“Oh my, from the looks of it, this young lady has quite a warm heart too! Why not pick out a bolt of floral cloth from my shop as well?”
The shopkeeper was a businessman through and through, quickly stepping in to smooth things over.
Unexpectedly, though, he walked straight into He Jiaojiao’s line of fire.
Her brows immediately twisted together as she snapped angrily,
“I’m not buying! Your fabric is ugly and shabby! It doesn’t suit me at all! And you think I’d wear something like this? Know your place!”
The moment she said that, Huo Guangji frowned and turned to look at her.
He thought to himself, This woman really is annoying. I heard she’s supposed to be educated, so why is she so arrogant and full of herself?
He immediately shifted farther away from her again.
He Jiaojiao was furious but helpless.
Once Huo Guangji finished paying the shopkeeper, he hurried off so quickly that she couldn’t even catch up to him.
Right then, several female comrades who had come with He Jiaojiao finally found her.
None of them knew what had happened. One girl surnamed Li, who usually got along best with He Jiaojiao and loved gossiping, immediately leaned over teasingly.
“Jiaojiao, how are things going with your Brother Huo? You came all the way out to this poor backwater place just for him. Don’t tell me he disappointed you? We sisters deliberately wandered around this market twice just to give you two some alone time!”
“What’s it to you? You’re always sticking your nose into other people’s business! Do you have to investigate every bit of gossip from every family?”
He Jiaojiao was already in a terrible mood, and Li’s teasing instantly set her off.
She lashed out without giving the slightest face to her dormmate, directly calling out Li’s gossip-loving habit.
The girl choked in anger.
She’d only been joking, but who would’ve thought He Jiaojiao would suddenly explode like this?
Rolling her eyes, she turned and grabbed the other girls beside her.
“Let’s go! Ignore her!”
Just like that, He Jiaojiao was left standing alone in the middle of the street, tears gathering in her eyes, full of grievance and frustration.
That damned Huo Guangji—was he made of wood?!
She’d already made her feelings so obvious. How could he still remain completely unmoved?
By all logic, whether it was appearance or figure, she was far superior to that country bumpkin of an original wife. So why wasn’t he taking the hint?
What He Jiaojiao didn’t know was that in this world, while some people worried, others rejoiced.
While she was agonizing over Huo Guangji, Qin Yu’e had already tossed him completely out of her mind.
The steamed bun shop’s cooking was excellent, and both Qin Yu’e and Aunt Liu felt they’d absolutely come to the right place.
Even though they’d only bought vegetable buns, the portions were generous.
The dough was made from mixed black rye flour, which normally tasted rough and hard when eaten plain. But the owner clearly had skill.
The filling had been mixed with a generous amount of fragrant sesame oil, using soft squash vegetables as the base.
There were probably bits of scrambled egg mixed in as well. Although there wasn’t much egg, it still gave the buns a faint savory richness.
And who knew what spices the owner had added—the flavor was so good that Qin Yu’e and the others couldn’t stop praising it.
One huge bun later, Qin Yu’e was so full she kept hiccuping.
Meanwhile, Aunt Liu sipped her mung bean soup and sighed in admiration.
“This shop really is generous. These big buns are only two cents each. I thought they’d be nothing but black rye dough, but they’re actually delicious, and the filling’s not small either!”
The owner was quick-witted in business. The moment he heard customers praising him, he jumped right into the conversation.
“Sister-in-law, if you like them, want to buy a few more? Even if you can’t finish them now, taking them home is still worth it! Our buns may be vegetarian, but we do add animal fat to them. To be honest, it’s my family’s secret recipe. Guaranteed that after you eat them once, you’ll want a second round!”
The owner wasn’t wrong, but both Qin Yu’e and Aunt Liu were short on money, so they hurriedly waved him off.
At that point, they felt too embarrassed to continue sitting there drinking the refillable mung bean soup.
They quickly picked up the children, thanked the owner, paid, and left.
Walking down the street afterward, Aunt Liu still couldn’t stop savoring the taste.
“Xiao Qin, how do you think that owner made black rye taste so good?”
Both women worked around food, and naturally craftsmen always compared skills with other craftsmen.
Qin Yu’e thought seriously for a moment and also found it surprising.
Black rye flour was simply wheat ground without removing the bran and husks.
That kind of flour was cheap because a pound of wheat only produced about seventy percent refined flour, but if you kept everything together as black rye flour, you got the full yield.
The problem was that black rye tasted awful. It was hard to make soft and fluffy. Usually, steamed buns or flatbreads made from it turned out coarse and tough, scratching the throat on the way down.
But the buns they’d just eaten, while not exactly fluffy, were still far tastier than ordinary black rye products.
That was why Aunt Liu couldn’t help asking.
After some thought, Qin Yu’e guessed,
“Aunt Liu, didn’t the owner just say he added a lot of animal fat to the buns? Do you think maybe he mixed the fat directly into the dough? I remember seeing pastry chefs do that before. When they make pastries, they knead lard into the flour, and the dough becomes oily, soft, and shiny—smooth like a freshly peeled egg.”
“That’s actually possible!”
Aunt Liu slapped her thigh immediately.
“Xiao Qin, your brain really works fast! I thought the animal fat had been added to the filling. But now that I think about it, that doesn’t seem right. If the fat had been mixed into the filling, there’d definitely be greasy residue flavors, which would actually make the filling taste worse. So that owner must’ve played a trick on us—he definitely mixed the fat into the dough but didn’t tell us!”
The more they discussed it, the more interested Qin Yu’e became.
If black rye could be made this delicious, then the military camp wouldn’t have to eat coarse grain flatbreads every day anymore.
To be blunt, those rough grain cakes had already upset her stomach lately.
She immediately winked at Aunt Liu.
“How about we try making some black rye dough ourselves when we get back? Didn’t the camp still have some rendered animal fat left from last time?”
“That’s true,” Aunt Liu said with a helpless laugh after hearing the suggestion, “but Xiao Qin, don’t forget ours isn’t proper pork lard! It’s badger fat. No matter how good badger fat is, it still can’t compare to pork fat—it has a smell to it! If you can solve that problem, then maybe what you’re saying really could work. Forget black rye—even our coarse grain cakes might become delicious with a little badger fat mixed into the dough.”
This was actually the first time Qin Yu’e had heard about that issue.
She quietly stored the information away, already planning to experiment with flour and animal fat once they got back.
Maybe she really could figure out a way to remove the strange smell from badger fat.