Early the next morning, Lu Yan reheated the leftover buns and fish ball soup from the previous day, and breakfast was quickly settled.
After the meal, Lu Yan suggested going into town for a look around, which put Old Lu in a difficult position.
He had already taken a day off yesterday and needed to return to work today. So he counted out one hundred copper coins and had Lu Sheng accompany Lu Yan.
After settling Madam Xu in comfortably, the two of them drove the donkey cart into town.
There was a street in town dedicated to merchants and peddlers, bustling with noise and activity.
“Wontons! Five coins a bowl!”
“Big steamed buns! Meat and vegetable fillings!”
“Candied hawthorns! Candied hawthorns!”
This trip wasn’t just about buying vegetables and meat. Lu Yan also wanted to see what kinds of businesses were operating in town so she could figure out what she might do herself.
After making a circuit of the market, she discovered that there were indeed many food stalls, and the prices were generally quite cheap.
A large steamed bun cost one coin.
A vegetable bun cost two.
But the moment meat or sugar was involved, prices shot up.
The meat buns didn’t even contain much meat, and the wontons had pitifully small amounts of filling, yet they sold for four or five coins apiece.
Candied hawthorns were even more outrageous, selling for eight coins a skewer.
It was obvious how much the common people valued meat and sugar.
Lu Yan directed Lu Sheng to buy vegetables first.
The weather was gradually turning cold, and there weren’t many kinds of fresh vegetables left. Before long, anyone wanting fresh produce would have to buy greenhouse-grown vegetables.
Radishes and cabbages were dirt cheap.
A basket of radishes cost three coins.
Two baskets of cabbage cost only five.
What delighted Lu Yan the most was that, although she hadn’t seen tomatoes yet, potatoes and sweet potatoes had already been introduced and were sold everywhere.
At this time they were called “foreign potatoes” and “foreign sweet potatoes” because they had come from overseas.
They had only been introduced recently, and the imperial court was promoting them as high-yield, filling crops.
The common people had obediently accepted them as staple foods, steaming and boiling them every day.
Only Lu Yan knew what these two crops truly meant.
Starch had all sorts of uses.
So she had Lu Sheng spend another five coins on a basket of potatoes and sweet potatoes.
Chili peppers had also already appeared.
The Lu family probably didn’t enjoy spicy food because they had none at home, but the people in town seemed rather fond of it. Quite a few food stalls had jars of chili paste and chili powder.
Naturally, Lu Yan bought a basket of dried chilies as well.
Vegetables were cheap, but meat was expensive.
When they arrived at the butcher’s stall, Lu Yan actually heard Lu Sheng swallow.
Well, if the child wanted meat, then they had to buy some.
When the two half-grown children entered the shop, the butcher didn’t take them seriously at all.
Lu Yan asked about the price of the meat, and the butcher impatiently replied,
“That piece you’re pointing at is top-grade pork belly. Twenty coins a jin.”
Lu Yan: “…”
The meat looked average at best.
Was he really trying to fool her just because she looked like a child?
She let out a cold laugh.
“If this counts as top-quality meat, then I suppose everything else in your shop must be garbage. Even dogs wouldn’t eat it.”
Before Lu Sheng could react, she had already dragged him out of the shop.
“Pah! What a crook!” she spat angrily.
“Don’t be upset,” Lu Sheng comforted her. “He’s not the only butcher in town.”
So they went to another shop.
The owner there was much more pleasant, welcoming them warmly and politely asking what they needed.
The pork belly here really was good quality—five beautiful alternating layers of fat and lean meat.
Unable to help herself, Lu Yan sighed in admiration.
“What beautiful meat.”
The butcher smiled.
“You’ve got a good eye, young lady. This fine pork belly is seventeen coins a jin. If you buy more, I can lower the price a little.”
Instead of answering, Lu Yan shifted her gaze to a pile of large marrow bones nearby.
The bones had been scraped clean and gleamed white, with hardly a shred of meat left on them.
She pointed at them.
“And how much are these?”
“The bones themselves aren’t worth much, though they’re good for making soup at home. Three coins a jin.”
Lu Yan thought for a moment.
“How about this? I’ll give you fifty coins. You weigh out three jin of pork belly for me and throw in these bones as well. Deal? If it works out, I’ll keep buying from your shop in the future.”
The butcher paused and quickly did the math.
Three jin of pork belly at seventeen coins a jin came to fifty-one coins.
The bones weighed about two or three jin, but hardly anyone bought them anyway.
Altogether, he wouldn’t really be losing money.
What surprised him most was how quickly this half-grown girl had done the calculations.
Smiling, he agreed.
Lu Sheng immediately counted out fifty coins.
The butcher weighed out three jin of pork belly and added several marrow bones, placing everything onto the children’s cart.
Looking at the three jin of meat, Lu Sheng felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction.
Even during New Year celebrations, they had never bought this much meat at once.
There wasn’t much left of the hundred coins Old Lu had given them.
With the remaining money, Lu Yan bought sugar and various spices.
Originally, she had planned to eat lunch outside with Lu Sheng, but when she remembered Madam Xu waiting at home, she decided to head back instead.
So she spent every last coin.
It was already noon.
The two of them made another round through the market, observing which stalls were busiest at lunchtime, and then happily drove the donkey cart home.
As the cart slowly entered the village, several old women chatting beneath a tree at the village entrance watched them pass.
“Did you see that? That’s the child bride Sheng’s father bought for him.”
“I saw. She’s so skinny and tiny—doesn’t look lucky at all. How could she possibly bring him good fortune?”
“What money do they have left to be picky? Since Old Lu’s wife broke her leg, they’ve spent who knows how much on doctors and medicine.”
“That’s true.”
Neither Lu Sheng nor Lu Yan heard any of this.
After arriving home, Lu Sheng did something completely out of character—he didn’t go back to study.
Instead, he hovered around the basket of meat like a dog guarding its food.
Lu Yan found it amusing.
“What? Are you planning to eat it raw?”
Knowing she was teasing him, Lu Sheng didn’t mind.
Instead, he asked seriously,
“So, how are you planning to cook it?”
After spending the morning looking around town, Lu Yan realized that there were still huge gaps in this era’s food scene.
All kinds of modern breakfast flatbreads—jianbing, stuffed egg pancakes, stone-baked flatbreads, smoked-meat pancakes—didn’t exist here.
But then she thought about it.
All of those required griddles and stoves.
There was no gas here.
Was she supposed to make charcoal herself?
Forget it.
She temporarily abandoned that idea.
So what kind of food could be made at home and simply brought to market?
The first thing she thought of was a Chinese meat sandwich.
But if she stuffed it with a generous amount of meat, the price would be too high.
The people in town would never bear to buy it.
Then another idea struck her.
Menzi.
Menzi was a food found in many northern regions, made from meat broth and somewhat similar to aspic.
The kind Lu Yan had eaten most often in her previous life was donkey-meat menzi.
Shops that sold donkey-meat sandwiches often offered sandwiches filled with menzi as a cheaper alternative.
There wasn’t much meat in it, but it was packed with rich meaty flavor.
The problem was that menzi required two things:
Meat broth.
And sweet potato starch.
Both would take time to prepare.
But she had happened to buy meat and half a basket of sweet potatoes today.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
Since she had everything she needed, she decided to get started immediately.
It was already well past noon, and there wasn’t time to make anything elaborate for lunch.
So Lu Yan simply kneaded some dough and hand-pulled noodles, then made a large pot of stir-fried cabbage noodle soup.
The dish was simple, but the cabbage was sweet and tender, and the noodles were wonderfully fragrant.
Lu Sheng slurped down two enormous bowls, soup and all.
After the meal, it was finally time for Lu Yan to begin her grand menzi-making project.
As usual, she first prepared another basin of dough to rise.
Then she put the meat on to simmer.