Chapter 17
Days And Nights
Bags of cat litter were placed in a corner of the storage space, piled up into a small mountain. Du Yue felt a little more at ease when she saw them.
Du Yue had only discovered that items could be stacked up to the top of the space when she was buying cat litter.
No matter what, they could be stacked together. They were stacked very stably and would not crush the things placed below.
This way, every corner of the storage space could be fully utilized without any waste.
Du Yue lay on the bed, turning on the swamp cooler as she pondered her next plan of action. It did not take long for her to fall asleep.
When Du Yue opened her eyes again, the sky was still bright. She picked up her phone and saw that it was already six in the afternoon.
At six o’clock in the afternoon, the sun had yet to set. It hung in the middle of the sky, shining brightly upon every corner of the earth.
Du Yue walked to the window, lifted the curtain a little, and looked out. She was dazzled by the blinding sunlight.
Everyone was used to sleeping during the day and moving around at night.
Not long after Du Yue woke up, it was time for the water supply to resume. She went straight to the bathroom to take a shower and took off her sweat-stained clothes to wash. She changed into a set of dry clothes and started to prepare dinner.
After the power and water restrictions, all of the restaurants were closed, be it small or big. After all, it was almost impossible to run a restaurant given the water and electricity restrictions. Not only was the cost of the raw materials expensive, but they could not be stored or kept fresh.
This was especially true for meat, which would start to go bad in less than an hour under these temperatures.
Under such circumstances, no one was willing to take such a big risk to open their restaurants
Du Yue’s own solar panels were enough to supply all the household appliances in her house with power, so she could eat fresh meat and vegetables openly now.
In fact, she had already turned off the power to the fridge and put all the food into her storage space. The preservation function of the storage space was even better than that of a refrigerator, and it did not require electricity.
She often turned on the ice maker because the four swamp coolers in her room used a lot of ice every day.
Occasionally, when she wanted to make something like snow ice and ice cream, she would turn on the power in the refrigerator.
However, Du Yue did not plan to make anything cold today. She wanted to make stewed meat. As time passed, the environment became more and more harsh, and the resources naturally became more and more scarce.
The streaky pork was cut into pieces of equal size. First, she mixed it with scallion and ginger cooking wine to remove the blood and foam from the meat and threw them away.
Then, she poured out all the water in the pot and added a small amount of oil, scallion, ginger, garlic, star anise, pepper, cinnamon, fragrant leaves, and other spices to fry the pork belly. When the oil in the fatty meat was almost fried, he added a handful of rock sugar and turned the fire to a low temperature to boil it into a sugar color.
Then, she added a pot of hot water, added in the raw and cooking wine and salt, and boiled the water again over high heat. Then, she turned the heat down and slowly stewed it.
Du Yue had specially bought a large, commercial iron pot for stewing meat. It was the kind that could stew 50 catties of meat in one pot.
The red braised meat took quite some time to cook. Du Yue took advantage of this time to stir-fry a few more plates of beef and to cook a pot of chicken soup.
Du Yue had many kitchenware items, including four gas stoves. With four different pots working at the same time, she cooked very quickly.
However, Du Yue’s room was filled with the fragrance of all kinds of meat because she was cooking in large quantities. Although her windows and doors were closed, the smell still drifted out through the gaps.
Not long after, Du Yue saw someone asking in the home owners’ group chat as to who was making good food.
However, no one paid him any attention.
A month ago, ordinary families could eat all kinds of meat for three meals a day, and people would not care about what their neighbors ate every day.
However, now, there were very few people who could eat meat. Therefore, even if their families had the means to do so, everyone would eat meat in secret. They did not want anyone to know about it, for fear of attracting other people’s attention and risk bringing trouble to themselves.
In two hours, all of the dishes were ready.
Du Yuesheng took out a small bowl of chicken soup and a plate of red braised meat. The rest were divided into equal portions and put into disposable lunch boxes, which was then put on the shelf in the storage space.