269 Broad-minded Brother Shao
Qiao Xuan thought for a while, and instructed Liu Yan to kill the chicken. She went to the flower field to pick some wolfberry sprouts, and then to the vegetable yard to get some fresh loofah, and beans. She also dug out some yams from the cellar, cut a handful of leeks, and went home. She made Liu Yan wash them all.
Then, she went to the yard to pick two large round watermelons and let them soak in the spring water. She picked some egg-sized tomatoes.
The two young masters were lucky. Even she herself had not eaten the ripe tomatoes yet.
For lunch, she stewed chicken with boletus and Hericium erinaceus, and battered the crucian carp with a thin layer of paste and fried it in oil. After that, there were many small river prawns that were braised and baked two days ago. In the meanwhile, there was steamed mandarin fish, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and loofah soup.
Beans, wolfberry sprouts and yams were all served as cold dishes.
She cut the beans into pieces about two inches long, blanched them and placed them on a plate neatly, sprinkled some salt and drizzled them with sesame oil.
Wolfberry sprouts were also mixed with sesame oil, salt and vinegar after being blanched.
Some seasoning and scallion slices were added to yams and wooden ears, after being blanched.
It was a table full of meat and vegetable dishes. The meat dishes were clean and bright, whilst the vegetable dishes were fresh and tender. For a farmer’s family, it was an extremely good lunch.
Yuezheng Xiao felt a bit bored. After being seated for too long, he went around in the yard, and Shao Yunduan kept him company.
Yuezheng Xiao laughed when he saw the spring in the backyard. “Brother Shao, you are really excellent to have got the spring. It is fun to watch!”
Shao Yunduan smiled. He didn’t think that it was fun, just handy to use.
Not far away from the spring, there was a half-man tall tank that drew their attention.
Yuezheng Xiao went forward and his eyes widened. “So many fish! You have kept so many kinds of fish which even I don’t know about!”
Xie Jingrong also had a look and found it amazing. He could not help but feel gratified. “Yeah! I have never seen these many varieties of fish!”
That was true. He was a young master who had either seen the gold fish or carps, or fish being served as food.
He had never seen these many kinds of strange fish that were swimming in the tank.
Shao Yunduan said, “My brother got the fish from the river. We keep them alive till we can’t finish them. If we feel like eating one, we will get one out and make a dish of it.”
“That is cool! Look at the hopping fish. They must taste really good! Brother Shao, your home is fun!”
Yuezheng Xiao could not help but feel a bit envious.
Xie Jingrong raised his eyebrows and walked towards a wall. He was looking at the pots of orchids on the shabby wooden shelf in full concentration.
Yuezheng Xiao was attracted. “Wow, these are orchids, they are so lively too! Vividly growing!”
Shao Yunduan smiled. “These are brought from the mountains! They look beautiful so they were planted here!”
Xie Jingrong sighed. “Brother Shao, you are so broad-minded. These are not ordinary orchids. These two pots are spring swords, this is the plain lotus tripod, this and this look like spring swords, but they are different, and here are the jade orchid and molan, but they are not exactly the same. Should be a variant, I believe.”
“Brother Shao, spring swords and plain lotus tripods are really difficult to get. These variants are so rare! Not many people are able to get one variant for one single plant throughout their whole life. Brother Shao, your flowers are worth a lot of money, judging from the leaves, shapes and colors.”