Chapter 4: Shopping

After lunch, Chen Huihong escorted Chen Huihui home to rest. Zhao Rong, feeling the house wasn't clean enough for the evening guests, dragged Qin Congwen back for a second round of cleaning. Qin Huai and Qin Luo headed to the supermarket on the negative first floor of the shopping mall to buy ingredients. Ouyang, who had over an hour before his shift started and nothing else to do, tagged along to buy groceries.

The supermarket on the negative first floor was a massive hypermarket. The fresh produce section was as abundant as a wet market, and naturally, the prices were equally abundant, leaving Qin Luo, who rarely bought groceries and knew nothing about market prices, completely bewildered.

"Lychees... 128 yuan a box? One box has... one, two, three... nine pieces. Brother, this supermarket sells lychees at 14 yuan each!" Qin Luo was shocked.

Qin Huai didn't buy lychees or even look at them; he was picking spinach in the nearby vegetable section. To be fair, although this supermarket was expensive, its quality control was excellent. Even at noon, one could still pick fresh, dewy spinach, far superior in quality to the market behind their old neighborhood gate, where after 8 AM, vendors would randomly foist various leftover rotten vegetables on you.

However, that market was cheap and allowed bargaining, so each had its pros and cons.

"Brother, lychees at 14 yuan each—what must they taste like!" Qin Luo continued staring at the lychees.

"You wouldn't understand; these are the same variety Yang Guifei ate back in the day, of course they're expensive. It's the celebrity endorsement. The taste is exactly the same as the 'Concubine's Smile' you eat at home for 8 yuan a jin," Qin Huai said.

Qin Luo suddenly understood and continued staring at the lychees.

Standing between Qin Huai and Qin Luo, Ouyang, who didn't know how to pick vegetables but loved to join the fun, remained speechless.

Wait, did Luo Luo trust her brother that much? The variety of those lychees was clearly 'Gualu,' written plainly on the label. The 128 yuan per box was even a special promotional price; could she not see those huge characters saying "Promotion"?

Of course, Ouyang chose not to say anything, after all, he still wanted to eat crab-shell yellow pastries in the future.

He had just searched online: crab-shell yellow pastries came in savory fillings like scallion oil, fresh meat, crab roe, and shrimp, as well as sweet fillings like white sugar, rose, red bean paste, and jujube paste. They were baked flaky pastries.

The pictures showed them golden and crispy, sprinkled generously with white sesame seeds.

If one took a bite while they were fresh out of the oven, still warm...

Slurp!

That flavor was too unimaginable to contemplate!

Ouyang tightened his grip on the live shrimp he had just selected.

He had picked these shrimp one by one; they were large and lively, looking extremely fresh. Most importantly, among the four or five types of shrimp in the seafood section, this kind was the most expensive, so the crab-shell yellow pastries made with them would surely be delicious!

Qin Huai was so smart; he must be able to understand his hint!

"Qin Huai, Luo Luo really listens to you. She believes whatever nonsense you say," Ouyang could only walk over to Qin Huai and sigh silently.

Hearing Ouyang say this, Qin Huai put the selected spinach into a bag, nodded in agreement, and said, "That's how it is."

With so many adults in the family brainwashing Qin Luo over the years, it was impossible for there to be no effect.

Speaking of brainwashing, sometimes even Qin Huai himself found it absurd.

It wasn't just that Qin Congwen had no children for many years; his younger sister, Qin Xiuli, had also been married for years without conceiving. With both siblings in this situation, outsiders inevitably suspected they carried some illness. Even Grandma Qin herself had wondered if she had worked too hard in her youth, damaging her health and thus harming her children, leaving her trapped in internal conflict and self-blame for years.

They couldn't even hold their heads up when going out.

But less than half a year after Qin Congwen adopted Qin Huai, Zhao Rong became pregnant.

Before Qin Luo was even born, Qin Xiuli also conceived.

That year, Old Lady Qin wished she could take a megaphone and shout from the head of the village to the tail every morning, venting all the grievances she had suffered over the past decade.

According to the lore back in the Qin family's hometown, if a couple childless for many years suddenly conceived after adopting a child, it meant the adopted child's fate carried younger siblings; the children were brought by the adopted child. Old Master Qin believed this theory wholeheartedly and even spent the huge sum of five yuan to hire a fortune teller to verify it.

For the sake of the five yuan plus a meal, the fortune teller calculated that Qin Huai's fate included one younger sister and one younger brother.

Two months later, Qin Luo was born with a cry.

A few months after that, Qin Huai and Qin Luo's cousin, He Cheng, was born.

Since then, Qin Huai became famous in a single battle, renowned locally as a holy hand specializing in curing infertility.

Later, when Qin Xiuli wanted another daughter, she tried repeatedly to find that fortune teller from back then to calculate whether Qin Huai's fate still included a female cousin, but to no avail. She could only sigh daily at her unlucky son, who had failed math since childhood.

During high school, Qin Huai had seriously considered whether his dormant system was a "Holy Hand of Obstetrics and Gynecology" system. When filling out his college application forms, he had even hesitated over whether to sacrifice his hair to study medicine.

In the end, he wasn't admitted because his scores weren't high enough.

Thinking of this, Qin Huai felt a little disappointed.

A doctor system certainly sounded more prestigious than this cooking system.

If he had abandoned science for medicine and become a generation's holy hand, a hundred years from now, he might well have become a local legend. "Sigh." Qin Huai let out a breath.

Ouyang's expression tightened; thinking Qin Huai was sighing at the shrimp in his hand, he quickly asked, "Are the shrimp I picked wrong?"

"Can this kind of shrimp only be used for stir-fry and not as filling for pastries? Let me ask you, Qin Huai, what kind of shrimp is generally used for the fresh shrimp filling in crab-shell yellow pastries? My mom plans to learn recently."

Ouyang felt his hint was already quite explicit.

"Shrimp? Isn't crab-shell yellow pastry filled with meat? Fresh shrimp... I don't know." Qin Huai looked at the shrimp in Ouyang's hand. "Ouyang, you bought these shrimp for your mom, right? These shrimp are nice; I'll go pick some too. Tonight, we'll wrap wontons with fresh shrimp filling."

"Hold the spinach for me first; I'm going to pick some hind leg meat." With that, Qin Huai headed straight for the fresh meat section, leaving Ouyang in the vegetable section frantically searching on his phone to see if crab-shell yellow pastries actually had a fresh shrimp filling.

He had hinted so obviously, yet Qin Huai completely failed to get it!

"Brother Ouyang, my brother doesn't know how to make crab-shell yellow pastries with fresh shrimp filling." Having finished looking at the lychees and deciding that Ouyang's hinting skills were so poor he might as well not hint at all, Qin Luo walked over to Ouyang. "If you want to eat them, you have to tell him directly. He will find a recipe online and learn it."

"Find a recipe online?"

"Yes." Qin Luo nodded as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "That's how it's always been. Whenever I want to eat a certain pastry, I tell my brother. He looks through cookbooks at home or searches online, and after practicing for a while, he masters it."

Ouyang was bewildered: "Shouldn't this kind of thing be taught hand-in-hand by a master?"

"They're all secret family recipes, family inheritances, school lineages—that's how it's written in novels. Are online recipes reliable?"

Qin Luo didn't know how to answer either, so she simply said, "My brother says... some are reliable, some aren't great, but if they aren't great, you just adjust them."

"My dad says the skill of making steamed buns is innate. He's been selling buns for twenty or thirty years, yet his buns aren't as delicious as the ones my brother made when helping out at home during middle school."

"It's also possible that my brother practiced the basics well at the welfare institute before. My brother says that since fourth grade, he has been the sole person making buns for the welfare institute."

Ouyang was even more confused. He had always assumed Qin Huai came from a lineage of profound family learning, that their bun shop was a legendary reclusive school, and that Qin Congwen was the thirteenth-generation inheritor of such-and-such buns.

This had built his expectations for a long time. Ever since Qin Congwen arrived, he had been pondering how to broach the subject and ask the uncle to show off his skills.

But now Qin Luo told him that Qin Huai was entirely self-taught.

"When my brother was in high school, his grades were just average, only a tiny bit better than mine. At that time, my third great-aunt and eldest uncle both advised my parents to send my brother out of town to learn a trade. Apparently, there was some famous restaurant in Hangcheng where the masters accepted apprentices. My eldest uncle could pull strings to get him in. If he returned after mastering the craft, our family bun shop might have been upgraded to a pastry shop."

"But in the end, he didn't go."

Just as they were speaking, Qin Huai returned after selecting the meat and shrimp. In his left hand, he carried hind leg meat and live shrimp; in his right, shoulder meat and pork belly, while his pinky finger hooked a small bag of fat.

"Wow, buying so much," Ouyang exclaimed.

"For making minced meat," Qin Huai explained, lifting his left hand. "The most important thing about Four-Joy Dumplings is the minced meat."

Seeing that Ouyang seemed not to understand, Qin Huai explained in more detail: "Generally, dumpling fillings use hind leg meat, while bun fillings use shoulder meat. Hind leg meat is firm with little sinew, making it taste good."

"However, Luo Luo's tastes are quite special. This girl prefers tender and smooth meat fillings, ideally a bit fatty—the kind that releases oil when you bite into it."

"If it didn't taste bad, she would practically stuff bun filling inside dumplings."

"So today I plan to make two types of dumpling filling: one made purely from hind leg meat, and another mixed with three-layer pork and shoulder meat, plus some extra fat. If you aren't used to it, just eat the first type. I will steam them separately."

Ouyang listened, completely stunned.

Although he didn't understand, it sounded delicious.

After much deliberation, Ouyang gritted his teeth, stamped his foot, looked at Qin Huai, and said with a determined expression, "Brother!"

"Huai Brother, you are my brother! I want to eat Crab-Shell Crisps with fresh shrimp filling!"

Qin Huai: ...

"Get lost!"

(End of Chapter)