then grind it into powder.
Before starting to cook food with this green soap fruit powder, Su Ran still felt a bit uncertain inside.
Because she remembered that when she previously boiled green soap fruit in water to eat, the cooked green soap fruit flesh would turn translucent.
She was uncertain whether the current green soap fruit would still turn that way after cooking.
If so, then this green soap fruit might have to be removed from the recipe for her and Gray.
Because the sticky, gooey texture of the fruit flesh after turning translucent was really hard to eat!
That day, Su Ran directly made gnocchi soup with the green soap fruit powder.
Because she was afraid it wouldn’t taste good and would waste other ingredients, she only used one green soap fruit.
She put mutton fat into the pot, heated it up, first added the fresh scallops picked from the seaside, then added thick lettuce leaves and kelp leaves together to stir-fry; after stir-frying until almost done, she added water and salt.
She stirred the green soap fruit powder with water into a slightly thick paste; after the soup in the pot came to a boil, she used a spoon to scoop the fruit powder paste into the pot little by little.
The fruit powder paste on the spoon immediately dropped off by itself when it touched the boiling hot water, rolling in the boiling scallop green vegetable soup in the pot.
Su Ran added the paste while watching the condition in the pot.
And all the way until this bowl of gnocchi soup was ready, the white noodle blocks in the pot showed no change in color.
Su Ran’s hands trembled slightly with excitement!
She scooped out a noodle block to examine it carefully, and found that the edges of these noodle blocks were still slightly translucent, but not as obvious as before.
She couldn’t wait and quickly blew on the noodle block twice before putting it into her mouth.
When her teeth bit into the already softened cooked noodle block, the fresh seafood flavor sticking to the outside filled her mouth, followed by a familiar noodle taste on the tip of her tongue.
The moment Su Ran tasted the texture of the noodle block, she was almost in tears!
This was pure flour!
This was a carb staple that made one feel utterly satisfied with just one bite!!
She never thought that in her lifetime she could still taste flour staple food!!
So this pot of gnocchi soup almost all went into Su Ran’s belly.
Compared to Su Ran who was joyful over discovering flour, Gray didn’t like the taste of flour as much.
But it just didn’t like eating the noodle lumps, not that it wouldn’t eat them.
Su Ran served it a bowl with only a few small noodle lumps, and it still drank it clean.
The broth of the gnocchi soup carried the fresh flavors of scallops and kelp, and the thick lettuce leaves were tender and soft after stir-frying and then boiling in water.
After finishing the meal, Su Ran felt a great sense of satisfaction.
From that day on, Su Ran paid special attention to these green soap fruits that had reached the mature season.
She counted the green soap fruit trees here at the seaside one by one, and there were twenty-four in total.
And according to Gray, there were several places in the nearby forest where green soap fruit trees grew.
But because they had been eating from this area at the seaside during this time.
So now there weren’t many green soap fruits left on the trees here.
After all, there was a period when Gray was obsessed with eating roasted green soap fruit.
And now, Su Ran had to collect all these fruits home before they spoiled on these trees or were eaten by other animals.
