novelraw Chapter 713: Inventory of Supplies
Chapter 713: Inventory of Supplies
For example, besides the frozen, ready-to-eat buns and steamed buns as staple foods, there needed to be a variety of nutritious side dishes. Grandma Jing had already prepared various pickles and preserved vegetables; she even managed to make fermented bean curd. With the Jing family being large and having big appetites, Grandma Jing’s efforts were also substantial. She directly stored them in the 60-liter airtight storage boxes they had bought, neatly stacked and ready to be eaten on the road.
If they wanted to eat things like bean sprouts or small tofu during the trip, they could simply soak them on the way.
With no sunlight day after day, it was necessary to supplement with vitamins. The medicine they had bought previously was now all consumed, so their current sources were fresh fruits, various dried fruits, and frozen fruits.
Before, Jing Shu could find excuses, like going to West Mountain, to bring back some fresh fruits available in Wu City, along with the fruits from the carefully tended sunroom on the second floor of the villa. The family had not really lacked for them.
As for fresh fruits not available in Wu City, Jing Shu would never bring them home. Mr. Jing and Mrs. Jing’s positions were not low, and they were well-informed. Bringing such fruits back would necessitate fabricating lies and could lead to many complications. Therefore, Jing Shu usually processed them into dried fruits, frozen products, or finished goods before bringing them home.
For example, in the wealthy Su Malie’s house, the fridge still contained many pre-apocalypse cheesecakes, durian cakes, and the like. Some were collected from various places, and some were freshly made at a high cost. These kinds of things could be frozen for years without spoiling, affecting only the taste. At Su Malie’s last birthday party, Jing Shu had a slice of mango-durian combination cake and found the taste quite acceptable.
Of course, the birthday party was limited to a few close friends. Su Malie no longer threw grand parties like in the old days, where she invited her entire class for a full-course Western meal. She even kept an inventory of her current stock in her little notebook, which she counted multiple times every day.
Jing Shu glanced at it a few times and clicked her tongue. When it comes to good stuff, Su Malie doesn’t even have as much as I do!
Unknowingly, Jing Shu’s collecting habit had led to an assortment of tasty goods that surpassed even Wu City’s second-richest family. Jing Shu felt a great sense of achievement.
It was still necessary to eat some fruit every morning. Fruits were important, but they couldn’t take all the fruit plants from the sunroom with them. Nor could they take the apple and apricot trees from the yard. It’s not like you can just uproot an apple tree and take it with you when you move, right? That would be going too far.
After some thought, Jing Shu decided to use the Hulk to transport the easily cultivated strawberries, the trellised mare-nipple grapevines already bearing fruit, and the potted dragon fruits. This way, they would at least have some fresh fruit to eat on the road. Apples, which have a longer shelf life—the ones appearing in supermarkets daily before the apocalypse were usually stored in cold storage for about a year—could be taken to eat on the road.
Peaches, apricots, kiwis, and oranges could last about half a year after being frozen.
Pears would be turned into frozen pears, which happened to be Jing Shu’s favorite dessert. She’d place a frozen pear in a bowl and slowly slice it, slurping the icy, sweet flesh. It was a delightful afternoon treat, almost as good as cake, and frozen pears paired with hot pot was an unspeakably perfect match.
If other fruits were available at West Mountain, they could take some to improve their diet. If not, they wouldn’t bother. If a craving hit hard, they’d just eat some dried fruit. Jing Shu understood this feeling very well: sometimes, despite having a pile of options, you crave the one thing you don’t have. Isn’t that annoying?
Not being able to have it can lead to all sorts of frustration and discontent. So, Jing Shu understood that feeling and became even more meticulous in going through everything, to avoid the upsetting situation of wanting something specific and not having it.
The other fruits in the sunroom might as well be forgotten—it wasn’t that they were hard to carry, but since they were already harvested and bare, there’s no use bringing them along on the road; we couldn’t eat them. But those still bearing fruit definitely need to be taken.
Moreover, due to various factors like temperature and humidity, these fruit plants usually required eight hours of exposure to grow lights, which was quite a hassle. If not cared for properly, they could easily die. So, it was best to leave the seeds and branches behind, bundle them together, and transplant them once they arrived at the new location. Jing Shu wasn’t heartbroken about leaving them; I can plant them in my space whenever I want, it’s no trouble at all.
If it hadn’t been difficult to travel openly, Jing Shu wouldn’t have wanted to bring any of these. Grandma Jing, on the other hand, looked at the large potted lychee tree with a touch of heartache. "Such a big pot is definitely useless to bring along. Let’s just cut some branches, take good care of them, and plant them when we get to the new place."
This applied not just to the dwarf lychee trees, but also to watermelon vines, apple tree branches, and so on.
In the apocalypse, the true measure of a family’s resources lay in the food they possessed and the crops they cultivated.
Now that they had to relocate, their crops were as precious as life itself. Neither Grandma Jing nor Mr. Jing could bear to part with any of it. Some of the vegetable racks built in the courtyard had already been moved to the second floor of the RV. Mr. Jing had placed the rest in newly made cold frames, which Hulk would transport, with Mr. Jing meticulously tending to them on the journey.
The Jing family’s villa also had a special area for cultivating various mushrooms. These mushrooms made incredibly delicious soups. Any mushrooms that couldn’t be eaten immediately were dried. These dried mushrooms took up very little space and would rehydrate into a sizable portion.
"These mushrooms are easier to tend to than vegetables; they have fewer needs and aren’t as delicate," one of the elders remarked. "If we can, we should bring all of them. Nobody knows what the situation is like over there... Wu City isn’t short of grain, but other places might not be so fortunate. It hasn’t been easy for us to cultivate so many mushrooms over the years. Being able to save the surplus as food is a real achievement."
In these times, who would complain about having extra food? Naturally, the more, the better.
After a nutritious breakfast, Jing Shu arranged for a lunch of many of her favorite foods: fried chicken, roast lamb, pan-seared steak, braised goose, Lion’s Head meatballs, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and other dishes best eaten fresh. Jing Shu secretly stored these fresh dishes in her space. Those that could be made into frozen items suitable for sharing, like braised goose, were frozen and then vacuum-packed.
When the time comes, I’ll just tear open the bags and heat them up. It’ll be incredibly convenient!
However, Mr. Jing dearly loved roasted buns. One bite of the crispy, golden-brown thin crust, revealing juicy lamb mixed with the fresh fragrance of onion—so satisfyingly chewy... he could eat a dozen or so in one go without any problem. While roasting lamb, Jing Shu had baked several boxes of these lamb-filled crispy buns by the hot hearth, then froze them. They could be steamed later, and although the texture wouldn’t be as good as fresh, it would have to do.
Of course, there was also the nang Mr. Jing loved, the honey-glazed lotus root Mrs. Jing favored, the spicy crayfish Grandma Jing adored, the steamed pork ribs with rice flour Third Aunt enjoyed, and the roasted pork belly loved by Wu You’ai, who had just returned home to the news of the migration, among other favorites.
So, even though it wasn’t the New Year, the villa was constantly filled with what seemed like a delicious fragrance, though faintly interspersed with a pungent odor. This happened because even when Jing Shu and Grandma Jing cooked with all their might, using the range hood wasn’t enough to prevent all smells from escaping, so Jing Shu had to devise a compromise.