PDLP Chapter 196 Processing Ginseng
Chapter 196 Processing Ginseng
Hearing their conversation, Miler quickly finished chewing the beggar's chicken in his mouth, swallowed it, and said...
"This is a common bird around here, called the cuckoo bird, named for its cooing sound."
Honestly, when I was raising my cuckoo bird for the first year, my living expenses were way over budget, and my pension hadn't even arrived by the end of the month. I was so poor that I couldn't even afford to eat.
My brothers are all broke by the end of the month. They helped me out for two days, and now all six of us are broke by the end of the month.
I was so hungry back then that I went to the outskirts of the city to get some nutrition and caught some cuckoos to eat a few times.
That taste... ugh! Where can I find something so fragrant and tender? It had a fishy smell, and the meat was too tough to chew.
Milo remembered the cuckoo bird they made back then, and her face scrunched up in frustration. She realized it was because she didn't know how to prepare it properly; she never imagined it could be made so delicious.
Yufei thought for a moment
"We're making some sweet and sour chicken for dinner before we go home! One way is to braise or make soup, and the other is to wrap it in these broadleaf leaves and roast it. I want to see if the sweet and sour chicken is just naturally delicious, or if it's because of the broadleaf leaves."
Qi Huang nodded, indicating that he understood, and they stopped dwelling on the topic.
Everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, and Lei Jun took out the wild ginseng that Yufei had dug up earlier, without hiding it from Miler and the others.
In Yufei and the others' hearts, Mile is now like their little sister, and she has become an integral part of their lives.
As long as it wouldn't reveal that they weren't from this world, they didn't want to avoid her too much.
"This is... ginseng?!" Qi Huang and the others asked in surprise upon seeing the human-shaped object in Boss Lei's hand.
"Yes!" Lei Jun knew they had already confirmed it when he took it out, but they just couldn't believe it, so he gave them a definite answer.
"My God, this thing must be almost 500 years old!"
Li Lanjuan was overjoyed to see the ginseng in Lei Jun's hand. This quality of ginseng was rarely seen on Earth, but it was a life-saving treasure; how could they not be excited?
She knew that several elderly people in the courtyard really needed this.
Before she came here, her mother had mentioned this to her when she called.
It's said that the old Su family member is nearing the end of his life. The renowned traditional Chinese medicine master Li Fenghua once said that if they could find a wild ginseng that's around two hundred years old, it could easily add ten years to his life.
Wild ginseng still exists, but let alone two-hundred-year-old wild ginseng, even one-hundred-year-old ones are extremely rare; these are still hidden away in those families.
Who wouldn't risk their life? Who would be willing to give it up?!
The Su family has been buying up century-old wild ginseng at high prices for several years, but they haven't found any yet. For the past few years, they've been surviving thanks to the miraculous fruits and plants of Longyuan Town.
However, these things seem to have limited effectiveness; their effect on the Su family member has been weakening this year.
Therefore, when she came, her mother told her that the teacher was dying, and asked her to see if she could encounter the hundred-year-old wild ginseng during the mission.
If possible, try to bring some back. Of course, no one had any real hope; it was just a casual mention, since the Su family and her family did have some connection.
Unexpectedly, she actually encountered this in this other world, but she didn't plan to make any requests of Boss Lei in this regard.
Wild ginseng is extremely rare and hard to come by. Even if she had found it, she would have unconditionally donated it to the country, let alone one that she hadn't found.
Once this ginseng returns to the Great Xia Dynasty, whether the Su family can obtain it from the state will depend on their own abilities.
It has nothing to do with her
"Yes! That's right, this one is about 500 years old. Yufei found a ginseng bush; the whole area is full of them. This one was just randomly dug up. Now that everyone's full, let's go dig for ginseng together. Be careful when you dig."
Ideally, they should be planted with soil. Once we get back to our lodgings, we'll get some flowerpots, plant them in them, and bring them back to the village in a while!
Lei Jun shared the good news with his team, making them excited. They crossed their arms and were ready to get to work.
"Sister Yufei, is this ginseng really that powerful? They seem so excited about it."
Miler, puzzled, followed them to the ginseng patch while asking Yufei the questions that had been on her mind.
"Yes! This is a very important medicine for our village; it can save our lives in critical situations."
Yufei smiled and said to Miler
"Oh~"
Miler is a medicine, and has nothing to do with delicious food, so she stopped asking. Who cares about medicine? Anything that isn't delicious isn't worth her attention.
They dug for ginseng all afternoon, but only managed to dig up about ten ginseng plants; they hadn't even dug up half of the entire ginseng patch.
If they kept digging, they wouldn't finish before dark, so Lei Jun immediately decided to gather the dozen or so plants, cook dinner first, and then go back.
Starting tomorrow, anyone who isn't competing should come and dig for ginseng!
We were planning a feast of cuckoo birds that evening. While Yufei and her friends were digging for ginseng, Miler and her six siblings caught more than ten cuckoo birds and brought them back.
Ginseng digging is a delicate and technical task that they can't handle, so they might as well do something else. This also means they won't need to catch cuckoos anymore when they're preparing dinner.
As arranged by Yufei at noon, they made braised chicken with some of the cuckoos, and wrapped some in bay leaves after processing them with ginger, scallions, and garlic to make bay leaf roasted chicken. The remaining two chickens were used to make soup.
The soup took a while to simmer, but thankfully they were able to enjoy a hot dinner before dark.
After finishing their meal, they concluded that the meat of this cuckoo bird was not much different from the meat of the flying dragons on their planet Earth.
The broadleaf leaves can make its flesh even more delicious and tasty!
For this reason, Lei Jun added an extra task for his team: to collect more broadleaf leaves while harvesting ginseng.
As for bringing the live seed back to Earth… Lei Jun glanced at the tall, broad-leaved tree, realizing it was unlikely they could transplant it themselves.
Let's see if we can get a few back from Old Man Mai at the Beast God Temple.
As for Yufei, needless to say, she had already secretly placed several Bangbang chickens and broadleaf leaves into the space.
Lei Jun and his team had a very fruitful day, and Yu Fei's harvest was also considerable. Besides the more unique species, they released 17 kinds of inedible original species into their space.
Xiao Jun carefully planted them in their most suitable spots, and today's countryside trip came to a perfect end.
After their trip to the countryside, their competition venue changed, and Yufei was unlucky enough to be assigned to a gladiatorial arena.
Everyone else was assigned to other arenas in groups of two or three, so today she went to her own arena alone.
Her match is in the morning today, so she doesn't have any matches this afternoon. She decided to go find Miler and the others after her match.
Little did she know what kind of crisis she was about to face.