I Have a Countryside Gourmet Restaurant

Chapter 239: Chapter 235: Are These Plants a Type of Wild Fruit?

After the two returned to the shop, customers soon began arriving for a meal.

Li You got busy in the kitchen. Ye Shengge, meanwhile, went upstairs.

Not long after, Ling Xiaoru arrived. She was sleeping over tonight.

Li You told Ling Xiaoru to go upstairs and rest first. They would all eat together later. Dinner was on him tonight.

”Well, thank you, Boss!” Ling Xiaoru was delighted.

With that, she went straight upstairs.

Li You continued to work. At seven-thirty in the evening, he finally started preparing their dinner.

Five pounds of spicy crayfish, three servings of Chopped Pepper Fish Head, a portion of mapo tofu, a bowl of tomato and egg soup, plus half a braised chicken he had specially set aside.

’This should be more than enough.’

Once everything was ready, the last wave of customers paid their bills and left.

Time to close up and eat.

He went upstairs.

The TV was on in the living room. Ye Shengge and Ling Xiaoru were both sitting on the sofa, each engrossed in their phones.

”Dinner’s ready,” Li You said.

Ye Shengge and Ling Xiaoru both answered in acknowledgment, then went downstairs together to help bring up the food and wine.

’A bowl of wine each should be good for tonight.’

Once everything was set, they began to eat.

”Boss, are you going to start building the wild fruit orchard tomorrow?” Ling Xiaoru asked.

’Ye Shengge must have told her about the orchard.’

Li You nodded. ”I’ll start clearing the land tomorrow. Once it’s more or less ready, I’ll go into the mountains to find wild fruit trees and transplant them back here.”

Ling Xiaoru said, ”Then I’ll stay and help tomorrow.”

Li You asked, ”How many commissions do you still have left to draw?”

Ling Xiaoru replied, ”I still have quite a few, but none of them are urgent. A delay of a few days won’t be a problem.”

Li You said, ”As long as it doesn’t interfere with your work.”

”It won’t,” Ling Xiaoru said.

Afterward, the three of them continued to eat, drink, and discuss the wild fruit orchard.

After they had slowly finished their bowls of wine, no one had any more.

...

「The next day.」

「Morning.」

For breakfast, Li You made three servings of poached eggs in fermented rice soup.

Having noodles every morning got repetitive. It was good to change things up once in a while.

The fermented rice was from the batch he had made with Xia Xiaoyue and Mu Qingye. It had been kept in the Storage Pavilion, and there was still plenty left.

”Boss, did you make this fermented rice yourself? Or did you buy it?” Ling Xiaoru asked.

Li You said, ”I made it with Xia Xiaoyue and Mu Qingye last time. What do you think of the taste?”

Ling Xiaoru said, ”It’s delicious. I figured you made it yourself. You can hardly find any this good in stores.”

Ye Shengge then asked, ”Is it complicated to make fermented rice?”

Li You replied, ”Not at all, it’s very simple. Are you interested, Miss Ye?”

Ye Shengge nodded. ”I’ve eaten a lot of fermented rice, but I’ve never known how it’s made.”

Li You said, ”Then maybe tomorrow, or whenever, we can make some more. You can experience the process for yourself.”

”Okay! Thank you, Boss!” Ye Shengge was overjoyed.

After they finished the poached eggs in fermented rice soup, Li You began to prepare the braised dishes.

He hadn’t gotten around to preparing other ingredients yet, so it was still just braised chicken and chicken feet.

Once the braised items were in the pot, it was time to start clearing the land for the wild fruit orchard.

He would start with a plot of about 400 square yards.

A plot of 400 square yards should be enough for now. When it was no longer sufficient, he could always clear more land.

Ye Shengge and Ling Xiaoru were both raring to go.

Li You grabbed the tools, and together with Ye Shengge and Ling Xiaoru, they went to the empty plot next to the orchard.

This was the spot for the wild fruit orchard.

Li You first marked out an area of roughly 400 square yards.

The next step was to clear away the rocks, weeds, and other debris.

Ye Shengge and Ling Xiaoru were in charge of clearing the weeds, while Li You handled the rocks.

As usual, he started by breaking up the larger rocks with a hand hammer and a chisel.

After the first strike of the hammer, the system’s voice echoed in his mind. ”Host detected to be clearing land for a wild fruit orchard. Side quest triggered.”

”Quest Name: Build a Wild Fruit Orchard.”

”Quest Requirement: Orchard area no smaller than 160 square yards, with no fewer than three types of wild fruit (inclusive of three).”

”Time Limit: None.”

”Quest Reward: One random ingredient (Quality: Superior. Weight: 1,100 pounds), one lottery draw.”

The voice was a pleasant surprise for Li You. He hadn’t expected to trigger another side quest like this.

Moreover, the quest requirements were even less demanding than his original plan.

He had originally planned to clear about 400 square yards, but the quest only required an area of at least 160 square yards.

As for the requirement of at least three types of wild fruit, this was also less than what Li You had planned.

Li You had planned to plant at least five or six types to start with.

’This is basically a freebie quest reward.’

In that case, Li You wasn’t going to hold back. He would finish the quest as quickly as possible and claim his reward.

After all, both a lottery draw and a random, superior-quality ingredient weighing 1,100 pounds were things to look forward to!

He quickly got to work.

As he was working, Ye Shengge called out from a distance, ”Boss, come take a look. Is this plant a type of wild fruit?”

”Is it? Let me see.”

Li You called back and walked over to Ye Shengge, following her finger to see what she was pointing at.

His eyes instantly lit up.

The plant on the ground was indeed a type of wild fruit.

And it was one with an excellent texture, incredibly fragrant and sweet.

Wild ground melons!

”Wild ground melon” was the local name for it. In other places, it went by many different names, like ground fruit, ground loquat, all-earth-green, ground melon vine, purple earth-gall, ground pomegranate, mountain-crossing dragon, and earth-crawling dragon. It was a type of perennial, evergreen vine in the *Ficus* genus of the mulberry family.

This plant grows as a creeping vine along the ground, often forming large patches. Its stems are cylindrical or slightly flattened, brownish-brown in color, with many branches and slightly swollen nodes.

The leaves are ovate, with blunt tips and sparsely serrated, wavy edges. They are green in color.

The fruit is spherical or ovoid, typically one to two centimeters in diameter. It grows half-buried, or sometimes mostly buried, in the soil. It is bluish-green when unripe, turning a pale red with spots all over its body when mature.

It’s an extremely common and popular wild fruit in the countryside.

This is because its texture is superb. It is absolutely overflowing with fragrance, a sweetness like honey. You can smell it from several meters away.

It is also rich in nutrients. Its content of dietary fiber, carbohydrates, and carotene is higher than that of many other fruits, such as apples, cherries, and citrus.

It was also one of Li You’s favorite wild fruits.

He had never noticed such a large patch of it here before.

”This is definitely a wild fruit. We call it wild ground melon around here. It’s delicious. Have you ever had it before?” Li You said.

Ye Shengge crouched down, pushed aside the wild ground melon vines, and pointed to a bluish-green fruit half-embedded in the soil. ”Is this the fruit? I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it.”

Li You said, ”That’s the fruit, yes. But it’s not ripe yet. It will turn a pale red when it’s mature.”

”A pale red?” Ye Shengge shook her head. ”Then I’m sure I’ve never had it.”

Li You said, ”If you didn’t grow up in the countryside, it’s normal not to have tried it. But this fruit is really delicious. You have to try it once it’s ripe.”

Ye Shengge nodded. ”Okay. How much longer until it’s ripe?”

”Soon,” Li You said. ”We have a saying around here: ’On the sixth of the sixth month, the ground melons ripen. By the middle of the seventh, they rot.’ The ’ground melon’ here refers to the wild ground melon. This means they ripen around the sixth day of the sixth lunar month. It’s already the fifth lunar month now, so they’ll be ripe very soon.”

Ye Shengge said, ”Then it really should be soon. ’By the middle of the seventh, they rot’—does that mean the wild ground melons will spoil after the middle of the seventh month?”

Li You nodded. ”They start to spoil around that time, yes. The fruiting season for wild ground melons isn’t very long.”

”That’s a bit of a shame,” Ye Shengge said.

Li You smiled. ”I wouldn’t say it’s a shame. Every fruit has its own life cycle. We just need to enjoy its delicious flavor during its season and not let it go to waste.”

Ye Shengge nodded. ”That’s true.”

Just then, Ling Xiaoru came over and said, ”Wild ground melons are really delicious. A lot of people love them. Let me see how well these ones are growing.”

As she spoke, she also crouched down and pushed aside the vines with her hands.

No matter where she looked, she could see several, or even more than a dozen, unripe wild ground melon fruits.

They were growing exceptionally well!

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