CH 11

Underneath the hut was a basement lined with stone. It was being used as a food storage.

There were plain jute bags with unhulled rice grains inside. Well, it was probably rice.

「Do you want some help?」

Bryce-kun asked as I looked through the storage.

「Thanks, but it’s fine. Um, what do you do when you make bread with these?」

It was the first time I’ve ever seen unhulled rice grains.

Bryce-kun removed the husk with a tool I wasn’t familiar with. Then, he brought the grains over to something that looked like a millstone.

「S-stop, stop!!」

I see. No wonder it smelled and tasted bad. They were using the grains without polishing them! It was the rice-bran that stank.

Rice polishing. I remember doing it when I was in elementary school. You pour rice into a bottle, then mash them with a rod. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

I was told that in the olden days of Japan, it was the children’s job to do it. In reality, that was a lie. I heard that during the wartime, people took great care to polish their precious rice in bottles. However, nobody could do such a time-consuming job every single day. In reality, the people poured the rice onto a stone mortar and pounded them with a rod. That way, they could polish a lot of rice grains at once. The people could also use a water wheel, and the men could use a seesaw-like tool to crush the grains.

I poured the unpolished rice into a sturdy-looking pot, and then used a slightly heavy rod to grind the rice.

「Onee-chan, what are you doing?」

「If you do this, the bad wheat will turn into some tasty rice.」

「Really? Let me do it!」

Kurtz-kun wanted to take over the grunt work. Is he going to be okay? I thought, but then I recalled the way he climbed up that cliff. He definitely had more strength than me.

「Then, can I leave this to you?」

In the meantime, I went to check out the kitchen setup. Bryce-kun explained it for me.

「Water comes out from here.」

There was a pump. Thank god. I thought we would have to draw water from the river.

「Firewood? I think we can only gather them in the forest.」

Seriously…? That would take quite some time to do. Also, burning unseasoned wood would cause a lot of smoke, right? I wondered if I could tell the wood apart properly.

Since I’ve burned firewood and cooked over a kamado stove (*1) before while camping, I thought I would be fine with using the one here, but boy was I wrong.

「If you use a fire magic stone, you can use the stove for three days or so. You can get a small one by exchanging one potion for it.」

Bryce-kun explained, and pointed at the vending machine.

「Fire magic stone?」

Uwah! Here comes the fantasy!

Next to where you place the pot, there was a small dent. That was where the fire magic stone went.

It costed one potion! And it even lasted for three days, how economical! This system was way better than using firewood any day! Wait, I had no potions left!

I used all of mine yesterday.

W-wait, I could do that thing.

「Bryce-kun, 【Contract: Borrow 1 potion – Equal Exchange】.」

Was this okay?

「Got it. 【Contract complete】.」

As soon as Bryce-kun accepted my trade request, an orange light emitted from the palm of our hand, and it disappeared into our foreheads.

Wow, as expected of a fantasy world!

I placed the potion Bryce-kun gave me into the vending machine, and said 「fire magic stone.」Then, a red stone the size of a fingernail dropped out from where the bread came from.

Alright.

I got the polished rice from Kurtz-kun, and was about to pour them into a pot to wash, but I decided to separate the rice from the rice bran with a strainer. If we save the rice bran, we could use it to pickle vegetables with. Vegetables get more nutritious if you pickled them in rice bran. Except, I wasn’t sure if children would like the taste of it… Also, I knew how to make it, but I’ve never tried to.

「Huh? The bad wheat turned white.」

「The reason it smelled and tasted bad was because of this brown colored part. If you make bread with just this white part, it won’t taste bad.」

「Onee-chan, you’re so amazing!」

「Really? It won’t taste bad?」

「Ehh, but we can’t make bread, so let’s turn these into flour and make flatbread with them.」

Apparently, flatbread was made by baking kneaded wheat flour without expanding them. Maybe it was similar to naan?

「Ahh, wait, don’t turn them into flour! Let me cook them!」

I rescued the rice from being grinded down by the mortar.

I poured the rice into the pot, then washed it three times with water.

After washing, I poured in an adequate amount of water, and off to the stove top it went! First you let the heat stay low, then raise it up to a high. Do not take the lid off yet, even if your baby cries. (*2)

「You can adjust the heat over here.」

This might be a kamado stove, but it was super convenient! Now that I thought about it, wasn’t rice cooked on top of one pretty tasty? However, the lid didn’t match the kamado-made rice image, since it was thin and flimsy.

Let’s get a thicker lid some other time.

「It’ll be ready in about thirty minutes. I want everyone to try it. Well, unfortunately, there are no side dishes or even salt to go with it…」

At least the rice would taste sweet when chewed, but still. Hmm…

「Okay, let’s get ready for today in the meantime.」

Bryce-kun said, and the other two replied back with energy.