The Mean Farmhouse Widow (Gourmet)

Bai Xiaoya transmigrates into a novel about a beloved heroine as the villainous widowed sister-in-law. She often beats and scolds the heroine, the future empress, and humiliates the heroine's brother, the future chancellor. After her affair is exposed, she dies a miserable death in a brothel... Looking at the heroine, kneeling on the ground with her little nose red from crying, and the young man beside her, kneeling upright with a look of restrained pain, Bai Xiaoya thinks she can still lie low for a while. After all, none of that has happened yet. For now, she's just a poor young widow who has recently lost her husband. So Bai Xiaoya decides to become a beautiful, kind-hearted young widow and take good care of this dilapidated household. She plants crops and vegetables, raises pigs and chickens, and experiments with recipes... Beside the academy where her younger brother-in-law studies, she sells her secret-recipe braised dishes, spicy hot pot, cold skewers, liangpi noodles, cold noodles, and nourishing porridge in all kinds of flavors... Her little shop soon thrives. Her younger sister-in-law becomes the crown prince's consort, and her younger brother-in-law places first in the imperial examinations and enjoys a smooth official career... Bai Xiaoya smiles with the satisfaction of an auntie. Her work is done, and it's time to bow out. Just as she's preparing to leave, on a night of torrential rain, her aloof, taciturn younger brother-in-law storms into her room, eyes red. Bai Xiaoya: "What are you doing?" He pulls a book from inside his robe and tosses it onto the bedside. Bai Xiaoya takes one look at the five big characters on the cover. Good grief, he's actually written it all down. Years later. Who would have thought that a dignified fourth-rank prefect would spend his nights writing storybooks and all kinds of tales, with his room brightly lit by candlelight? A certain woman munches on watermelon and urges him on. "I've caught up, you know. Hurry up and write." The prefect wipes away his sweat. "Almost done, almost done. I've already written three hundred characters." "What? You've only written three hundred characters? If you can't finish today's installment, you're sleeping in the study." The prefect is on the verge of tears. What a mess he's made. If only he had known this would happen, he never should have started writing novels! * Reader notes: 1. This is a transmigrate-into-a-book story with plenty of fictional liberties. Don't compare it to serious historical romances. If that's not your thing, don't read it. 2. The potential pitfalls are all in the blurb. The heroine transmigrates after the original body has already gone through a wedding ceremony with the hero's older brother, but they never consummated the marriage. Readers who mind this should proceed with caution. 3. The hero and heroine are both each other's first and only partners. This is a warm, everyday romance with few conflicts. The hero is not a background character and has a substantial role. 4. The setting is fictional, and the ingredients in the story aren't historically verified. Everything is there to serve the plot. Coming soon: Cooking for an Army Camp Miao Lan transmigrates into a novel set in a chaotic era. After the male antagonist Shen Yan is defeated by the hero Wei Lin, he flees to the heroine's hometown and notices that she looks very much like Wei Lin's deceased first love. Shen Yan captures the heroine's family and forces her to go undercover beside Wei Lin. After she successfully gets close to him, the love triangle between the hero, the heroine, and the doomed supporting female character who resembles his first love begins. In the end, the heroine's identity as a spy is exposed, and Wei Lin runs her through with his sword. Miao Lan transmigrates into the doomed supporting female character, who is about to be forced into becoming a spy... Miao Lan angrily throws a fit! To hell with these melodramatic stories about doomed supporting heroines who look like someone's first love! She's not acting in a tragedy! Thinking of the original character's miserable ending, Miao Lan sells her shop and house, then flees north with her mother and younger sister. . Three years later, the armies of Wei Lin and Shen Yan surround the small city where Miao Lan lives. Miao Lan: "...Just destroy the world already!" Wei Lin: "As it happens, my army's kitchen camp is short on people." Shen Yan: "What a coincidence. My army's kitchen camp is short on people too." Miao Lan: "That works for me. Cooking for a crowd is what I'm best at!" She rolls up her sleeves, lights the fire, and gets to work! Taro-braised chicken, braised duck with konjac, cold dressed tripe, twice-cooked pork... minced pork and eggplant, spicy chicken, and two big bowls of fish-fragrant shredded pork! No meat? Vegetables will do too: mapo tofu, cold dressed onions and wood ear mushrooms, water celery stir-fried with dried tofu, and garlic green beans stir-fried with dried tofu. The northwest is short on rice and vegetables? Then it's time for noodles: liangpi, roujiamo, guokui with chili, belt noodles, oil-splashed noodles with minced meat sauce, dry-fried ma shi noodles, braised noodle slices, lamb paomo, and skewers! . When Miao Lan cooks for Wei Lin's army: The soldiers in Wei Lin's camp: "These oil-splashed noodles smell amazing! The dry-mixed noodles with minced meat sauce are delicious! The lamb paomo is so filling! The pickled long beans stir-fried with minced pork go perfectly with rice!" The soldiers in Shen Yan's camp: "The hard flatbread in our hands suddenly doesn't taste so good. We want to join the other side." When Miao Lan cooks for Shen Yan's army: The soldiers in Shen Yan's camp wipe their mouths and kneel as one. "Reporting to the general: Chef Miao is one of ours. Anyone who tries to take her will have their entire family killed and their household wiped out!" The soldiers in Wei Lin's camp: "Shameless Shen Yan! Give Chef Miao back to us! Give her back!" In the end, the two armies unite, fighting the Rong and Di in the north and driving out the southern barbarians, joining forces against their enemies and restoring the land. The soldiers: "Charge! Kill them! The lamb skewers are ours! Protect the cattle and sheep of the northwest! Protect the south, our land of fish and rice! Protect our boiled fish!" The northern Rong and southern Yi: "How did these weak, useless Central Plains people suddenly become so fierce? Do they have divine weapons helping them?" . All Miao Lan wants is to quietly work as a cook in the army camp. After the land is reunified, she plans to return to her old home in the southwest with her family, open another restaurant, and enjoy a peaceful retirement. But how did cooking lead to her ending up in bed with Shen Yan, the male antagonist? Still, dating a heroic, handsome general with a strong build and a great body is, hehe, far too much fun. There's just one thing she can't figure out. Shen Yan is nothing like the man described in the novel... Even the hero says Shen Yan has changed, and the soldiers praise his command skills as equal to those of a legendary god of war who died over two hundred years ago. . A beautiful, clever, fiery heroine who can cook X a seemingly aloof, actually shameless male lead who has been reborn as a god of war. Both are each other's first and only partners. Sweet and satisfying. Neither lead is the original person. Theme: Supporting each other and growing together