Chapter 671: Chapter 443: Potatoes
Thinking that, Xiaomi casually gathered a pile of wild grass to the side, then handed a small hoe to Xiao Wei and told him to dig a pit.
"We’ll do it here. You first dig out a spot where we can cook, I’ll go catch two wild rabbits, and we’ll have roast rabbit for lunch today."
As she spoke, she pointed, quite naturally, to the spot where Xiao Wei had just pulled out the potato seedlings.
The potatoes here grew quite shallow; she could even see some exposed on the surface. Just a light dig would get them to the big potatoes underneath.
Xiaomi had already checked before. Although because of the climate they didn’t grow that well, they weren’t small either. She’d dug a few, each about the size of a fist.
Seeing Xiao Wei go "oh" and get ready to work, Xiaomi picked up her bow and arrows and turned to leave. She had barely walked a few steps when she heard Xiao Wei mutter, "What’s this, how come it’s so big?"
Xiaomi’s brows arched. Step one of the plan: success!
To be honest, she’d already done plenty of "big things" anyway; one more wouldn’t make a difference.
But Xiaomi also had other considerations.
Big Brother was going into officialdom, and had clearly said that the title of Marquis of Agricultural Administration would be passed on to Xiao Wei in the future.
Besides, compared to reading and writing, Xiao Wei really did prefer working in the fields. You could say that among all the sisters, the one who knew the fields best was Jiang Wei.
Since he was going to inherit that title, it’d be best if he had some real merit to show for it.
Their father had gotten the marquisate because of the high yields of rice and wheat. As for Xiao Wei, she would let him be the one to "discover" the potato.
This was something she had carefully discussed with Wei Ziang.
That was also why she insisted on dragging Xiao Wei up the mountain today.
Xiaomi took a roundabout walk, then directly pulled a cleaned rabbit out from her space and came back; it had only been two quarters of an hour, front to back.
But when she came back, she found that Xiao Wei wasn’t there. She hurriedly called out a few times.
"Sis, I’m over here."
Jiang Wei stood up from a nearby thicket, still holding the hoe in his hand.
Xiaomi got a fright and rushed over. "What are you doing over there? You scared me to death, I thought something happened to you."
Jiang Wei had no idea what his sister was worrying about. Instead, he excitedly raised what he was holding. "Sis, look what this is."
Two big potatoes.
Xiaomi jumped, thinking for a moment that Xiao Wei recognized them, then immediately realized and quickly shook her head. "What’s that?"
"Heh, I don’t know either, but this thing is edible."
Xiaomi’s eyes widened; this time she really was surprised. "Edible? How do you know?"
"Because I just ate some."
Xiaomi’s face changed at once. "What! How can you just randomly eat things? What if they’re poisonous!"
Raw potatoes are poisonous!
But she quickly recalled that the spot where he’d been digging had a pile of burned ash and charcoal, which calmed her a bit.
Looking at Jiang Wei again, there was a ring of black around his mouth; he’d probably eaten something burnt.
"How did you eat it? What if it’s poisonous?"
"I roasted it first."
Speaking of that, Jiang Wei got excited, and hurriedly scooped up an armful of potatoes from the ground.
"I was going to dig a pit for the fire, right? Makes it easier to light. Who knew I’d hit these in one scoop."
"They look a bit like sweet potatoes, but when I took a bite, my mouth felt a little numb, so I spat it out. Guess you can’t eat them raw."
"Just so happened there were a few small ones, so I lit a fire and roasted them. And you know, Sis, roasted like that they actually taste pretty good. They’re all fluffy inside, and I sprinkled a bit of salt—made them even better."
Jiang Wei explained while hugging at least twenty or thirty potatoes to his chest, bundled up in the hem of his clothes. The big ones were about the size of a fist, the small ones only as big as a thumb.
He really hadn’t let a single one go.
Xiaomi felt a little lightheaded. She had been planning to wait until Xiao Wei dug them up, then when she came back to roast the rabbit, she’d pretend to be curious and roast a few potatoes on the side.
And yet she’d barely gone for a short walk, and step two of the plan was already done?
"So you’d just been digging these? Then how did you know there were more over there?"
"I went looking," Jiang Wei shrugged. "Not only are there some here, I found quite a few plants over there too. Look, I already dug up a whole pile."
Jiang Wei jerked his chin in that direction, and only then did Xiaomi notice another heap of potatoes beside a stack of firewood...
Xiaomi sniffed, feeling like all the advance planning she’d done had been a bit unnecessary.
Holding the rabbit by its ears, she followed Jiang Wei over to the spot they’d chosen for their little outdoor cookout, Jiang Wei chattering nonstop beside her.
He was saying how he felt this thing couldn’t be eaten raw because it tasted terrible, unlike sweet potatoes, which are crisp and sweet even raw.
You couldn’t eat them half-cooked either, because they didn’t taste good.
Based on his experience with eating green beans and pumpkins, if they weren’t fully stir-fried, they tasted a bit weird and were even poisonous—light cases gave you diarrhea, serious ones cost you half your life.
He figured this strange thing that grew in the ground was probably the same: only edible once fully cooked, and very tasty then.
Listening to Jiang Wei’s explanation, Xiaomi was completely stunned.
She had to admit, he was absolutely right. Raw potatoes are poisonous, and half-cooked ones even more so.
And Jiang Wei had gotten it all right after just one taste—wasn’t that a bit too impressive?
"There must be a lot of these fruits around here. When we’ve got time, we should go look all over. Maybe we’ll really discover a new kind of grain."
As he spoke, Jiang Wei had already separated out a small pile of potatoes.
"Sis, look, I dug these all from under the same plant. This has to be three or four jin at least. The yield’s amazing!"
He even nodded firmly as he said it, confirming his own guess.
Xiaomi nodded woodenly. That’s right, potatoes do have high yields—three to five thousand jin per mu is no problem.
"Sis, you’re acting so strange today, hardly saying anything. Oh right, didn’t you want roast rabbit? I’ll go poke around somewhere else. You season it with spices first, and when I get back we’ll roast it."
"Huh? Oh. Okay, go ahead."
Only after Jiang Wei dashed off again, small hoe in hand and full of energy, did Xiaomi helplessly shake her head and start marinating her rabbit.
Honestly, she wasn’t that into the whole outdoor cooking thing anymore; the goal had already been achieved ahead of schedule.
It was just that she’d been so keen on coming out to cook before, and now she couldn’t think of a good excuse to go back.
Once the wild rabbit was marinated, she laid it on the oilcloth she’d brought beforehand. After thinking a bit, Xiaomi shaved a few wooden sticks to sharp points and skewered the potatoes.
She specifically picked a few knobbly little potatoes; with just a light rub, the skin slipped right off.
She strung up two skewers of small potatoes, then skewered two big ones, and used a dagger to slice around them while turning, shaping them into thick little pagodas.
Since Xiao Wei had already confirmed they were edible, she would start developing new ways to eat potatoes!