After bonding a little with Emma, Elena went out of her room as it was evening and time for dinner was fast approaching.
She had decided to help cook and by the way show off her skills.
Oddly enough, cooking was also something she and Ethan had competed in and she had won by a narrow margin.
So her cooking was pretty good.
However, plans never go according to wishes.
She was kicked out of the kitchen by Mary who said she’s cooking with Sarah’s help.
In the end, Elena’s plan to dazzle them with her cooking fell through at its finest.
But she didn’t give up.
If dinner didn’t work, then tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Something would work.
Why she was so certain?
Because James would go to the town for his eighteen odd jobs daily and wouldn’t have time to even eat after breakfast.
Mary and Thomas would go the fields with Sarah taking care of Emma so it was impossible to manage everything.
She’d definitely sneak a chance to cook.
Of course, the problem was ingredients.
It wasn’t like she could cook without the ingredients.
In the Shaw family, this never stumped her but in the Bennet family she faced another roadblock.
With only one kilogram of refined flour and the rest being mixed cornmeal and coarse grain, she really wanted to wrestle heads with the version of her who was so proud of cooking.
Like what’s she even supposed to cook with these ingredients?
At least there were some scallions, leeks, ginger, garlic, wild vegetables and mushrooms.
So managing a vegetable stir-fry would suit her just fine.
Just add a bit of oil and spices and it’ll taste heavenly.
And so she got to cooking.
It was around early morning and she had woken up earlier than everyone.
It was a struggle for her to wake up so early but the rooster wouldn’t let her sleep any longer.
The Bennet family was used to it and didn’t wake up.
It was approximately five in the morning. No one wakes up that early or so Elena thought.
Until she came to the kitchen and found Sarah bustling about.
’Another time!’ she vowed and rushed back inside to catch up on her sleep.
She wasn’t lazy but she just couldn’t cook with someone supervising her.
She knew villagers were thrifty with ingredients and as long as it was edible and filled the stomach, they would call it food.
But she was generous and really wanted to cook to show off.
It wasn’t anything else but to get their agreement to begin her first boom of business of cooking and selling food early in the morning.
It was that simple.
Most people went hungry to Peace Town and Hanging Moon City for work by the first ray of dawn.
She was hoping to entice them into hunger and end up eating her food.
Her plan was theoretically good but she faced too many hurdles along the way.
Honestly, Elena didn’t really want to eat their cooking.
It was barely edible by her standards and she had to swallow it with water.
Thus, evening came and so did Elena’s time to shine.
She finally found the kitchen empty as Mary and Thomas were returning from the fields and Sarah was busy with Emma.
She scooped a generous amount of lard and put it in a wok, using firewood as fuel.
She had never really used such traditional stoves but she could manage.
Once the lard melted into a oily sheen, she added ginger, garlic and let it cook for a minute before adding the spices.
Just as the spices heated up, she gave it a rough stir and let it rest for about a minute.
Then she added the roughly chopped vegetables she had found in the kitchen without any hesitation.
Her chopping skills weren’t the best and she admitted she fell short there but so what?
The results were what mattered.
While the vegetables were being cooked, she kneaded the dough by using half of the fine flour and adding a bit of cornmeal and coarse grain because if they ate fine flour suddenly, they might get indigestion or diarrhea.
It was what she had learned in science.
She wasn’t sure if it applied but it never hurt to be careful.
As soon as the dough was finished, she let it rest and went back to the stir-fry.
She added soy sauce, vinegar and chilli sauce that she had dug out from the kitchen and then gave it another stir.
Meanwhile, she returned to preparing a filling.
She decided to use eggs and chives because they had two hens which laid eggs and chives were the only other ingredient left.
She made a simple filling by beating eggs into a thick consistency and adding chives on top and continuing to stir it until it held the chopsticks when turned upside down.
It was quite a sight.
Just as she finished that, she returned to the stir-fry, stirred and could see that it was almost done.
So she went to make doughballs out of the kneaded dough, eager to fill them with the stuffing of eggs and chives and then bring them to a steam.
She was making dumplings along with a stir-fry.
A weird combination but she had to make do with the ingredients at home.
Plus, her plan was to sell buns and dumplings because they were easy to carry and eat.
So it solved her problem of transportation.
Just as she finished with portioning out the dough, the stir-fry vegetables finished cooking and she plated them, adding a bit of sesame seeds to top it off.
"If only I could add a drizzle of oil and honey on top, it would be absolutely delicious," she mumbled aloud, staring at the plate.
Finishing with that, she quickly stuffed the filling into the doughballs and steamed them.
It only took about 20 minutes to finish.
All in all, she had spent over half an hour in the kitchen.
Just as Mary and Thomas returned home, they smelled a delicious aroma wafting from somewhere.
"Strange, whose family is cooking so extravagantly?"
Just as the two were discussing this, they ended up etching closer to their home and the aroma got stronger.
In the end, both looked at each other and thought, ’So the clown was me all along?’
While gulping their saliva, the two entered their home and were stunned by the odd food combination on the table.
"Sarah!" Mary shouted, calling for her daughter-in-law, wanting to find out what happened at home today.