CH 55.2

「Which do you think is delicious?」

「Ehto, if you could see the folds under the umbrella, it should be delicious.」

「Heh, you know a lot.」

「Fufu-nn」

I’ve studied about it.

If I were to eat something, I want it to taste the best.

You can praise me more.

Also, I heard that you can even pick the small ones as long as you can see the folds.

I poked a small shiitake mushroom.

They’re so cute. I want to have them in my room.

「By the way, how much should we pick?」

「I don’t know. I’ve never eaten them before so I guess a basket full for now?」

「Eh? Eh? You already picked that much?」

While she was thinking like that, the two of us silently picked up shiitake mushrooms and before we knew it, our baskets were already half full.

「Aaaauuuu, let me pick some too」

「Hurry up. I’m already hungry and want to eat it as soon as possible.」

She quickly picked off the shiitake mushrooms that caught her eye.

If you’re going to eat something, I’m sure you prefer eating something you picked yourself.

In no time, our baskets were full so we moved on to the cooking area set up nearby.

At the cooking area, the person in charge was processing the gehagehas we caught earlier and all we had to do was to put them in a pot with the meat and cook them together.

The pot is placed on a stove dug into the ground and an earthenware pot is placed on top of it.

There were around 20 pots like that lined up in a row. Everyone was enjoying themselves around the pot in their own ways.

They are so kind to prepare and clean up the pots and pans and even make soup stock for us.

I’m sure we’re all looking forward to eating it….

It’s good that we’re having fun but….I wonder if we had too much….

「Can we even eat all of these….?」

「Yes but this is too much.」

「Like I said, the two of you no longer need to fish～」

「That is….no, well, right. We caught one each but the gehagehas are really big.」

「I wonder if we took too many shiitake mushrooms.」

「I thought we only had one basket so we should fill it up….」

Normally, four people would share one pot but there are only three of us who’ll share one. And we also had a lot of ingredients prepared.

It was enough to make us almost unable to close the lid of the earthenware pot…..

The soup stock was made from dried shiitake mushrooms and vegetables. The soup stock itself smells good. Regardless of how many ingredients we had, it stimulated my appetite.

The earthenware pot on top of the stove rumbled and the white smoke billowed out of the small hole of the pot.

「I heard that shiitake mushrooms taste better when they are dried.」

「Heh, I wonder why.」

「I don’t know but if that is the case, maybe we should have dried the ones we picked today.」

「No, I heard they taste good fresh too.」

「They’re so versatile.」

「Shiitake mushrooms are great〜」

「Ah, it’s wobbling.」

It almost blew out. When I picked up the lid, the inside of the pot was a mess.

Shiitake mushrooms, vegetables, fish, and meat were packed in a chaotic state and I didn’t even know where to start.

However, it looks delicious.

「Uwaaa…. there are so many ingredients that it’s a mess.」

「Right? It looks like a festival where you can eat both meat and fish together.」

「Hey, let’s eat〜, hey hey, can we eat now?」

「Okay」

The leader of our group, Yoshina-chan, a dogkin, was the first to take a bowl full of ingredients and took the first bite.

「Hoott!」

With Yoshina-chan trembling and her mouth wide open, perhaps because of the heat, I and Poto, a monkeykin, quickly picked up our chopsticks.

「Alright let’s eat」

「Ah, meat only! I can eat only meat, right?」

「Hey Kakra, eat your veggies. 」

「We have too much gehageha so we all must eat them.」

「I’ll eat them next.」

I piled my bowl with shiitake mushrooms and poured broth into the bowl with a ladle.

I took a sip of the hot soup while huffing and puffing.

Hmm, what a complex taste.

It’s hard to describe what it tastes like in one word but it’s delicious.

I took a bite of the gehageha filet and I could smell the fishy smell in my nose.

I remember I once had it before aquaculture started. It was very smelly and tasted awful.

However, after it’s been cultivated, the smelly and awful taste disappears and only the taste of its meat can be tasted.

I guess the girls in the aquaculture group can be proud of themselves.

And maybe because I caught it myself, it tastes better than the ones you’ll get at the street stalls.

Next, I took a bite of the shiitake mushroom with a cross-shaped slit on its head.

The shiitake mushroom is very crispy to chew and has a nice aroma.

The thought of this unique and rare delicacy makes me want to stuff my mouth full of it.

I heard that they are also delicious when grilled so I guess I’ll try them.

「Deli….cious! Delicious, it’s really good.」

「Right, I can’t stop eating〜」

「Ara, we’ve run out of meat….」

「This tsumire is good. I wonder what’s in it?」

「I heard it was made by cutting gehageha into small pieces and pounding it into a dumpling. It certainly tastes strange though.」

「Is it because of ginger?」

「Jingle〜?」

「…..idiot」