Chapter 361: Chapter 360: Pickled Vegetables
Jiang Feng’s mentality collapsed.
The direct consequence of a shattered mentality was mistaking the sugar jar for the salt jar and sprinkling half a spoon of sugar into the pot.
Zhou Shi, who was standing right next to Jiang Feng and witnessed him turn his minced meat and eggplant dish into a sweet minced meat and eggplant dish: ? ? ?
“Did the customer request the eggplant to be sweet?” Zhou Shi asked with a puzzled face.
“What sweet?” Jiang Feng was lost in thought.
“You just scooped sugar,” Zhou Shi reminded him.
Jiang Feng finally snapped back to reality, tasted the eggplant in the pot, and silently poured it into the swill bucket.
The eggplant incident was just a minor interlude. It had been four months since the last game update after the cooking competition, and Jiang Feng had grown accustomed to using his Appraisal Skill to see a rough evaluation rating before tasting the dish himself, then using the skill again to see the detailed evaluation.
He had also become used to looking at the recipes every night before bed, observing those dishes that he couldn’t practice at the moment due to insufficient skill or overly expensive ingredients. Whether it was Superior Soup Lobster, Two-tone Prawns, Swallow Begets Pigeon, or Crab Stuffed with Orange or Zha Jiang Mian, Jiang Feng had watched the preparation process of these dishes dozens of times. Although he had never actually practiced them, he had “made” them many times in his mind, like a giant acting as a dwarf in his imagination.
Now that the game had updated, the cheat Jiang Feng had been using was temporarily offline, which made him feel somewhat uncomfortable.
On the way home in the evening, Wu Minqi keenly noticed Jiang Feng’s discomfort.
“Fengfeng, are you feeling unwell tonight? You seem off,” Wu Minqi said, walking shoulder to shoulder with Jiang Feng on their way home, brushing past the overworked 996 office drones as usual.
“I just didn’t feel right while cooking tonight,” replied Jiang Feng, “I really wasn’t in the zone.”
“Have you been too tired lately?” Wu Minqi asked with concern, “You haven’t rested much these past days. Do you want to take a day off tomorrow or go to an art exhibit with us in a few days to relax?”
“Art exhibit?”
“Isn’t Yue coming back in a few days? There’s an art exhibit this weekend that’s supposed to last for a week. Yue has mentioned wanting to see it, and I plan to go. Zhang Guanghang is also interested. Since we only work a half-day on the 27th due to taste testing, we’re planning to go to the exhibit. Do you want to come with us?” Wu Minqi asked.
“Sure, I’ve been wanting to see an art exhibit myself, whose exhibit is it?” Jiang Feng readily agreed. In truth, he knew next to nothing about art, but since his wife wanted to go to the exhibit, he naturally had to accompany her.
Not just to an art exhibit, but to a comic convention as well.
“It’s a solo exhibit by an up-and-coming Italian painter. Yue seems to like his drawing style a lot,” Minqi said, “Do you enjoy art exhibits as well, Fengfeng?”
“Uh… I quite enjoy looking at famous people’s works,” Jiang Feng replied earnestly.
For instance, works by celebrities with high popularity like “Detective Conan,” “Fairy Tail,” and the like.
A blend of the refined and the popular, the refined and the popular.
“Here I thought you weren’t into that sort of thing. There’s a jewelry exhibit in December, do you want to go see it together?” Wu Minqi asked with a smile.
“Sure,” Jiang Feng responded with a smile.
A jewelry exhibit?
What’s that?
The day after the game went offline, Jiang Feng began to regain his touch for cooking.
On the third day of the game being offline, everything returned to normal. Jiang Feng started to practice when he needed to practice, chat when he needed to chat, take scoldings when he needed to be scolded, and date when he needed to date. Although the game was temporarily suspended, the buff food that Jiang Feng had made himself remained effective and did not affect his regular work.
On the fourth day after the game went offline, Ji Yue beat up her annoying little brother, Ji Qiran, and came back home. When she left, she had bought a high-speed train ticket, but could only afford a hard seat on the train for her return trip. She brought back a huge bag of homemade secret sauce pickles and appetizers made by her mom and grandma, all packaged tightly in various jars and containers, which made Jiang Feng wonder if her family used to be in the pickle business before they went downhill.
Ji Yue arrived by train at eight in the evening. Zhang Guanghang went to the train station to pick her up. As soon as they got home, they sent WeChat messages to invite Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi to come and share the loot.
When Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi pushed the door open, they saw Ji Xue, Ji Yue, and Zhang Guanghang, each sitting on a little stool, unpacking the plastic foam wrapped around the jars at the coffee table.
Smelling a jar of Lao Gan Ma, Ji Yue said, “This is pickled sword beans.”
She then skillfully handed the jar to Ji Xue, who placed it at the bottom left corner of the coffee table.
Ji Yue picked up another jar of olive vegetables, sniffed, and said, “Seems like chopped peppers, no, wait, are they chopped or pickled peppers? My mom’s got it sealed too tight. Zhang, you smell it.”
Zhang Guanghang took the jar and sniffed at it, “Chopped peppers.”
He then placed the jar just as adeptly at the bottom right corner of the coffee table.
“Yue, what’s this?” Ji Xue pulled a clear container from the big tote bag, containing a mysterious strip-like substance that was somewhere between black and brown in color.
“It’s the new dried pumpkin my mom started making recently. Just put it on the floor; I don’t recommend eating this thing,” Ji Yue said as she began to smell another jar.
Jiang Feng & Wu Minqi: …
The three of them really looked like bandits dividing up the spoils.
Walking forward, Jiang Feng quickly glanced over the situation. He suspected Ji Yue might have brought every single jar from her house with her. The Jiang family’s five households probably couldn’t turn out so many different shapes of jars.
She must have carried a few dozen pounds all the way here, plus she had to squeeze onto a train with a hard seat ticket for over twenty hours, and that’s not counting the other luggage. It wasn’t easy for Ji Gezi to come alive to Beijing.
“Didn’t you say it was just a little bit of pickles?” Jiang Feng felt he needed to redefine his understanding of the term ‘a little bit.’
“You didn’t see it with your own eyes in my house. My dad’s been running a business out of town for months and only comes home once. Now, with nothing to do at home, my mom spends her days making this stuff and gardening. She even took over the wisteria trellis in our backyard to grow loofahs, and stopped keeping spider plants and roses, instead planting onions and garlic in the flower pots. When I got home, the first thing I saw wasn’t my brother but a long line of pickle jars in the laundry room on the first floor. If it weren’t for my brother’s mess, my mom would be learning how to make vinegar by now,” Ji Yue said with a dispirited face, randomly picking up a large jar, giving it a sniff, and passing it to Zhang Guanghang, “Pickled cucumbers.”
“Let us help you guys,” Wu Minqi said, walking over to Ji Yue, crouching down, and pulling out a plump jar from the bag.
After a sniff, Wu Minqi’s brow furrowed, realizing that things weren’t so simple.
“Is this… kimchi?” Wu Minqi hesitated. As a Shu person skilled in the art of making pickles, she really didn’t want to admit that the stuff in the jar she was holding was kimchi.
Ji Yue leaned over to take a sniff and nodded, “It’s kimchi. My mom recently learned how to make kimchi from someone else. Not recommended for consumption, put it on the floor.”
Jiang Feng also stepped forward to help, picking up a small jar and smelling it.
“Shanghai green pickles,” he declared.
Ji Yue looked at him and complimented, “An expert, huh!”
“My mom also likes to make pickles,” said Jiang Feng, glancing at the plethora of jars and bottles on the floor and table. “Only pickles.”
Then the five of them set to work, sorting the heavy, diverse, and numerous expressions of love from Ji Yue’s mom.