Chapter 414: Chapter 209: The Most Delicious Food Since Entering the Show [Second Update!]

As the show progresses, only three contestants remain. Rather than focusing on who will ultimately win the championship, the audience outside is actually more eager to see another result — namely, who will be eliminated first between Pacini and Kanna.

As for Li Younan, based on his current lifestyle, as long as he doesn’t take any reckless actions, it’s reasonable to suspect he could stay until next year. This guy seems to become more comfortable the longer he stays.

Now for Pacini and Kanna, although Pacini currently has a greater advantage, Kanna seems to genuinely be favored by Lady Luck.

Whenever she’s on the verge of failure, she unexpectedly gets a bit of food supply: sometimes it’s fish caught in her net, sometimes a trap catches a small animal, and other times she finds some odd plants or even bird eggs.

In summary, Kanna has been on the brink of elimination several times, yet miraculously battled against two men who hunt large animals until now.

Of course, the three on the show are unaware of each other’s situations.

Outside of Li Younan, the audience actually prefers Kanna more — this woman possesses surprising optimism and strength.

Even though life is so challenging, she always wears a smile on her face.

What the audience doesn’t know right now is, Kanna is about to smile again.

Kanna wears a thick hat, her hands are dry and rough, even showing signs of frostbite.

Having lost quite a bit of weight compared to when she first entered the wilderness, she is currently pulling up her net by the lakeside.

There’s nothing in the net, but a smile appears on her face, though it’s tinged with helplessness and self-mockery.

She opens the camera: "Today, Lady Luck did not favor me. Perhaps it’s time to try a new location. The last time I caught fish here was a week ago. I’m planning to explore a bit further south, maybe the water there is calmer, leading to unexpected discoveries."

As soon as she resolves to do this, she drags the net and walks in that direction for over an hour, each step a struggle.

Her shoes and clothes are covered in mud. The piercing cold makes her extremely uncomfortable, but she still displays her signature smile: "Based on my previous experiences, whenever I’m unlucky, something fortunate eventually happens. Who knows, maybe this is Lady Luck’s prank."

Walking along, she reaches a shallow area she has never visited before.

She sets up the camera, and while arranging the net, she suddenly notices some plants by the lake, first stunned, then wide-eyed.

She abandons the net, exclaiming: "Oh my gosh! What is this? What is this?"

She calls out twice in a row, plucking the slender black seeds from the plants.

Holding these black seeds in her hands, she looks around and notices there are quite a few of them growing near the shallow area.

She becomes so excited that tears stream down, muttering: "Oh my God!"

Running to the camera, she showcases her finds: "This is North American wild rice! Oh my God, Lady Luck has blessed me again! Wow, with wild rice, I can last a long time! And it looks like there’s quite a lot!"

However, she quickly faces a new dilemma.

This time she came here to set up a net and didn’t bring a suitable container for the wild rice.

She hesitates for a moment, then takes off her jacket.

Battered by a cold wind, she sneezes softly.

She quickly takes off the shirt underneath before quickly putting back on her coat.

She ties her shirt simply to use as a makeshift container for the wild rice.

Similar to Li Younan’s situation, she collects all the wild rice in the shallow area.

But the real bounty lies in the deeper water. Several times, she considers stripping and swimming over.

Kanna is quite the swimmer, yet every time she tests the water temperature with her hands, she abandons the idea.

Although the wild rice is tempting, swimming in this weather risks catching a cold or cramping, which would end the game early without even a chance to call for rescue.

However, even collecting only from the shallow area yields a considerable harvest.

She estimates approximately six pounds of wild rice.

Later, she sets up the net and heads back to the shelter with the wild rice.

Once back, she eagerly pours some wild rice into a pot, adds water, and says to the camera: "Folks, I’m starving and can’t wait to try the taste of wild rice right now. Honestly, I’ve never eaten anything like this before."

Then, she proudly educates the audience off-camera: "Wild rice is a food beloved by Native Americans, or Indians. This food can be cooked directly without dehusking and is rich in essential proteins and carbohydrates, with contents even higher than rice and wheat. But I still don’t know what it tastes like, so I’m cooking it now."

Kanna lacks cooking skills; to her, as long as the food is cooked, it’s edible, and she has always approached it this way.

She plans to cook the wild rice for half an hour. Based on her sparse experience cooking rice, she thinks this time will be sufficient.

With the wild rice cooking, she grins at the camera again and says: "Before coming here, I never thought I’d be so eager for wheat or rice. I’ve always loved eating meat. Well, now I’ve got to let the wild rice cook a bit longer, and before that, I need to clean up my clothes."

By this point, her clothes are completely mud-soaked.

She takes them off and quickly changes into dry ones.

Since entering the wilderness, she has never washed clothes, but in this environment, it seems this matter isn’t that important.

For the clothes she had taken off, her way of handling them was to hang them directly on the stick outside the shelter to dry.

She took a sip of hot water, felt very happy, and said to the camera, "But seriously, I really want to take a hot shower now."

After saying this, she turned off the camera and then hid inside the shelter, intending to wait until the temperature from the stove rose a bit before stripping down and wiping her body with a towel.

...

Just about the same moment Kanna was cooking wild rice, Li Younan also returned to the shelter.

Compared to Kanna who hurriedly cooked the wild rice, Li Younan casually poured the wild rice from the cowhide bag into an empty jar first.

Wild rice is very easy to preserve; kept in a dry place, it won’t spoil or mold for several years.

This jar of wild rice, Li Younan plans to eat sparingly, making his diet complete for the foreseeable future, which is far better than supplementing carbohydrates with starch as before.

However, wild rice isn’t that easy to cook.

The highly skilled Li Younan knows well that wild rice is hard and difficult to chew when directly cooked; one bite takes several minutes to chew and still can’t be swallowed.

Li Younan also planned to try out the taste, scooping about one or two ounces into a small bowl, just enough to cook a bowl, and then soaked it in hot water.

To cook wild rice to be soft and tasty, it needs to be soaked for at least several hours, and since it’s still early, after soaking this bowl of wild rice, Li Younan took off his dirty clothes and prepared to do laundry.

He sighed slightly because the bath water on the stove would mostly have to be used for washing clothes today, delaying the plan to soak in a bath at night again—he’d have to heat a large pot again.

After washing clothes, the wild rice wasn’t ready yet, so Li Younan took the opportunity to chop a considerable amount of black pine wood.

He was very skillful at chopping; when he first arrived, he chose a slightly farther place, but now he gradually started chopping closer and closer.

This arrangement allows the difficulty of chopping firewood to become increasingly easy, which is a disguised form of delayed gratification.

He chopped five complete black pine logs and dragged them back, not in a hurry to split them all into firewood, as this amount would last him for quite a long time.

Li Younan has a habit of stockpiling all supplies; a considerable pile of split firewood is stacked at the shelter’s entrance, and inside the shelter, there’s never a shortage—you can always add wood whenever needed.

After finishing these tasks, he was a bit hungry, and by now the wild rice had soaked enough.

Next was a segment demonstrating culinary skills; Li Younan turned on the camera, showcasing the technique to cook wild rice: "First, we need to steam this wild rice. Why not choose to boil it? Because here on the plateau, water doesn’t actually reach 100℃; it can only reach about 90 degrees. Secondly, this is just the first step of cooking."

Earlier, while busy, he had already taken time to boil the water for steaming rice, so now he put the wild rice directly into the wooden steamer to steam.

With pottery, he has a complete set of cooking equipment for steaming, boiling, frying, and deep-frying.

Meanwhile, he began preparing the waterfowl he hunted today.

Processing the waterfowl, deboning and chopping it into cubes, then adding salt, some melted butter, and a bit of wild onion extract to make seasoning for simple marination.

Meanwhile, the wild rice, already steamed, was now ready; Li Younan used the pot provided by the program crew, placed it on the stove, threw in a piece of ghee to melt, then said to the camera, "Today we are making a dish of waterfowl meat cubes sautéed with ghee and wild rice."

The melted ghee turned into golden liquid, emitting a rich dairy aroma, with foaming bubbles.

He tossed the marinated meat cubes into the pot, quickly sautéed them, and Li Younan’s face revealed a delighted expression—regardless, the waterfowl meat is fresh, far more tender than the wind-dry smoked beef.

After the base ingredients were sautéed to produce a broth, he poured all the steamed wild rice into the pot, followed by another round of quick stir-frying.

After plating, Li Younan used a delicate dish to serve, didn’t forget to accompany with a ceramic spoon and a cup of sweet tea, also scooping a bit of cheese curds into a small dish as a snack.

After plating, recording it with the camera and offering a line "audience eats first," he then started to feast.

Through his complex cooking, the wild rice had become very soft and tasty, with every grain absorbing the broth.

Although the main seasoning was only salt, the natural meat aroma and the buttery dairy flavor fully triggered the rice-like fragrance and a primitive, rugged aroma of the wild rice.

Li Younan ate with great satisfaction, finally facing the camera with a contented belch.

After finishing the meal, without rushing to tidy the dishes, he comfortably lay on the bed and turned on the crystal radio.

Although the crystal radio doesn’t need a power source, its loudspeaker does require power, so Li Younan can’t have it on 24 hours a day.

At this moment, he didn’t feel homesick at all, nor did he feel those strange sentimental emotions from before; he even started looking forward to spending a longer time here, as if it was quite nice.

...

Rewinding the time by a few hours, Kanna saw that the water in the pot had been completely absorbed by the wild rice, and she hurriedly tasted the wild rice rice right from the pot.

When she put in the first bite, her expression became a bit odd, continuing to chew, chewing for several minutes, revealing an indescribable expression to the camera, "To be honest, I think the taste of this wild rice is quite good, but it’s just too hard to chew. Eating one bite of wild rice takes me at least 5 minutes of chewing."

As for the taste...

Kanna thought for a moment, suddenly realizing something, saying, "Wait a minute."

Then she took out the high salt, sprinkled a bit on the rice and mixed it thoroughly, then took another bite, showing a happy smile: "This is definitely the most delicious food I’ve eaten all year!"