Chapter 4: Procurement

After lunch, Chen Huihong sent Chen Huihui home to rest. Zhao Rong felt that the house wasn't cleaned properly and guests were coming tonight, so she dragged Qin Congwen back to clean it a second time. Qin Huai and Qin Luo went to the supermarket on the basement level of the mall to buy ingredients, and Ouyang, who had nothing to do for over an hour before work, followed them to buy groceries.

The supermarket on the basement level was a huge mall, and the fresh food area was as rich as a vegetable market. Of course, the prices were also very rich, directly confusing Qin Luo, who didn't usually buy groceries and didn't know the prices.

"Lychees... 128 a box? One box has... 1, 2, 3... 9 pieces. Brother, the lychees in this supermarket sell for 14 yuan a piece!" Qin Luo was shocked.

Qin Huai didn't buy lychees and didn't look at them, picking spinach in the vegetable area not far away. Don't say, although this supermarket was expensive, the quality control was good. Even at noon, he could pick fresh and tender spinach, which was of much higher quality than the vegetable market at the back door of the residential complex in his hometown, where you could randomly buy various overnight rotten vegetables given to you by vendors after 8 AM.

However, the vegetable market was cheap and you could bargain; each had its pros and cons.

"Brother, what must lychees that cost 14 yuan a piece taste like!" Qin Luo was still staring at the lychees.

"You don't understand this; this is the same type of lychee that Concubine Yang ate back then, so of course it's expensive. With celebrity endorsement, the taste is the same as the 8-yuan-per-jin Concubine Smile you eat at home," Qin Huai said.

Qin Luo suddenly realized and continued to stare at the lychees.

Standing between Qin Huai and Qin Luo, Ouyang, who didn't know how to pick vegetables but liked to join in the fun:...

No, does Luo Luo trust her brother that much? The variety of that lychee was clearly "Gualu," and the label clearly stated it was 128 a box, and it was even a special promotion. Can't she see the big "promotion" characters?

Of course, Ouyang chose not to say anything, since he still wanted to eat crab shell yellow later.

He had just searched online, and crab shell yellow had salty flavors like scallion oil, fresh meat, crab powder, and shrimp fillings, as well as sweet flavors like white sugar, rose, bean paste, and date paste. It was a crispy cake baked in an oven.

That picture—golden, crispy, and sprinkled with white sesame seeds.

If it were just baked and he took a bite while it was still hot...

Slurp!

He didn't even dare to imagine the taste!

Ouyang gripped the live shrimp he had just picked.

He had picked these shrimp one by one; they were large and lively, and they looked fresh. Most importantly, out of the four or five types of shrimp in the aquatic area, these were the most expensive, so the crab shell yellow made with them must be delicious!

Qin Huai was so smart, he must be able to understand his hints!

"Qin Huai, Did Luo Luo really listens to you; she believes any nonsense you say." Ouyang could only walk to Qin Huai's side and sigh silently.

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

With so many adults in the family brainwashing Qin Luo for years, it was impossible for it not to have any effect.

Speaking of this brainwashing thing, sometimes Qin Huai himself felt it was very absurd.

Not only was Qin Congwen childless for many years, but his own younger sister, Qin Xiuli, had also been married for many years without being able to conceive. With both siblings appearing in this situation, outsiders would inevitably suspect whether they had some illness, and even Grandma Qin herself suspected whether she had worked too hard when she was young and hurt her body, leading to both children having poor health and harming them. She had been trapped in internal friction and self-blame for many years.

She couldn't even hold her head up when going out.

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

Before Qin Luo was even born, Qin Xiuli also became pregnant.

That year, Grandma Qin wished she could hold a loudspeaker and shout from the beginning of the village to the end every morning, shouting out all the anger she had suffered for over 10 years.

According to the saying in the Qin family's hometown, if a couple is childless for many years and then suddenly becomes pregnant after adopting a child, it's because the adopted child brings younger siblings with them; the child was brought by the adopted child. Grandpa Qin believed this saying deeply and for this reason spent a huge sum of 5 yuan to hire a fortune teller to calculate it.

For the sake of 5 yuan and a meal, the fortune teller calculated that Qin Huai had a younger sister and a younger brother in his fate.

Two months later, Qin Luo was born.

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

Since then, Qin Huai became famous in one battle and became a local expert known for treating infertility.

Later, Qin Xiuli wanted another daughter and kept trying to find that fortune teller to calculate whether there was a younger cousin in Qin Huai's fate, but to no avail. She could only sigh every day looking at her unlucky son, whose math had been failing since he was a child.

When Qin Huai was in high school, he even seriously thought about whether his system, which had never been activated, was an obstetrics and gynecology expert system. When applying for college, he even hesitated about whether to sacrifice his hair to study medicine.

Later, he didn't get admitted because his score wasn't high enough.

Thinking of this, Qin Huai was a little disappointed.

A doctor system sounded much more high-end than this cooking system.

If he had abandoned science for medicine and become a generation of experts, it might have been a good story in the local area a hundred years later. "Sigh," Qin Huai sighed.

Ouyang's expression tightened, thinking Qin Huai was sighing at the shrimp in his hand, and asked hurriedly: "Is the shrimp I picked wrong?"

"Could it be that this kind of shrimp can only be used for stir-fry and not as a filling for snacks? Qin Huai, let me ask you, what kind of shrimp is generally used for fresh shrimp filling in crab shell yellow? My mom plans to learn it recently."

Ouyang felt his hint was already very clear.

"Shrimp? Isn't crab shell yellow meat-filled? Fresh shrimp... I don't know." Qin Huai looked at the shrimp in Ouyang's hand. "Ouyang, you bought this shrimp for your mom, right? This shrimp is not bad; I'll go pick some later, and I'll wrap fresh shrimp wontons tonight."

"You hold the spinach for me first; I'll go pick some hind leg meat." After saying that, Qin Huai went straight to the fresh meat area, leaving Ouyang in the vegetable area frantically using his phone to search for whether crab shell yellow actually had fresh shrimp filling.

He had hinted so obviously, yet Qin Huai didn't get it at all!

"Brother Ouyang, my brother doesn't know how to make fresh shrimp filling for crab shell yellow." Qin Luo, who had finished looking at the lychees and felt Ouyang's hinting level was too poor to be worth hinting, walked toward Ouyang. "If you want to eat it, you have to tell him, and he'll find a recipe online to learn."

"Find a recipe online?"

"Yeah." Qin Luo nodded as if it were normal. "It's always been like this. Whatever snack I want to eat, I tell my brother, and my brother flips through the recipes at home or finds one online, and he'll learn it after a while."

Ouyang was confused: "Shouldn't things like this be taught by a master hand-in-hand?"

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

Qin Luo didn't know how to answer either, only saying: "My brother said... some are reliable, some aren't, but if it doesn't work, he'll just change it."

"My dad said the craft of making buns is innate. He's been selling buns for twenty or thirty years, and they aren't as good as the buns my brother made when he helped at home in junior high."

"It's also possible that my brother practiced his foundation well in the orphanage. My brother said that from the time he was in fourth grade, the buns in the orphanage were all made by him alone."

Ouyang was even more confused. He had always thought Qin Huai came from a family tradition, that their bun shop was the legendary hermit school, and that Qin Congwen was the 13th generation successor of the XX bun school.

It made him look forward to it for a long time, and ever since Qin Congwen came, he had been pondering how to open his mouth to let his uncle show everyone a hand.

As a result, Qin Luo told him that Qin Huai was completely self-taught.

"My brother's grades in high school were very average, just a little bit... better than mine. At that time, my third aunt and eldest uncle both advised my parents to send my brother to learn the craft elsewhere. It seemed there was some 'Zhiwei Ju' in Hangcheng, where the master took apprentices, and my eldest uncle could find someone to pull strings to get him in. If he learned it and came back, our bun shop might be able to turn into a dessert shop."

"But he didn't go later."

As they were talking, Qin Huai came back after picking the meat and shrimp, with hind leg meat and live shrimp in his left hand, and sandwich meat and three-layer meat in his right, and a small bag of fat meat on his little finger.

"Wow, you bought 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 didn't seem to understand, Qin Huai explained in more detail: "Generally, hind leg meat is used for dumpling filling, and sandwich meat is used for bun filling. Hind leg meat is firm and has few tendons, so it tastes good."

"However, Did Luo Luo's taste is quite special. This girl likes tender meat filling, and it's best if it's a bit fatty, the kind that can seep oil when you bite into it."

"If it weren't for the fact that it doesn't taste good, she would wish she could wrap bun filling into dumplings."

"So I'm preparing to make two kinds of dumpling fillings today: one is pure hind leg meat, and the other is mixed with three-layer and sandwich meat, with extra fat meat added. If you aren't used to eating it, eat the first kind of filling; I'll steam the two kinds separately."

Ouyang listened, stunned.

Although he didn't understand, it seemed delicious.

After thinking about it, Ouyang gritted his teeth, stomped his foot, looked at Qin Huai, and said firmly: "Brother!"

"Brother Huai, you are my brother; I want to eat fresh shrimp filling crab shell yellow!"

Qin Huai:...

"Get lost!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 5 =====