While others washed and prepped the ingredients, Li Chenmo and Dong Li built eight bonfires to serve as temporary stoves. Meanwhile, Lu Jueyu retrieved the soup and drinks she and her husband had prepared earlier from her space.
Thanks to Han Yuheng borrowing the village hall for them, they also had permission to use the village’s large pots, pans, woks, and cutlery.
By now, the kitchen was crowded with tools, leaving barely any space to work. Seeing this, Lu Jueyu decided to move operations to the backyard, which was much more spacious.
Amid the crowded kitchen, no one noticed the addition of several large vats of soup, drinks, and water that appeared from her space. Once everything was set, she left the kitchen to check the temporary stoves her husband and Dong Li had built.
In the backyard, Li Chenmo and Dong Li had already finished building temporary stoves using stones. Once the fire was lit, they placed large woks on top of the three stoves and filled them with water to steam rice with pandan leaves.
The women worked very quickly, washing 150 kilograms of uncooked rice and putting it into a steamer to steam.
Since villagers have larger appetites than modern people, Lu Jueyu calculated that each person can eat about 200 grams of uncooked rice. Therefore, one kilogram of uncooked rice can only feed five people.
They have about 50 tables ready for guests and need another 6 tables for people who come to help. So, as a rough calculation, that’s about 600 servings, equivalent to 120 kilograms of uncooked rice.
In order to avoid the embarrassment of the guests not having enough food, Lu Jueyu decided to prepare 150 kilograms of rice.
Due to the large amount of water needed to wash ingredients and cook, Li Chenmo took his son back to their house to fetch more.
For today’s banquet, Lu Jueyu had prepared a cold appetizer platter that included cold jellyfish salad, roasted duck, century eggs, pig ear salad, pork tongue salad, and creamy corn salad.
Additionally, she planned dishes like asparagus and crab meat soup, steamed fish, roasted chicken, Mapo tofu, stir-fried vegetables with oyster sauce, lion’s head meatballs, and stir-fry crab with Padang sauces.
For dessert, she made grass jelly soup with brown sugar syrup.
While the rice was steaming, she asked several women to help fill two large pots with lake water so she could begin steaming the crab first. After the crabs were washed and steamed, Lu Jueyu went to the kitchen and started slicing the cold dishes and placing them on bamboo plates.
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