Someone Else's Tastes Better
"We usually eat three meals a day. There will be times when I cook, and times when Yanne or Aunt Michelle will have to handle it."
Most farm households only ate two meals a day, so I made sure to warn them in advance.
"Also, whenever possible, we'll eat all together at mealtimes. Even though Aunt Michelle, Tilt, and Jack are hired help, there's no reason to eat separately when we're all living under the same roof."
Sezanne thought Jinwoo's words were unusual. Normally, employers didn't share meals with their servants.
"Since we won't be harvesting the fields ourselves, let's start by compacting the dirt floor in the main house and laying down wooden planks."
The house had a simple dirt floor, typical for a farmhouse, which was why we wanted to install proper flooring.
"Once we buy and lay the wooden floor, and tend to the small kitchen garden out front, there won't be much else to do. Michelle, how do people here usually prepare for winter?"
"The winters here aren't that cold, so we've only ever focused on stockpiling food. It only snows once or twice, and heavy accumulation is rare."
I felt relieved to hear that extensive winter preparations weren't necessary.
I gave the boys some soap and taught them how to wash their hair and bodies. While I was at it, I registered them in the status window and checked their condition.
Whoa! Their strength went up by one each, and their HP increased by five.
Both Tilt and Jack had fairly average stats with no standout talents. Still, a (+1) appeared next to their strength values, and +5 was attached to their HP. When I checked Yanne, Sezanne, and even Michelle, they all showed increases in strength and HP. The separate notation suggested the boosts would disappear after a while.
"Master, after eating the blessed food, I feel like I have more energy."
"I feel like my body's improved too. I thought it was the warm stew on this chilly day, but thinking of it as a divine blessing makes the effect feel even stronger."
Yanne and Sezanne, who both had low base strength, seemed to notice even a (+1) quite clearly.
Now that I knew buffing food improved both taste and stats, it was time to test cooking with vegetables I'd grown using buffs. I was curious whether applying the buff once to the ingredients and again during cooking would let the effects stack.
If the buffs stacked the way I suspected, this skill might practically be a bug.
It was still before dawn, but the frenzied barking of Call and the honking of the geese jolted me awake. I sprang up, threw on my quilted armor and leather hat, then rushed out with my kite shield and mace at the ready while casting a buff on myself.
Ten or so men were clustered together, swinging sticks at the loudly barking dog and geese. I was about to charge in with my shield raised when one of them spotted me and shouted.
"Good heavens! We're here to harvest the fields today. We're not thieves!"
I skidded to a halt mid-charge. Just then Sezanne stepped out and lit up the area with her Light magic.
"M-magic!"
I still wasn't sure if they were legitimate workers, but they were all wearing dirty work clothes and looked startled, so they probably weren't thieves.
"We were sent by the Alfred family. They told us to harvest the wheat and bean fields here."
"Paperwork? How can you prove you're from the Alfred family? And shouldn't you have given notice the day before?"
"P-paperwork? Illiterate fellows like us can't read. Even if we had documents, we wouldn't understand them. We've done this kind of work many times before, but there were never any papers."
Showing up at dawn without any prior contact to harvest seemed suspicious. But from the locals' perspective rather than my modern one, this might be completely normal procedure.
After they saw Sezanne's light magic, the workers' momentum died down, which helped dispel my doubts.
"You can harvest the wheat and beans over there. Can you finish in one day?"
"In one day? Even going as fast as we can, it'll take three or four days."
I wondered why four thousand pyeong of wheat and bean fields would take that long, but that was my modern perspective talking. Back on Earth, my family home was in Daejeon; just a short drive out of the city and you'd see bean fields everywhere. My relatives grew beans too, so I'd heard plenty about it during holidays. They said renting a combine harvester would let you clear three or four thousand pyeong in four or five hours. Wheat was the same. The right equipment made farming easy and fast. Here, however, everything had to be done by hand.
The workers checked the bean stalks and pods, well-dried by the autumn and early winter winds, then lined up and began cutting. Those behind them loaded the cut stalks onto a cart. That task alone took half a day.
Then twelve people gathered to thresh the stalks inside the cart. The well-dried beans popped free of their pods and piled up on the bottom. Because they were so dry, the beans bounced everywhere. Two geese waddled around, pecking them up eagerly.
"Excuse me, Sir Mage. Would it be all right if we light a fire here for a bit?"
The man who seemed to be the workers' leader asked Sezanne rather than me. When I nodded, she gave permission.
"Thank goodness. Roasted wheat stolen from the fields is the most delicious. Hehe."
A few of the men who saw Sezanne's approval brought over threshed bean stalks, while others went to the wheat field and cut ripe stalks.
[Crackle!]
The sound of the dry bean stalks burning carried a certain rustic charm. Over that cozy fire they laid the wheat stalks, roasting the grains until the husks turned black. Then they cupped the grains in their palms and rubbed their hands together as if clapping.
"Blow— blowww— phew— phew—."
When they blew into their cupped hands, the grains stayed behind while the husks flew away. The workers tossed the collected grains into their mouths all at once.
"Ah, so savory. Just as I thought, this flavor only comes when you roast someone else's wheat instead of your own."
"Hahaha."
The sight of the workers snacking on stolen roasted wheat was amusing, but the savory aroma drifting on the breeze stimulated my appetite.
When I cut some wheat stalks from the field and brought them over, Yanne fetched threshed bean stalks without being told. Sezanne lit them on fire, and we all sat around the flames.
"Good teamwork. Though I guess we're stealing wheat too. Hahaha."
"Since we're sneaking it, we can't pray to God Sadalla. Hehe. Ah, it's burning!"
With her small hands, Yanne deftly held the wheat stalks and roasted them. She rubbed the charred husks between her palms to collect the grains nicely.
She was about to pop them into her mouth, but seeing Sezanne—who was new to this—burning her entire stalk, she stopped.
"Sister, ah!"
"Huh? Ah!"
Yanne tapped Sezanne's lips and fed her the roasted wheat. Sezanne chewed it, declaring how savory it was.
Watching Sezanne munch contentedly made me smile. To remove the charred husks, Yanne had rubbed her hands together and inevitably gotten soot on them. That same soot was now smeared around Sezanne's mouth, which only made it funnier.
Yanne noticed the charcoal on Sezanne's face and laughed too, but since she was responsible, she pretended not to see it and went back to roasting more stalks.
I cleaned some roasted grains and ate them myself. The fresh roast's nuttiness combined with the smoky open-fire flavor grew richer with every chew. Eating like this in the middle of work was an absolute treat.
No, it really did seem more delicious because it was someone else's wheat, not our own.
"All right, we've taken the edge off our hunger. Let's get back to threshing those beans. We need to finish them today if we're going to harvest the wheat tomorrow."
The workers dragged themselves up from their comfortable spots and resumed work. We roasted and ate a few more batches before cleaning up. Everyone struggled to hold back their laughter at Sezanne, who wandered around with black smudges all over her face.
"What?! Why didn't any of you tell me?! Yanne, you—!"
Sezanne, who only learned the truth later, grabbed Yanne and tickled her mercilessly.
In the end they couldn't finish threshing all the beans in one day, and the sun set. The workers pitched tents in the bean field and settled in for the night. They lit a fire with the bean stalks and cooked porridge. Their lives truly were one of constant hardship.
The beans Michelle's family had planted resembled yellow Daewon beans. All afternoon Aunt Michelle had been picking up the ones that had fallen in the field.
Just as the workers said while roasting the wheat, things taken from someone else's field tasted the best. Of course, it was Michelle and her sons who had done all the work to grow them.
"Wow! That's amazing. They were round and smooth when I picked them up from the ground, but after soaking in water they became long and thin!"
Sezanne, who knew nothing about household matters, was fascinated by how dried beans that rolled so easily became elongated and stopped rolling once they absorbed water.
Michelle had planned to make bean stew with the collected beans, but the savory taste of the roasted wheat lingered in her mind. She decided to make something else savory with these beans instead.
She drained the soaked beans as much as possible, then told us to coat them with flour by rubbing it on. Ideally we would have used glutinous rice flour, but since we didn't have any, we had to substitute with regular wheat flour.
While the beans were being coated, we melted the pig lard we'd bought at the market in a frying pan to make oil.
"Master, are we going to deep-fry the beans?"
"That's right. Fry the flour-coated beans so they don't stick together."
[Sizzle!]
The beans crackled energetically once they hit the oil. I used a wooden spatula to separate any that were clumping. When they were done, we placed them in a tilted bowl to drain as much of the pork fat as possible.
The glistening fried beans looked so tempting that Sezanne picked one up immediately.
"Ooh, it's so savory. How should I describe it? The harder the bean, the more savory it becomes the more you chew. It's a bit of a hassle to keep chewing, yet it makes you want to keep biting down."
Sezanne's review was exactly right. Fried beans needed that hardness to be good. These days many places steamed the beans first to soften them and used glutinous rice flour, but for snacks or side dishes, the proper version had to have that satisfying crunch.
Sezanne, who had instinctively understood why fried beans should be hard, was a true gourmet.
Sezanne really is talented. She's got the palate of someone who could go from anorexic to obese.
Hearing that it made you want to keep chewing, Yanne grabbed some too. I gave a couple to Michelle and her two sons, who had been holding back out of politeness.
As we enjoyed the savory crunch, Yanne brought out the mushroom honey she had produced herself and drizzled it over the fried beans.
"Ah! So that's why they need to be hard!"
When I created honey-glazed bean fries, Sezanne launched into an enthusiastic explanation.
"Mushroom honey is thinner than other honeys, so it could make the beans soggy. But because the fried beans themselves are so hard, it's the perfect combination!"
The moment she finished speaking, Sezanne snatched up one of the honey-coated beans and ate it.
"The sweet flavor is perfect! I could eat this forever without getting tired of it!"
Sezanne was delighted to have found another snack to go with her brown sugar toast.
"Master, it seems like other people's beans taste better. Should we go steal some beans?"