By linking my account to the check-in system, I became a leisurely traveler.

Chapter 211 Rice with Caviar: Wild Rice from the Americas! [First Update!]

Li Younan was so excited he couldn't sleep all night. He never imagined he would be so thrilled by listening to a radio program. In fact, this part didn't need to be recorded on camera—it was a relatively private moment of enjoyment.

Although he could tune the crystal radio, the AM broadcast signal coverage in Lake Chilco, Canada, was relatively limited due to its remote mountainous location.

In fact, he could only receive three channels: the first channel was 570 from Lake Williams, and the transmitting station was more than 100 kilometers away from the receiving location.

Although the distance is far, the information revealed in the program indicates that this channel has a transmission power of 1 kilowatt.

Since Lake Chirko is in the wild and lacks a complex electromagnetic environment, the received signal was quite good.

The first channel that Li Younan heard playing "Wonderful Tonight" was this channel.

This channel primarily plays country music and local news, but it mainly focuses on music most of the time.

At least after nightfall, there are no more programs with hosts.

The second channel is 7:30 AM from Vancouver, which mainly features breaking news and sports programming.

Li Younan listened for quite a while.

There is a program that broadcasts baseball games live.

Although Lee You-nan himself didn't know much about baseball or the star players the host was talking about, he still listened with great interest.

On such a lonely night, when it was quiet outside and the shelter was peaceful, the not-so-loud sound of the crystal radio speaker became noticeable.

Li Younan recalled reading "Robinson Crusoe" when he was a child. Back then, he read about how Robinson Crusoe settled down on a deserted island, built his own fortress, and had meat and bread to eat. He thought that kind of life was really good.

Therefore, when I was a child, I couldn't understand why Robinson Crusoe would get so excited about a savage and patiently teach that savage to speak.

Only then did he truly understand the feeling – only by experiencing genuine loneliness can one appreciate the preciousness of civilization and social interaction that everyone possesses.

Li Younan listened to the radio for a long time until the last three channels that could be received started playing music.

The night in the wilderness is quiet and long.

Li Younan had many dreams that night—a jumble of dreams, pieced together in fragments, with the only common thread being that each fragment contained various friends and objects from modern civilized society.

The night passed, and the next day was still a bright and sunny day.

After entering September, rainfall has become very scarce, and after the snow and wind of the past two days, the temperature has actually warmed up a bit.

Li Younan planned to search the area near the lake again.

The reason he hadn't headed towards the lake before was partly because he had various reasons for having to go to the forest, as most of his supplies came from there.

Besides fish, there doesn't seem to be anything else to be found in the direction of the lake.

On the other hand, it was because Li Younan was not a very good swimmer. Although he had learned to swim through a period of persistent practice, it was still quite difficult for him to splash around in a lake in the wild. Moreover, the water in Lake Chirko was extremely cold, and swimming in it would definitely not be a good idea.

However, it must be said that there are some good things around Lake Chirko.

Carrying a bow and arrows and a full set of weapons and equipment, Li Younan explored step by step along the lakeside towards the south, where the terrain appeared to be flatter.

After walking for only about 20 minutes, we spotted a water bird.

Li Younan cautiously approached the waterbird, and the instant the waterbird flapped its wings and took flight, he raised his hand and shot an arrow, bringing the waterbird down from the sky.

In this way, we can have an extra meal today to change things up.

He didn't carry a basket on his back when he went out today; instead, he carried a leather bag with a capacity of about 5 liters, which he tied to his back.

This leather bag was made by Li Younan using scraps from making mattresses and recliners.

Compared to a bamboo basket, a leather bag can't hold much, but it's good for packing smaller items.

To be honest, the roads near Lake Chirko are not easy to navigate.

Although the terrain is much flatter than when heading towards the forest, a major problem is that there are many small marshes along the shore of Lake Chirko, with dense vegetation that makes it easy to get your shoes wet.

Li Younan was very careful when she left, but her trouser legs still got soaked.

Fortunately, I wore waterproof boots today, so my socks stayed dry.

The production team provided several sets of pants and clothes, as well as a total of 12 pairs of socks.

Li Younan had sacrificed a pair of socks to make the filtering equipment, and now only 11 pairs of socks remained.

To ensure cleanliness, he always changes and washes his socks and clothes, so he was just a little helpless at this moment—he would have to wash his pants again when he got back.

Since there was no laundry detergent, the toothpaste provided by the production team, although containing some cleaning ingredients, was certainly not something Li Younan would use to wash his pants and clothes; that would be too extravagant.

Fortunately, he had a corresponding strategy: using wood ash.

Wood ash is truly a versatile and amazing resource in the wilderness.

Besides being added to mud during house construction, wood ash can also be used for washing clothes. Its main component is potassium carbonate, which is alkaline and can break down grease and dirt on clothing, similar to the principle of traditional soap.

However, there is a proper way to use it; you can't just add wood ash directly to the water when washing clothes.

Li Younan previously demonstrated this process in a video: collect dried wood ash, make a wood ash bag from the scraps left over from making socks into filter screens, and soak the ash bag in water for 10-15 minutes. This allows the alkaline substances to dissolve in the water without bringing out the ash from the wood ash itself.

Washing clothes with grey water can have a similar effect to soap.

Li Younan sighed softly.

Although clothes can be washed clean, hand washing is still quite troublesome.

He absolutely hates doing laundry. If he stayed here long enough, he even considered building a waterwheel by the stream across the waterfall, which would make a drum-type washing machine.

He then chuckled, finding his own thoughts unbelievable—he was getting lazier and lazier.

Just as he was thinking this, he suddenly lost his footing.

Fortunately, Li Younan, who has exceptional physical abilities, did not fall down. After adjusting his posture, he stood up steadily.

But the moment he lowered his head, his expression suddenly lit up with joy.

This is... oh my god, they actually found it!
Ahead was a shallow swamp, covered with many upright, cylindrical plants with stems over a meter tall.

The long leaves are estimated to be several tens of centimeters long, with fine serrations along the edges. They look somewhat like reeds, but are much larger.

The plant has slender seeds growing on it, which Li Younan gently flicked with his hand and they fell off.

He quickly put the seeds in his palm into his leather bag—this was the wild rice from North America that he had been longing for.

Although it's called wild rice, it's not actually a type of rice.

In fact, this stuff is sold in supermarkets in China, and the price is ridiculously high, costing over a hundred yuan per kilogram.

The vast majority of wild rice in China is imported from Canada's Glacier Lake.

Compared to ordinary rice, this wild rice is entirely black and long and thin, resembling a black iron nail.

Some businesses market this as caviar from rice.

As a chef, Li Younan would naturally not blindly believe such a claim.

In fact, wild rice was already in use in ancient China, although it was called "gu" in ancient times.

There is a vegetable called water bamboo, which is a cultivated variety. After being infected with smut fungus and swelling, it can no longer produce seeds. Therefore, this grain was replaced by higher-yielding crops such as rice and wheat in a certain dynasty.

Li Younan noticed that many wild rice seeds had fallen into the shallow swamp, which made him feel a little heartbroken.

The shallows are covered with rice stalks, which were once an important source of carbohydrates for the Native Americans.

Li Younan had to admire his good luck in finding such a patch of wild rice—but it was also thanks to the fact that it was the season for wild rice to ripen. Even when he came here a while ago, he couldn't find any wild rice to pick.

Li Younan collected all the wild rice around the shallows and filled a whole cowhide bag.

In fact, there is even more wild rice in the deeper waters of the lake. The wild rice plants in the deeper waters grow taller and thicker, and the yield is also greater.

In fact, the wild rice that the indigenous people who once lived in North America ate was mostly wild rice that grew in deep water.

However, Li Younan didn't have a canoe like the Native Americans, so he couldn't go in to collect the materials and could only watch anxiously.

However, after collecting the wild rice, Li Younan thought of something and sighed slightly—because he had not yet won the final victory, which meant that there must be other contestants who had not been eliminated.

The contestants were likely to face food shortages, but now that it's wild rice season, if other contestants can also find wild rice near the lake, this tug-of-war will continue for a while longer.

Fortunately, even near the lake, wild rice doesn't grow in such high quantities. It took Li Younan a long time to find this small patch of shallow water where wild rice grows.

Even if other contestants did find wild rice, they could only sustain themselves for two or three weeks at most by eating wild rice alone.

Once the window of opportunity in September has passed, those who haven't found their match will simply be unavailable.

The weather has been alright these past couple of days, but it might snow again in a couple of days.

Li Younan collected wild rice from the shallows, not even caring that his pants were soaked up to his knees.

The icy lake water made him feel quite uncomfortable.

Thinking about this, he realized that even if other contestants found wild rice, collecting it wouldn't be an easy task.

Li Younan didn't plan to touch the wild rice in the deep water area. Today's harvest was quite plentiful. Li Younan turned on the camera and proudly showed his harvest to the lens: "Guys, I estimate that I have collected about 10 pounds of wild rice today."

“My bag has a capacity of about 5 liters, which is just enough to hold the wild rice from this area.”

"This much wild rice, if we eat 100 grams a day, would be enough to last us 40 days! Of course, this is based on eating other foods as well. For a normal person, eating only 200 grams of wild rice a day is far from enough."

(End of this chapter)