The Game of Life TGOL

Chapter 531 - 529: So Delicious It'll Make You Cry

Chapter 531: Chapter 529: So Delicious It’ll Make You Cry

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The lion’s head meatballs were ready.

Tian Lin looked at the meatballs in the pot with a tinge of disappointment.

She had high expectations for this dish. She watched every step Jiang Feng took while making it, noting that even chopping the meat was complicated. He used such high-quality, fatty pork belly that she had imagined the result would be a dish so stunningly delicious.

Just like the meals Jiang Weiguo used to make many years ago.

It had been many years since Tian Lin had tasted Jiang Weiguo’s cooking, to be exact, she had only eaten it a few times and couldn’t even remember the taste anymore. She only remembered that Jiang Weiguo’s meat dishes were unlike anyone else’s.

They were different even before reaching the mouth, just the smell alone was captivating, as if the dish was sprinkled with luminous powder and was glowing.

She had thought Jiang Feng’s lion’s head meatballs would surely be the same, but they looked no different from ordinary meatballs, pale in color. They did smell quite nice, but it was a faint fragrance.

In any case, the allure was not enough to make it impossible to look away.

Then Tian Lin saw Jiang Feng pour a ladle of piping hot chicken soup over the lion’s head meatballs.

The chicken soup had naturally gone through a post-process treatment, with the oil removed from the surface and some other ingredients added. The color of the soup was lighter than before, but it still had a slight yellow tint.

At the moment the chicken soup was poured, Tian Lin caught the aroma.

It was not just the scent of the chicken soup, nor just the smell of the fat, but also bamboo shoots and something else – it was simply delicious.

So fragrantly tempting that one couldn’t look away.

Just like the first time she had tried Jiang Weiguo’s cooking decades ago.

“Aunt, if you want to make it yourself, there’s no need to re-season the chicken soup like I did earlier. Just skim off the fat, it doesn’t taste good if it’s too oily,” Jiang Feng said.

Tian Lin took mental note of that – the chicken soup for pouring should be light, not too oily.

Pouring the chicken soup!

Once the dishes were ready, Jiang Feng and Tian Lin began serving them at the table.

The Zhao family only had one dining table. It was large, but not enough to seat everyone. So usually, the elders would sit at the table to eat, while the younger ones would fill their bowls with the dishes and sit on the side. Once finished, they would go back for more food.

Zhao Mei, with her big belly, also took a seat at the table.

She was about to give birth soon, carrying twins meant her belly was frighteningly large, which made many tasks inconvenient. Her husband and Tian Lin helped her with picking food, so she just needed to point her finger regally to indicate what she wanted to eat.

As soon as Zhao Mei entered the dining room, she smelled the lion’s head meatballs. Even though she almost snuck chicken soup noodles every night, the mix of the soup’s and the meat’s aroma made her mouth water now.

These lion’s head meatballs were definitely not made by her mother!

She even doubted if any dish on the table except for the shredded potatoes was prepared by her mother. Her mom wouldn’t use five-spice pork belly with a mix of fat and lean meat for spicy pepper pork; instead, she would use purely fatty meat. When her mom fried tomatoes and eggs, she would definitely add soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and light soy sauce, not missing any. And her mom’s steamed eggs wouldn’t be so delicately smooth on the surface—they were made with extra eggs to have a custard-like feel.

She couldn’t think about it any longer, or she felt tears would uncontrollably start flowing. Ever since getting pregnant, she had become even more sentimental.

“Meimei, do you want some lion’s head meatballs? I can serve you some,” Tian Lin offered warmly.

Jiang Feng made six lion’s head meatballs, each the size of 1.5 adult male fists, so big that if a whole one were put in a bowl, there would be no room for soup.

“Zhuangshi, serve Meimei one in a bowl. These youngsters eat quickly; if you don’t serve more for Meimei, it will be gone in the blink of an eye,” Mrs. Jiang interjected.

“Grandma, no need to serve a whole one, I can’t finish it,” Zhao Mei said.

“It’s just one lion’s head meatball, what’s there to not finish? Back when I was pregnant with the kids, I would eat five or six meals a day, each consisting of three bowls of rice. Back then I only had one in the belly. You are carrying two, so you should eat more. You’re almost due; eating well will give you strength for the delivery. Otherwise, you’ll suffer during birth,” Mrs. Jiang remarked.

Tian Lin served Zhao Mei an entire lion’s head meatball. The huge meatball filled the entire bowl, so much so that Zhao Mei didn’t know where to start eating.

Eating it with a spoon made her worry that the meat might fall apart and drop out of the bowl, while biting it off with chopsticks seemed inelegant and she was afraid it would affect her looks.

After much consideration, Zhao Mei chose to bite into it with chopsticks. Anyway, she was already in such a state, with legs swollen like well-packaged sausages and a face as round as a freshly baked pancake, not to mention a belly as big as the lion’s head meatball in the bowl—what image was there to worry about?

Zhao Mei picked up the lion’s head meatball with her chopsticks, took a big bite, and the juice smeared over her cheeks.

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Fatty but not greasy, smooth and tender with a strong fragrance and elasticity, the meaty morsels bursting with meat juice and the fresh flavors of chicken broth and bamboo shoots exploded in Zhao Mei’s mouth.

It was fatty meat.

But it was delicious, delectable, the kind of fatty meat that could move you to tears.

There was no heavy sauce flavor, no excessive sweetness or saltiness, and despite the predominance of fatty meat cubes, it tasted very light. The juice seeped out of the meat cubes as if it could melt one’s tongue in the mouth.

“Mom,” Zhao Mei said with a sobbing tone to Tian Lin, “the fatty meat is so delicious.”

Pregnant women are always sentimental, with even the smallest thing warranting their tears, not to mention something as significant as lion’s head meatballs.

Zhao Mei wolfed down the lion’s head with big bites, her face smeared with meat juice, her mouth full of the fragrance of meat, just like when she was little, sitting at the dining table devouring a meaty meal.

She wept as she gnawed on the lion’s head, tears dripping onto it.

Tian Lin was on the verge of wiping her own tears away.

In a matter of minutes, a full bowl of lion’s head was gulped down by Zhao Mei.

“Mom, I want to eat ribs!”

“Tomatoes!”

“Give me two more pieces of ribs!”

“Add more chili peppers!”

Jiang Feng and the others were dumbfounded.

By all accounts, this should have been a heartwarming scene, a daughter who had been struggling with a poor appetite suddenly eating heartily at the dining table while her mother, overjoyed and moved to tears, continued to serve her food.

It was the epitome of a warm family drama from any perspective.

If only Zhao Mei wasn’t crying while eating, it would have been even more heartwarming.

Zhao Mei’s husband wasn’t idle either, responsible for wiping her tears. The whole scene seemed really odd.

Jiang Junlian was so frightened that she didn’t dare to reach out with her chopsticks, and it took her a long time to quietly pick up a small piece of lion’s head. After tasting it, she whispered to Jiang Junqing, “It just tastes like lion’s head, it shouldn’t be delicious enough to make Meimei cry.”

High schooler Jiang Junlian couldn’t understand the sentimentality of pregnant women or Zhao Mei’s feeling of parched thirst quenched by sweet dew.

The other women at the table who had given birth understood quite well, and the eldest aunt was the first to break the silence, explaining for Zhao Mei, “Meimei is just like I was, easily brought to tears when pregnant.”

“Yes, yes, I remember when I was pregnant with Feng, I once started crying after just a few bites of a green vegetable I had picked up during a meal. It scared Jiankang so much, he thought the salt wasn’t dissolved properly,” Wang Xiulian chimed in.

“I’m the same; when I was pregnant with Ran, I ate a pancake that was just a bit too hard, and inexplicably, I ended up crying while eating it,” the fourth aunt agreed with a nod.

Everyone started sharing their own experiences of eating and crying during pregnancy, which made Zhao Mei’s tears seem quite normal.

Meanwhile, the male members of the Jiang family were all confused, with not a single one of them remembering their wives crying over such strange and bizarre reasons during pregnancy.

“De, do you think Meimei is crying because it’s too delicious or because it’s awful?” Jiang Junlian asked Jiang Zaidi in a whisper.

“Is that even a question? Of course, it’s because it’s delicious!” Jiang Zaidi replied with conviction, looking enviously at Zhao Mei who had started on her second lion’s head.

When would he ever get such treatment? He could eat two out of six lion’s heads presented on the table.

Jiang Zaidi sighed deeply.

It seemed urgent now to start saving money, and he was also due to start looking for a girlfriend. He needed to find an opportunity to subtly ask his younger brother where he was planning to buy a house.

Even if he couldn’t indulge in two out of six lion’s heads, he resolved to strive for a life where he could eat lion’s head meatballs with every meal.

Jiang Zaidi clenched his fists tightly.

To eat lion’s head meatballs the size of his fist!