Chapter 3 - Making Breakfast

As the sun set, the day's work was finally over.

Su Yue stretched her sore waist. It was the first time she had experienced the hardships of farmers.

It turned out that bending over to work was such a painful thing. Even if the work did not require much effort, just bending and getting up again and again was enough to make you feel like being ran over by a car.

Dragging her feet back to her house like an old cow, Su Yue finally collapsed on the bed. She was going to fall apart.

The pain wasn’t only in her back, legs, and feet. Her whole body was not well.

As a post ‘90s generation who had never worked hard since infancy, she had never felt so sore.

Would it be so painful every day from now on?

Su Yue suddenly understood why the original owner was so resistant to living here. The original had also never done any heavy work in her life and then, all of a sudden, she was sent to the countryside and had to do farm work every day.

Had Su Yue encountered such a situation, although she would not think of giving up her life, she would definitely also feel depressed.

Su Yue was very worried about being unable to persist. It was really too painful to do farm work, but if she didn’t do it, then what about eating?

Educated youths came here alone. There was no family around. If they wanted to eat, they had to earn money on their own, as no work meant no food. Moreover, even if they had food to eat, the brigade couldn’t allow them to be lazy because the purpose of coming to the countryside in the first place was to work.

That is, unless you could find someone willing to support you, and the only way was by marrying. Only then could you not go to work and rely on the other people in your family to earn work points.

This was the case in the village. After coming, many educated youths had no hope of returning to the city and couldn't stand the hard work day after day, so they simply married people here and settled down.

Thinking of marrying someone, Su Yue couldn't help but think of Han Aiguo.

She suddenly discovered that it was simply impossible to see Han Aiguo in the place where she worked.

According to the system, Han Aiguo was in bed with serious injuries in his legs. It was naturally impossible for a person who can't even walk to work.

Therefore, there was no way for her to contact Han Aiguo while she was working.

But how could she contact him?

While Su Yue was thinking hard, there was a knock at the door. It was Li Xiaoqing again.

"Su Yue, the meal is done. If you don't come out, the porridge will turn cold."

"Oh, I’m coming." Su Yue hurriedly got up from the bed, and only then did she feel her stomach growling like it was about to eat itself.

Forget it. You have to fill your stomach first, only then can you have the strength to take the next step.

Following Li Xiaoqing to the kitchen, there was a table inside with three people sitting by it, already halfway through their meals. The three did not wait for them, but there were another two bowls of porridge with wotou [1] left by the side.

There were a total of five educated youths living in this yard, all of them female. Each house had two people and only her lived in a house alone.

Except for Li Xiaoqing, none of the other three had a very good attitude towards her. They didn't say hello when they saw her coming and could not even be bothered to look at her, as if she didn't exist.

Su Yue also didn't think about trying to please anyone. Since they ignored her, she wouldn't take the initiative to say anything. She just sat by the table, picked up her own bowl of porridge and drank.

However, after a mouthful, she almost spat it out.

This porridge was too coarse!

The porridge was made with big corn kernels [2], but they were too hard, hurting the throat when you swallowed.

The only wotou was also rough, eating just a bite more than the porridge almost choked her to death.

Su Yue felt suffocated to tears.

But even if she didn't want to, she had to eat. If she didn’t, she could only go hungry. It was hopeless to want to eat something good. This was the case in this era with scarce supplies and lack of clothing and food in rural areas. It was already good enough to be able to fill one’s stomach. Naturally, it was impossible to think about eating well.

"Ai..." sighing softly, Su Yue lamented her future life.

As a person, her main interest and concern is food. Food has become something absolutely indispensable for her. If there is no food, there is no meaning.

But the system dropped her here.

It seemed that going forward she had to not only think about the task, but also about how to make good food.

However, she didn’t have any ingredients in her hands, and she had not quite figured out the situation here. If she wanted to eat well, she needed to plan carefully.

Moreover, the next few days would be the busiest period of rice harvesting. Everyone was going all out to harvest rice. They came and went in a hurry and there was no time at all to care about food. It was even more unlikely that she would be able to take time off to find ingredients and make something edible. Her food scheme would have to wait until the rice harvesting was over.

Thinking about this, Su Yue had to accept the predicament in front of her, clench her jaw and drink the bowl of throat-scratching porridge and throat-grating wotou. Even so, she could barely fill her stomach. At least there was no need to go to bed hungry.

Towards the end of the meal, one of the female educated youths named Wei Jia said to Su Yue in an unpleasant tone: "Su Yue, you will be responsible for cooking tomorrow, so I hope you can get up early. Don’t let us not even have breakfast. If you don’t make it, we all have to go to work hungry."

When she said this, everyone else also looked at her unhappily, with obvious dissatisfaction in their eyes.

Su Yue was stunned, but then she remembered what was going on.

After the original owner came here, because of depression, she lived everyday in a daze. When it was her turn to cook, she couldn't get up in the morning. Not only that, she was not used to the earthen stove, making it very difficult to cook. This resulted in delays on breakfast several times, causing everyone to go work on an empty stomach.

Everyone was very dissatisfied with her, but after talking to the original owner a few times and being ignored, they gradually also started ignoring her. Except for Li Xiaoqing who was a little better to the original owner, the other three collectively disdained her.

Su Yue felt that this was indeed the original’s fault. No wonder everyone had this attitude towards her.

With a sigh in her heart, Su Yue nodded and said, "Okay, I know. I will get up early to make breakfast tomorrow morning, don't worry."

Hearing this, everyone was stunned, expecting her ignore them as if she hadn't heard anything like before.

This made the other people somewhat confused about what to say.

The scene was suddenly a bit embarrassing. Li Xiaoqing took the lead, standing up and saying: "Well, we are all tired today. Let's boil water to wash and go to bed. We will be busy again tomorrow."

Then everyone moved and started to do their own things.

Su Yue didn't compete with the others either. After everyone had washed up, she went to the kitchen to boil hot water, then entered her room holding a basin and barely gave herself a bath.

Although this way of bathing made her very heartbroken, it was better than not washing at all. Su Yue could only put on a fake smile to face her hardships, as this could also be regarded as experiencing human suffering.

After washing, Su Yue laid back on the bed. Originally, she wanted to think about what to do next, however, as soon as her body touched the bed she fell asleep before she could even blink.

When Su Yue woke up the next day, the sun had just come out, and there was a sound of rooster crowing not far away.

She didn't know what time it was. Listening carefully to the movement outside, she found that it was very quiet. The others hadn't gotten up yet.

Su Yue remembered that it was her turn to cook today, and didn't dare to delay. She simply got up and went to the kitchen to wash up, and then hurriedly started making breakfast.

The original owner was no good at using earthen stoves, but she could use them smoothly. The key issue was the ingredients. The only ingredients they had here were corn and cornmeal. The corn was used to make porridge or stew, and the cornmeal was used to steam wotou or fry pancakes. Not only that, the amount of rice was so pitiful it could hardly be used to do anything worthwhile.

Now she truly understood what hardship was.

What was that saying? Even a clever woman can’t cook without rice. Her current situation should be a true portrayal of this sentence.

In her previous life she was so good her private kitchen reservation had a waiting line of two years, but how could she make anything out of thin air?

Su Yue pulled her hair in distress, almost balding herself.

Seeing it was already late, Su Yue was afraid of delaying everyone's breakfast and decided to make do with what she had.

She washed the corn, put it in the pot with the right amount of water and started cooking the porridge.

She could only use her own experience to make the porridge softer and the pancakes edible.

After thinking about it, Su Yue started to mix the cornmeal and knead it into dough, then pressed them into oval shapes. After the porridge was cooked, she served it to cool. The pan was heated again and brushed with some oil very carefully. Of course, just a little bit, barely enough to make the pancake not stick to the pan.

No way, just a tiny little bit of oil. If she used it up all at once others would probably want her head.

With oil in the pot, Su Yue glued the pancakes on the borders, then took out the only condiments from the cupboard and quickly mixed a bowl of her own sauce, adding it to the pot. When it was almost ready, she slowly brushed the sauce onto the pancakes, then, after absorbed, put out the fire in the stove and used the remaining heat to fry the pancakes to the right degree [3].

The pancakes at this time tasted the best, and also had the strongest fragrance.

Su Yue took a few sniffs and smiled satisfactorily.

Although the corn pancakes were not usually delicious, she could guarantee that the ones made by herself should be considered a delicacy here, or at the very least they wouldn't make people hurt their throats just from swallowing.

[1] Wotou (窝窝头) - Steamed corn bread.

[2] Dazhuzi (大碴子) - Large corn kernels used to make a ton of foods in the Northeast. You need to soak them first and then boil them for a long time before they can be eaten without choking someone to death, so let’s pretend Su Yue thought ahead and left them to soak overnight.

[3] If you throw 面饼子贴在锅 (~pasted pancakes) on youtube you get a lot of One Pot Stew recipes, so the “sauce” can be whatever you want. The picture below is like a SSS version while Su Yue’s is more of a E. Also, usually they’re made from wheat flour? I think the cornmeal ones should be drier, but I have no evidence.