Chapter 144: Making Oyster Sauce
This morning, Su Ran had her head buried inside the quilt, her face tightly pressed against Hui’s scorching hot chest, reluctant to get up for a long time.
The weather had completely turned cold, with the temperature dropping day by day, and Su Ran felt that the current weather was almost a little colder every day than the previous one!
Especially during this early morning moment, she could feel the cold wind sneaking in through the gaps in the window board, rushing straight to the top of her head.
Hui, on the other hand, had become completely accustomed to her recent behavior of increasingly loving to stay in bed.
Even before Su Ran woke up, it would already cover the quilt all the way to the top of her head.
It would also thoughtfully leave a small gap from the top for her, so she wouldn’t suffocate from being buried inside the quilt!
Su Ran dozed off a little more inside the quilt, and when she woke up again, she wrapped herself in the quilt, stayed awake for two seconds, then quickly got up and put on clothes.
Her plan for today was to go to the seaside to pick oysters and then try to simmer oyster sauce at home.
It was seven o’clock in the morning now, and she planned to go early, pick until noon at the seaside, then return, and simmer in the afternoon.
This morning’s breakfast was the leftover stewed beef from yesterday.
After the weather got colder and colder, besides the beastmen who were afraid of heat feeling a bit more comfortable, another benefit was that food that couldn’t be finished could now be stored without spoiling.
The stewed beef was specially made extra last night by Su Ran; she stewed a full half of one.
For a four-eared ox like this, if roasted, Hui could eat half of it in one go before.
But now, because Hui was also eating white bean fruit, it actually ate much less meat.
At the beginning, Su Ran was a bit worried that if Hui changed its dietary habits like this, it might have some impact on its body.
But from summer until now eating white bean fruit, Hui’s body showed no abnormalities.
This slightly relieved Su Ran.
Later, she thought that Bai Bai, Xiao San, and the others, as herbivorous beastmen, also ate white bean fruit before she arrived here.
Although they and Hui were different types of beastmen, compared to beasts, both Bai Bai and the others and Hui now had body structures that were more similar to humans.
So Bai Bai and the others eating meat, and Hui eating plants, should both be normally digestible and absorbable by their bodies.
The difference was just a matter of preference.
Before eight o’clock in the morning, Su Ran and Hui set off together to the seaside.
Now, every time Su Ran went out, especially when she had to be held by Hui to fly on the way, she would always put on the thin sweater she made beforehand.
She also made a hat and a scarf for herself and Hui; the hat was made of cowhide with thick four-eared ox wool.
The four-eared ox’s short wool was exposed on the outside, and inside the hat was sewn a lining crocheted with sheep wool yarn, with a thin layer of cotton stuffed inside the sheep wool lining.
When setting off, Su Ran wrapped herself tightly with this hat and scarf.
Otherwise, she feared that once they flew up, the cold wind generated during high-speed flying would hit her body and freeze her stiff.
Now Su Ran was immensely grateful to her best friend from her original world.
She actually had no interest at all in knitting things.
Later, for two years, that best friend suddenly became interested in DIY handicrafts.
To the point that for two years, the birthday and various holiday gifts Su Ran gave her were all learned from videos and knitted on the spot.
Compared to her who was extremely afraid of the cold, Hui had only changed from shorts to capri pants, and was only wearing a large vest as an upper garment.
It seemed that the current season was precisely the most comfortable season for the beastmen.
Su Ran even somewhat suspected that even by deep winter, the cotton clothes and cotton pants she made, Hui might still feel hot wearing them and wouldn’t be able to wear them at all.
At least now, the cotton quilt they covered every night when sleeping, and the animal hide blanket they used before, Hui basically didn’t cover much.
Even if sometimes it wanted to snuggle with Su Ran and burrow into the quilt, it would only stay for a short while before being covered in sweat.
And now, Hui only draped a bit of the animal hide blanket over itself during the early morning each day.
Upon arriving at the seaside, even after landing on the ground, it was obvious that the seaside air was much colder than before.
Especially with the strong wind today, Su Ran felt even colder.
But Hui still seemed completely unaffected, even the scarf around its neck was forcibly wrapped on by Su Ran when they set off.
The oysters at the seaside had indeed grown much larger, just as Hui said before.
Su Ran picked up the meat from an already opened oyster and compared it to her hand, finding that the oyster meat inside had grown longer than her two hands held upright side by side.
She didn’t know how big oysters on Earth could grow.
But Su Ran felt that these oysters in front of her, nearly thirty centimeters long and over ten centimeters wide, were already larger than her cognition of what oysters should be!
And this was just the size of the oyster meat; even eating it directly, Su Ran felt one would be enough to fill her up!
However, while the oyster meat was bigger, which was good, the oyster shells had also grown along with the meat.
Su Ran felt that the current oyster shells alone already accounted for eight or nine jin of the entire oyster’s weight.
And after the shells grew bigger, they became even harder to crack open.
Finally, Su Ran simply used the multi-tool axe to knock a small opening at the top of the oyster shell first, then used the axe blade to split along the edge of the opening bit by bit, separating the two shells.
Because the oyster meat was now so large, this time the two large animal hide bags were quickly filled with shelled oyster meat.
When she and Hui returned, it was just ten-thirty in the morning.
After getting home, Su Ran first dumped all these oysters into a wooden basin and washed them one by one.
After washing them all, she rinsed them together with water twice more before confidently putting them in the pot to boil.
For these two large bags of oysters, Su Ran estimated it would take at least four batches to boil them all.
So she lit fires in both stoves inside the house, then put oysters in both pots to boil simultaneously.
Because there was a large amount of oysters in the pots, after the water boiled, she cooked them a bit longer.
After boiling for nearly fifty minutes, she first scooped out all the oyster meat from the nest and put it into two empty basins.
These oyster meat boiled for a long time, although the texture was a bit off, were still edible.
Su Ran planned to mix some with chili oil to eat later, and whatever couldn’t be eaten could be saved to feed the chickens.
Anyway, with the current weather, they wouldn’t spoil so quickly!
