Chapter 147: Winter Daylight
The noodles were cooked very quickly.
Su Ran took out one large and one small wooden bowl, used the strainer to scoop up the noodles, drained the water, and put them into the two wooden bowls respectively.
Then she ladled a bit of bone broth from the pot of stewed ox bone and poured it over the two bowls of noodles.
Hui took the two bowls of noodles from the side and directly carried them into the room. Su Ran followed behind, also taking the freshly made chili oil.
After entering the room and sitting on the kang, they officially started the meal!
After sitting steadily on the kang, the moment she first took in all the food on the kang table at a glance, Su Ran suddenly felt a bit teary-eyed.
This was the first time in over half a year, nearly a year, in this world that she had seen food that looked so similar to the meals she used to eat before.
Su Ran scooped two spoonfuls of chili oil into her noodle bowl, stirred it evenly with chopsticks, then held up the bowl and first took a sip of the richly aromatic bone broth.
The bone broth had just the right saltiness upon entering the mouth. One could clearly feel that the essence from the bone and meat had been stewed into the broth, smooth and fresh in flavor upon tasting, with a distinct aftertaste of sweetness after swallowing.
And the flavor of the chili oil stimulated the taste buds, always making one want another sip.
Immediately after, Su Ran tasted a mouthful of the noodles in the broth.
The noodles were cut wide, making them even chewier to eat.
The noodles were coated with thick bone broth, and after chewing a few more times, the unique aroma of the flour would burst out between the teeth.
Su Ran ate a few bites of noodles, and at this time, in front of Hui opposite her, a large pile of big bones that had been gnawed very clean was already stacked up.
Even for some bones that were very small and had been stewed tender and mushy, he directly crunched them in his mouth along with the meat, chewed them to pieces, and swallowed them into his belly.
Su Ran also picked up a piece of bone and put it into her own bowl.
The meat on the bone had truly been stewed very soft and tender; it could even come off the bone easily without much pulling!
Even the bone marrow in the middle of the large pieces of bone had been stewed soft, mushy, and glossy.
One basin of bones was quickly gnawed clean by Su Ran and Hui.
After finishing, without Su Ran saying anything, Hui himself carried the basin to the kitchen and brought back another large basin.
It was clear that he really liked this batch of stewed big bones.
In the new basin of ox bone he brought, the bones inside were piled high, almost forming a peak!
Besides the bones, Hui also really liked his own bowl of bone broth noodles.
Imitating Su Ran’s action, he also scooped some chili oil into his noodle bowl.
Of course, his noodle bowl could no longer be called a noodle bowl.
It should be called a small basin.
Now Hui’s chopstick skills were already very proficient.
Even with long nails on his hands, it didn’t affect his proficiency with chopsticks at all.
That small basin of noodles was quickly eaten clean by Hui, and even the broth in the basin was drunk down to the bottom by him.
And the cold dish that Su Ran made using the leftover oyster meat from simmering the oyster sauce actually tasted quite good.
Except that the texture of the oyster meat was a bit off.
But because the sweet and spicy seasoning sauce was well-balanced, it could cover up the deficiency in the oyster meat’s texture.
Today’s dinner was eaten clean by Su Ran and Hui.
Of course, actually most of it was eaten by Hui.
Su Ran felt that Hui’s appetite seemed to have gotten a bit bigger recently.
Similarly, because his appetite had increased, his body looked a bit more robust than before.
After finishing the hot meal, Su Ran felt heat radiating from her entire body.
Even though it was already evening with the window still open, she didn’t feel cold at all.
The light outside the window had already dimmed a lot, and in another half hour, it would be completely dark outside.
Su Ran looked outside the half-open window, where only half of the view was visible, and suddenly remembered something.
She hadn’t made the animal hide window cloth to nail onto the window yet.
When building the house before, she had already thought about the lighting issue inside the room.
In summer, it was fine; during daytime, she could just open the window board directly.
But in winter, without glass and not even paper to paste over the windows, how to let a bit of light into the room became a problem.
Some time ago when she found cotton, Su Ran tried twisting cotton into wicks and using mutton fat as lamp oil to make two oil lamps.
The oil lamps made from mutton fat could indeed be lit, and the effect was decent, but the only drawback was that they used too much oil!
If lit for a while at night, it was okay.
But in winter, if the windows could only be closed to block out the cold air, then the room would need oil lamps lit almost all day.
At that time, no matter how many white-headed sheep Hui caught this autumn, the oil lamps from the rendered fat wouldn’t be enough.
When building the house before, Su Ran had thought about trying to thin the animal hide to see if it would have some translucency.
It was just that at the time she thought there was still time, and she had been busy with other things, so she forgot about it.
Recently, she finally remembered.
The next day early in the morning, after breakfast, Hui went out to continue hunting, and the prey from hunting was made into salt-cured meat.
The few prey hunted yesterday had been dismantled and cut into strips by Su Ran and Hui while there was still light in the evening after dinner, rubbed with a large amount of sea salt, and put into a large wooden bucket, directly stored in the small wooden house for winter meat storage.
And Su Ran at home today needed to solve the window lighting problem.
After ten-something in the morning, the sunlight outside had become bright.
Su Ran found a intact red-skinned pig animal hide from the stored animal hides.
Red-skinned pig hide was the thinnest among the types of animal hides.
Moreover, after boiling and removing the red hair, the pinkish skin surface underneath would lighten in color a lot.
The red-skinned pig hide in Su Ran’s hands had already been processed; if used for clothes, it was already soft enough.
She spread out the entire pig hide, took it to the window, and pressed one side of the red-skinned pig hide against the top frame of the window.
Under the brilliant sunlight, the pinkish-white animal hide could already let some light through.
But Su Ran still wanted it to be more translucent.
She put away this red-skinned pig hide, then went outside and brought all three red-skinned pig hides that Hui had peeled from yesterday’s hunt into the room.
These animal hides had already been scrubbed and beaten by Hui with green soap fruit pits after peeling, but they hadn’t undergone boiling and rubbing treatment yet.
So Su Ran lit a fire at the stove in the kitchen, added water to the pot, and put all the pig hides into the pot.
This time, she boiled the pig hides for a very long time, and the longer the time, the stronger the smell of the boiled pig hides.
So much so that the first time Hui came back from hunting outside, he even ran into the room, thinking Su Ran was cooking food again.
These red-skinned pig hides were boiled from ten in the morning until twelve noon.
Su Ran used an arm-thick wooden stick to gently lift the pig hides in the pot a bit to check.
After feeling it was about right, she immediately extinguished the fire, then fished out the hides one by one from the pot.
