NOVEL NEXT Chapter 96 - Autumn's Colors Cannot Be Contained In Garden
Chapter 96 Autumn’s Colors Cannot Be Contained In Garden
Long Xi, while serving the dish, said with a smile, “This dish is ordinary in appearance, but it has something special inside. It’s called Diao Chan tofu, also called Hidden in Han Palace…”
“All right, all right, do you think everyone else doesn’t know it by another name? Isn’t it loach drilling tofu?” Grandma said to her.
Long Xi nodded her head repeatedly. She gave grandma a piece of meat and said with a smiling face, “Yes yes, Lord Grandma is experienced and knowledgeable, so she naturally knows that. Lord Grandma helped me put the loaches in the clear water basin with the egg white liquid yesterday, and fed them for at least 24 hours so that they could spit out all the dirt. Otherwise, it would be my fault to let you eat unclean things.”
Mo Kun asked curiously while eating, “Why would loaches get into the tofu?”
Long Xi said, “Because the loaches are still alive when they are put into the pot. After the pot heats up, it becomes hot and since loaches are afraid of heat, they will drill into the tofu.”
Mo Kun laughed and said, “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be so cruel? You won’t do that to me, will you? Mo Kun drilling tofu?”
Long Xi smiled and said, “My dear, do you think I will dare? You eat first, then I’ll cook fried rice omelette, which is most delicious when it’s freshly cooked!”
Grandma smiled and said, “We’re a family, of course, we will eat together. We’re waiting for you!”
Mo Kun said with a smile, “Right, if I don’t wait for you, I’ll not eat well!”
He didn’t know what Omelette Fried Rice was, so he went to the kitchen out of curiosity and watched Long Xi fry the rice.
He asked Long Xi, “What’s Omelette Fried Rice?”
She diced all the onions, carrots, chicken breasts and mushrooms. Then, she seasoned the chicken breasts with light soy sauce, shallot, ginger, salt, sugar and a little cornstarch, then stir-fried them with vegetables, in a pot. It was already cooked, so all she had to do now was to to fry the rice and cook the egg rolls.
She stir-fried rice with tomato sauce and tossed the pot, to wrap each grain of rice with sweet and sour tomato sauce, while saying, “Yanlie is the transliteration of omelette, meaning fried egg roll or fried egg dumplings. It’s very delicious. You can also call it egg roll rice. Personally, I prefer to make egg rolls in a semicircle.”
Mo Kun looked at the action and strength that she used to toss the pot, it was unlike an amateur chef under 18 years old. She was doing it like a real chef.
Long Xi added the cut vegetables and diced meat, stir-fried them with rice, stirring it well. After first filling the bowls with the rice, vegetable and diced meat, she then started to cook the egg rolls.
She beat the eggs and cooked five pieces of egg rolls of identical thickness, in a frying pan, and used two eggs per roll.
In this way, the thickness and tenderness of the egg rolls could be guaranteed. If the egg roll was too thin, it was not tender enough and broke easily when wrapping rice. If it was too thick, it did not taste very good!
Putting in the rice, diced meat, and diced vegetables, she started to wrap the rice with the egg rolls.
Experts always wrapped the rice with the egg rolls slowly, through tossing the pot, so that they could really seal the food in the egg rolls.
Long Xi was, of course, an expert chef.
She gave another round of textbook-level pot-tossing performance, which astounded Mo Kun!
When the golden egg roll was completely wrapped with the rich “stuffing”, she then closed the egg roll, poured tomato sauce on the egg roll, and a red smiling face appeared on the semi-circular golden egg roll, which looked so great!
Mo Kun could not help kissing her on the face, smiled and saying, “Xixi, in terms of cooking, I really respect you!”
Long Xi felt her face blushing again.
She said, “It’s for grandma. She likes tomato sauce. Do you want sweet chili sauce on yours?”
Mo Kun took the omelet rice to grandma, then went back to the kitchen and said to Long Xi, “I’d like to try the sweet chili sauce.”
“Okay!” Long Xi smiled sweetly and started to cook the Omelette Fried Rice with the sweet chili sauce.
She was very happy! For her, it was her greatest happiness that her darling could eat the food she cooked and was so satisfied with it.
Long Xi cooked many delicacies that Mo Kun and grandma loved, each of which was excellent in color, aroma and taste. Lord Mo Kun and grandma ate with joy.
Eating this meal was really a delicious and incomparably pleasant experience!
Earlier, while watching TV with grandma, he used his laptop to deal with the problems of the company’s electronic accounting, so that he would be free in the afternoon.
His new company would officially open in half a month!
At noon, after they had their afternoon siesta, Mo Kun drove Long Xi and grandma to Clear Lake Dream Gallery.
First, they went to the sales department and said they wanted to look for houses. The sales ladies, dressed in professional suits, were very enthusiastic and took them to visit the gardens and show houses.
Neither Long Xi nor grandma knew that Mo Kun was going to buy a house here, nor did they know that he was a secret billionaire. Both of them thought they were here only for a visit.
The main door of Clear Lake Dream Gallery was a vermilion gate, with side doors on both sides. In front of the door, stood a pair of stone lions, each of which was flanked by a uniformed security guard.
At first glance, it resembled the scene that Lin Daiyu saw, when she first entered Rongguo Mansion, described in A Dream of Red Mansions.
Above the main gate was a four-character plaque of “Clear Lake Dream Gallery”. The sales lady said that it was a gold lacquer plaque, made from the prohibitively expensive Phoebe zhennan S. Lee tree.
As soon as they walked in, they saw a large rockery made of Taihu Stone, which had various shapes, winding caves, ridges and green mosses. On one side, it was cut like a cliff, where red and gold chrysanthemums were in full bloom.
There was a sweet-scented osmanthus tree beside the rockery. Its branches and leaves flourished like umbrellas. The flowers were all at their peak, gorgeous and incomparable.
Turning around the rockery, they saw a beautiful antique moon gate, with a gold lacquer plaque made of white marble above, engraved with three regular script characters of “Small View Garden”.
Long Xi smiled and said, “Small View Garden? It seems that the word ‘dream’ in Clear Lake Dream Gallery was closely related to A Dream of Red Mansions.”
The sales lady initially thought that she was too young, and did not pay any attention to her. Most of the previous explanations were aimed at Lord Mo Kun. Now, hearing that she discovered something so quickly, she looked at her with new eyes.
With a professional smile on her face, she said to Long Xi, “This beauty has good taste! It is said that several designers of the Dream Gallery are very fond of the architectural style of the Grand View Garden in A Dream of Red Mansions. There are more than a dozen places named after the buildings in the Grand View Garden.”
Mo Kun asked Long Xi, “Do you like it here?”
Long Xi nodded, smiled and said, “The designers are very thoughtful!”
As soon as they entered, they seemed to fall into a sea of flowers. There was a riot of color everywhere, as the flowers showed off their blooms. The air was fresh and the pleasant fragrances of flowers permeated the whole area.
On the right was a cobblestone path, with a stone unicorn, on each side of the entrance. The two large golden hydrangeas on the back of each stone unicorn were skillfully made of innumerable golden hydrangeas of the same size, and tied to the stone unicorn with ribbons. After being decorated in this way, the unicorns seemed to be welcoming the distinguished guests.
The path led to a bamboo forest.
Long Xi smiled and said, “This is the so-called the winding path, leading to a secluded quiet place.”
They saw green bamboos providing shade, with slender branches, well-proportioned leaves, and overlapping shadows. The autumn sun fell on their bodies as the breeze caressed the leaves and there was a unique lingering charm around the place.
Among the green bamboos, there was a three storeyed archaized building with cornices, red walls, and green tiles. The plaque above the gate had the words “Xiaoxiang Pavilion”.
The sales lady said, “This is the show house. Please come in.”
She used a key to open the door, which looked like a carved wooden door, but was actually a metal door, and led the three of them in.
There were a big lawn and a big garden on each side of the road. Amidst them stood a magnolia tree, with particularly beautiful, white flowers.
Walking into the big living room, they saw light green velvet curtains hanging beside the tawny glass windows. There was western-style furniture including a lips sofa and glass dining tables and also Chinese-style furniture such as rosewood old-fashioned tables, padauk low tea-tables, and redwood chairs.
On the snow-white textured wall hung a number of Z Country landscape paintings, while five palace lanterns hung from the ceiling. Looking closely, they turned out to be big electric lamps wrapped in the palace lantern colorful gauze covers.
Long Xi said with a smile to the sales lady, “It’s really a combination of Chinese and Western elements!”
Mo Kun whispered to grandma, “Does grandma like this place?”
Grandma saw the sales lady standing far away. She laughed and whispered, “How can we afford it? Our money isn’t even enough to buy a bathroom tile!”
Mo Kun laughed and said, “Nothing is impossible!”
The next room was the bedroom. Mo Kun looked at the decorated bedroom, and could not help being in a jumpy mood. He imagined that he would live a “sexual” happy life here with Long Xi in the future, which made him so good!
“Xixi, I want to have an unforgettable wedding night with you here, do you know that?”
After visiting the show house and the Small View Garden, they were very satisfied with the environment here.
Long Xi especially liked Zhenxia Pavilion next to Xiaoxiang Pavilion, whose overall layout and interior decoration were similar to that of Xiaoxiang Pavilion, just without any furniture.
When they left, Mo Kun let Long Xi and grandma get in the car first, saying that he needed to go to the bathroom. Then he slipped over to the sales department quietly, gave the deposit with his credit card, and agreed to come over to sign the sales contract on Monday. He would then pay off the money at one time and get the house proprietary certificate.
Mo Kun did not intend to tell this to Long Xi and grandma. He intended to furnish the house and give Long Xi a big surprise on her birthday!
Long Xi received a phone call from Xiaolu in the car.
Xiaolu’s tone was very depressed, which indicated that he was in a very low mood. Long Xi asked, “What happened?”
He said angrily, “My mother is so infuriating! She still wants me to take the college entrance examination and enter the entertainment circle only after finishing college. I don’t agree, so she took the liberty of telling the director she knows, that I have withdrawn from the competition. What a nuisance! I feel that she does not respect me, and still treats me as a child!”
Long Xi said, “Calm down! Xiaolu, calm down first and have a good talk with your mother!”
Xiaolu said, “I have nothing to say to her! The program team already disqualified me! I came back by car without telling her. I’m in the car now.”
Long Xi said, “Cool down!”
Xiaolu said, “I’m going to talk to Weiwei about life tonight. Life doesn’t come again. How can we not cherish it?”