Chapter 1: A Refrigerator That Can Automatically Replenish Food. Is She About to Strike It Rich?
Strange.
Weird.
Very weird.
Wen Nuan Nuan, who had just opened the refrigerator, stared at the two full rows of eggs sitting neatly on the top shelf of the door and fell into deep thought.
And into deep self-doubt and a desperate attempt to recall.
Yesterday morning, she had used two eggs for her Yangzhou fried rice and five for the Korean soy sauce eggs. Logically, there should only be five eggs left in the refrigerator.
But, why was it full?
How could it be full?
This wasn’t scientific.
What had gone wrong?
Had she lost her mind, or had her refrigerator gained sentience?
Neither of those options was good.
Wait, that wasn’t entirely true.
The first option was definitely not good, but if it was the second one—the refrigerator gaining sentience—did that perhaps, maybe, possibly, mean she was about to strike it rich?
Oh yeah!
But could something as good as a pie falling from the sky really happen to her?
Could someone who had never even picked up more than ten yuan in her entire life really be this lucky?
Wen Nuan Nuan’s muddled mind cleared a little, and she quickly looked inside the refrigerator.
The carrot and peas she had used for the Yangzhou fried rice were back to the state and quantity they were in before she had taken them out yesterday.
Turning around, Wen Nuan Nuan went to check the ham sausages in the storage cabinet. Seeing that the quantity was still the remaining three after she had taken some, she took a deep breath.
“The ham sausages in the storage cabinet didn’t restore to their original quantity, but the eggs and vegetables in the refrigerator did. Does this mean it’s not the house’s fault, but the refrigerator’s?”
Wen Nuan Nuan strode to the refrigerator, pulled open the freezer section door, and began to search carefully.
When the local, farm-raised old hen that her grandmother had specially brought for her appeared, Wen Nuan Nuan’s mouth finally fell slightly agape in disbelief.
It was the one and only old hen. She had clearly stewed it into a rich and delicious old hen soup yesterday, and had even invited two colleagues from her office over to her place to eat it until not a single scrap was left.
Yet here it was, perfectly intact in the refrigerator once more!
Heavens, what on earth was going on?
Could someone give her a reasonable explanation?
This was completely beyond her scope of knowledge and understanding.
Wen Nuan Nuan slumped onto the floor tiles, frowning as she began to think.
She had to sort this out first.
Could it be that her refrigerator had developed an automatic restoration function? That it could automatically replenish food? Was that why every morning when she opened it, it still looked full of food, as if untouched?
If that was the case, did it mean she would never have to worry about food and drink again? And that she wouldn’t have to spend any more money?
She could even earn money?
No matter how expensive or rare the ingredients, could she take them out in a continuous supply every day?
Or maybe it didn’t matter if they were ingredients?
As long as it was something put into the refrigerator, could it all be automatically replenished?
What if she put in gold bars or cash?
At the thought of this possibility, Wen Nuan Nuan shot to her feet in excitement.
She remembered that yesterday, she had taken a bottle of a certain brand of soybean paste from the refrigerator, and there had only been a little bit left at the bottom. After scraping it clean, she had casually thrown the bottle into the trash can.
Now, as long as she could find that bottle of soybean paste, she would know if other items could be automatically replenished.
But after searching and rummaging everywhere, even turning the freezer section upside down two or three more times, Wen Nuan Nuan couldn’t find that bottle of soybean paste.
Instead, she casually opened a bottle of chili sauce to check and found that the amount she had eaten yesterday had been automatically replenished.
From this, Wen Nuan Nuan came to a conclusion: food could be automatically replenished, but containers could not.
Food inside a container would also be replenished, but the container had to be there. Once the container was gone, the food inside it would also disappear and not reappear.
Although it was a little different from what she had just imagined, Wen Nuan Nuan was still exceptionally excited!
To have an inexhaustible supply of food that she didn’t have to pay for was something she wouldn’t have even dared to dream of before!
Sob, she could finally see the possibility of paying off the mortgage on her small two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment ahead of schedule!
She was finally going to live the good life of eating her fill all day with nothing to do!
Thank the heavens, thank the earth, thank her family’s refrigerator.
But was it too early to be thankful?
She had to verify it first.
She would fill the refrigerator to the brim today with foods she liked and needed to eat, eat from the refrigerator tomorrow while keeping a careful record, and by the morning after, she would know if her theory was correct!
First, to the vegetable market to pick out the freshest, most delicious ingredients!
No sooner said than done.
Wen Nuan Nuan took out her eco-friendly bag, drove her beloved little car, and set off for a major shopping trip at the vegetable market she was familiar with!
Since this was a test to see if the refrigerator had an automatic replenishment function, if it did, she wouldn’t have to buy groceries again. It would be like a renewable cycle.
Therefore, Wen Nuan Nuan chose to buy the freshest, best, and highest quality ingredients in the market!
A girl should treat herself well!
First, she bought the most indispensable item: pork.
Five catties of pork belly, four pig’s trotters, five catties of pork hind leg meat, and three catties of spare ribs.
The authentic, local old hen her grandmother had given her was best for soup. She would buy a corn-fed young chicken to make braised young chicken.
She bought some eggs, salted duck eggs, and century eggs.
She bought a duck to make beer duck.
She didn’t like mutton, so she wouldn’t buy it. The refrigerator was only so big; its space had to be used for the foods she loved.
Beef was hard to cook and time-consuming, so she went directly to her favorite braised food shop next to the vegetable market.
Beef had always been expensive, and braised beef was especially so. In the past, she could only bear to buy half a catty at a time, but today was different!
With a grand wave of her hand, Wen Nuan Nuan magnanimously bought four catties!
Two catties were to be cut into chunks and two into slices, complete with braising sauce.
She had it all planned out. She would put it in the freezer section when she got home. Tomorrow, she could take out the slices, heat them with the braising sauce, and they would be just as delicious.
The beef chunks could be stewed with vermicelli and chili sauce—savory, fragrant, numbing, and spicy. Just thinking about it made her mouth water!
Swallowing her saliva, Wen Nuan Nuan hurried to the vegetable section, where the choices were easier.
Lettuce, green vegetables, carrots, eggplant, water bamboo shoots, spinach, loofah, bean sprouts, Chinese yam, tofu, tofu skin, dried tofu, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins…
She got one of everything she saw.
When she had too much to carry, Wen Nuan Nuan first took the ingredients to her car and put them in the trunk, then returned to the vegetable market to continue shopping.
To make buns and dumplings, flour was essential. She didn’t know how to make wonton wrappers, so she bought a catty of those along the way; the wrappers could also be used for shaomai.
It was September, and rice cakes and glutinous rice cakes made from the new rice harvest were already available. Wen Nuan Nuan thought of eating rice cakes cooked with salted meat and cabbage, and of the steaming hot scene of roasting rice cakes and glutinous rice cakes in the oven during winter, as if she had returned to her carefree childhood.
Buy!
Rice cakes and glutinous rice cakes were a must.
She bought a small bottle of each kind of sauce: chili sauce, chopped chili sauce, soybean paste, sweet chili sauce, and so on.
Next to the stall, an old lady was selling homemade fermented glutinous rice and glutinous rice balls. Buy!
The last stop was the aquatic products section, where she bought five catties of lively fresh shrimp and five catties of abalone.
After shucking, the abalone would weigh about two or three catties, but that was more than enough for her.
She also bought two catties of squid on a whim. She was going to achieve grilled squid freedom