From Madam Liu’s perspective, the county magistrate was the highest-ranked official in Tanggu Town. If the magistrate had to treat this man so politely, then he was definitely very high up the ladder. She needed to be more careful around him. 

There was a finite amount of resources at home. For the most part, they only had vegetables that were growing in the field. They only had one type of meat at home and that was the portion of streaky pork that they had bought yesterday.

Yu Xiaocao sliced off a portion of the streaky pork and chopped it up finely until it was finely minced. She then sliced some eggplants into discs and dipped them in egg and flour before she fried them into eggplant fritters. She had a hunch that the emperor emeritus liked strongly flavored food, so he would likely enjoy these fragrant and flaky eggplant fritters.

As for the leftover pork, she used it to make the fatty but not greasy, full of delectable flavor, twice-cooked pork. She took string beans that had just been picked from the garden and dry-fried them with a bit of lard to make delicious ‘dry-fried string beans’. To the tomatoes, she added several chicken eggs to make a plate of ‘stir-fried tomatoes and eggs’. Thus, she managed to put together four hot dishes for the meal.

For the two cold appetizers, she used cucumbers and peanuts that had been cooked in boiling water. However, with only two cold plates on the table, she thought that it wasn’t very ...