CH 45

「Here, this is your portion, Yuuri-san.」

Reward?

But all I’m doing is making food for everyone because I want them to eat my cooking…

「The potions we pick up when we’re training to level up is ours, but anything we pick up using your method will be split between all of us. Same with the meals, we need them in order to enter the dungeons.」

Really? But I think meals are necessary even if you go to a dungeon…

「Since I’m housewife, preparing meals is as simple as breathing, you see? It’s not something you need to praise me for.」

One of my husband’s many remarks floated through my head.

「That’s right, dungeon rules say, we must help each other out as a party!」

Kurtz-kun grinned.

「That’s why, please take them.」

Bryce-kun placed the winning potions in my hand.

Even though I’ll be satisfied with them enjoying my food…

And I’ll be happy if they said thank you…

For them to give me a reward for working to prepare the meals, that’s…

I’m surprised, but I will thank them.

「Okay, let’s eat.」

Rofas-san wasn’t here, but I didn’t want to make the children wait for him to come, so we decided to eat without him.

The moment I lifted my fork, I stopped. 「What kind of wife eats first while disregarding her husband!」I recalled my husband saying.

It’s fine. Rofas-san’s not my husband, and… he is not the central pillar of this family. He is not the family head either. That’s right, there’s no reason to wait for him. No, even if he is the head of the family, he puts the children first. He won’t tell them to wait for him while they starved.

「Huh? What is this, it’s sour.」

Kurtz-kun looked surprised as he ate a piece of bird meat.

「That’s right, what a mysterious taste. But it’s good.」

Bryce-kun ate a slice of bell pepper.

「Uwah, this is cool. There are holes in this. This is the first time Kirika has seen this.」

「Fufu, that thing is called a lotus root. A long time ago, people used to use them to stop bleeding or as a medicine for colds. There are people now who drink them in soup to help with bad coughs or diarrhea.」

I learned that when I was searching for ways to relieve the childrens’ coughing.

「Stop bleeding? So is this a type of medicinal herb, not a vegetable? No wonder we haven’t seen this before.」

Eh? Medicinal herb?

「No, that’s not it, they’re vegetables. I got them from the field. All foods more or less have some effect on the body, so if you classify them all as medicinal herbs based on that, there will be no more vegetables.」

Aren’t medicinal herbs the type of plants that are used in herbal medicine, because they have a stronger effect when used as medication?

Ahh, but it’s also true that many herbal medications use ginger. They can be used both for cooking and for medicine. Hmm, but lotus roots are… definitely vegetables, right?

「But I never saw a vegetable up there with this many holes.」

「Maybe because it wasn’t growing in the field itself?」

Huh? If it doesn’t grow in a field, does it still count as a vegetable? Hm? I don’t know anymore. Not to mention, it was growing in the mud, so does that make it a root vegetable? But lotus roots aren’t related to potatoes, right?

「Eh? Did you look for them inside the forest? It’s dangerous to there by yourself.」

「Wow, this vegetable is making crunchy noises. How weird. Kirika likes these lotus roots. Also, I love all of Yuuri-oneechan’s cooking, because they’re all so good. This one is a bit sour and sweet, and it’s good.」

Fufu.

「You see, I tried making a sweet vinegar sauce for the bird meat and vegetables, since there was some vinegar among the losing potions.」

That’s right.

The sweet vinegar sauce was made from vinegar, cooking sake, soy sauce, and sugar. It was fine to put ginger in it, so I used ginger ale to substitute for the sugar. Since it was too liquidy, I had to evaporate the sauce to make it thicker, which took a bit of time.

I cooked the bite-sized bird meat, bell peppers, lotus roots, and carrots. Then, I mixed in the sweet vinegar sauce made of chicken soup, losing potions, and winning potions.

…The sauce is not that thick though. It’s because I don’t have any potato starch. I didn’t have wheat flour either. I thought the food storage would have some, but there wasn’t any. There weren’t any wheat plants either. The only thing there were the bad wheats, in other words the rice plants.

…Huh? Can rice flour be used as a thickener?

In any case, I wanted some actual wheat plants. I have to add it onto the list of things I want that I’m going to give to Rofas-san.

I didn’t have enough ingredients, but I still managed to make the sauce not taste overly sour, and taste sweet like sugar. There was the fragrance of soy sauce too. Mhm, it’s good.

The lotus roots were nice and crunchy. The bird meat was soft and tasted good. It had a good consistency. Since there were three birds mixed in here, there were breast-like meat, thigh-like meat, and a lean breast-like meat. How lucky. There was no gamey smell either, so it was easy to eat.

「Fwah, this is amazing. Really amazing. The soup is so yummy. Yuuri-chan, this is the bone soup, right?」

「Uwah! Seriously? It’s true! There’s no meat in this, but it still tastes so good!」

I’m glad. Kirika-chan and Kurtz-kun both enjoyed the chicken soup.