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

Chapter 212 The Most Delicious Food Since Joining the Show [Second Update!]

With only three contestants remaining in the show so far, viewers are actually more eager to see another outcome than who will win the final championship – who will be eliminated first, Pacini or Connor.

As for Li Younan, judging from his current lifestyle, as long as he doesn't do anything reckless, it's reasonable to suspect that he can stay until next year. This guy seems to be getting more and more comfortable the longer he stays.

As for Pacini and Connor, although Pacini has the greater advantage, Connor seems to be truly blessed by Lady Luck.

Whenever she was about to die, she would unexpectedly receive some food: sometimes a fish caught in a gillnet, sometimes a small animal caught in a trap, and sometimes a strange plant or even a bird's egg.

In short, despite being on the verge of elimination several times, Kanna has miraculously managed to fight two men who hunt large animals to this day.

Of course, the three people on the show were unaware of each other's situation.

Aside from Li Younan, the audience actually preferred Kang Na more—this woman possessed an astonishing optimism and resilience.

Despite her difficult life, she always had a smile on her face.

What the audience didn't know was that Kanna was about to laugh again.

At this moment, Kanna was wearing a thick hat, and her hands were dry, rough, and covered in chilblains.

He looked much thinner than when he first entered the wilderness, and he was pulling up the gillnet by the lake.

There was nothing inside the barbed wire, yet a smile appeared on her face, a smile tinged with helplessness and self-mockery.

She turned on the camera: "Lady Luck isn't on my side today. Maybe it's time to try a different spot. It's been a week since I last caught fish here. I'm planning to explore a bit further south; perhaps the water there is calmer and I might have some unexpected finds."

Without hesitation, she dragged the barbed wire net and walked in that direction for about an hour, her steps labored.

Her shoes and clothes were covered in mud, and the biting cold made her very uncomfortable, but she still flashed her signature smile: "Based on my past experience, whenever I'm down on my luck, something lucky happens to me. Who knows, maybe this is just Lady Luck playing a trick on me."

As she walked, she arrived at a shallow beach she had never been to before.

She had arranged the camera positions and was setting up the gillnets when she suddenly noticed the plants by the lake. She paused for a moment, then her eyes widened.

He tossed aside the gillnet, then exclaimed in surprise, "Oh my God! What is this? What is this?"

She called out twice and plucked the long, thin black seeds from the plant.

Holding these black seeds in my hands, I looked around and noticed that quite a few more were growing near this shallow area.

She was so moved that tears streamed down her face, and she kept repeating, "Oh, my God!"

She ran in front of the camera to show off her harvest: "This is wild rice! Oh my god, Lady Luck is on my side again! Oh my god, with this wild rice, I can keep going for a long time! Oh, it looks like there's quite a lot!"

However, she soon encountered new troubles.

She came here intending to set up gillnets, but she didn't bring a suitable container to hold the wild rice.

She hesitated for a moment, then took off her coat.

A gust of cold wind swept by, and she couldn't help but sneeze softly.

She quickly took off her inner garment and put her outer down jacket back on.

She simply tied the clothes inside together, using them as a makeshift container to hold the wild rice.

Similar to Li Younan's situation, she collected all the wild rice near the shallows.

But the real wild rice was in the deep water, and she wanted to take off her clothes and swim over there several times.

Connor is a great swimmer, but every time she tested the water temperature with her hand, she gave up on the idea.

Although wild rice is tempting, swimming in this kind of weather could lead to catching a cold or getting cramps, ending the swim prematurely without even having a chance to call for help.

However, even just collecting wild rice from the shallows yielded a considerable harvest.

She estimated that there were about 6 pounds of wild rice.

After that, she set up the gillnet and took the wild rice back to the shelter.

Back at the shelter, she eagerly took out some wild rice, poured it into a pot, added water, and said to the camera, "Guys, I'm starving! I really want to taste wild rice right now. To be honest, I've never eaten this before."

Then, with a touch of pride, she explained to the viewers off-camera: "Wild rice is a food that the indigenous people of North America, the Native Americans, love. This food can be cooked and eaten directly without hulling, and it is rich in the protein and carbohydrates we need, even more so than rice and wheat. However, I don't know what it tastes like yet, so I'll cook it now."

Kanna doesn't have much cooking skill; for her, cooking food is all that matters, and that's what she's always done.

She planned to cook the wild rice for half an hour, which she felt would be enough based on her limited experience cooking rice.

After the wild rice started cooking, she grinned at the camera and said, "Before coming here, I never thought I would crave wheat or rice so much. I've always loved meat. Okay, now I need to let the wild rice cook a little longer. Before that, I need to take care of my clothes."

By this time, her clothes were covered in mud.

She took off her clothes and quickly changed into dry ones.

She had never washed her clothes since entering the wilderness, but in this environment, it didn't seem to matter so much.

She simply hung her clothes on wooden poles outside the shelter to dry. She took a sip of hot water, feeling blissful, and said to the camera, "But honestly, I really want to take a hot shower right now."

After saying that, she turned off the camera and hid in the shelter, planning to take off her clothes and wipe her body with a towel once the temperature in the stove had risen a bit.

……

At approximately the same time that Kanna started cooking the wild rice, Li Younan also returned to the shelter.

Compared to Kanna, who was in such a hurry to cook the wild rice, Li Younan simply poured the wild rice from the leather bag into an empty jar.

Wild rice is a food that is very easy to preserve. If stored in a dry place, it will not rot or mold for several years.

Li Younan will eat this can of wild rice sparingly by himself. For a long time to come, his diet will be truly complete, which is much better than relying on starch to supplement carbohydrates.

However, wild rice is not so easy to cook.

Li Younan, who has excellent culinary skills, knows very well that wild rice is hard and difficult to chew when cooked directly. You have to chew it for several minutes before you can swallow it.

Li Younan also wanted to try it, so he scooped out about an ounce in a small bowl, just enough to cook one bowl, and then poured in hot water to soak it.

To cook wild rice until it's soft and delicious, it needs to be soaked for at least several hours. Since it was still early, after soaking the bowl of wild rice, Li Younan took off his already dirty clothes and prepared to wash them.

He sighed slightly, because most of the bathwater heated on the stove would be used for washing clothes today, so his plan to take a bath that evening would have to be postponed again—he would have to boil another large pot.

After washing the clothes, before the wild rice was soaked, Li Younan took the opportunity to cut down a lot of black pine wood.

He was very skilled at cutting down trees. When he first arrived, he chose a slightly farther spot, but now he gradually moved closer to cut down black pine.

This arrangement makes it easier and less difficult for him to chop wood later on, which can be considered a kind of "bitter before sweet" situation.

He chopped down five whole black pine logs and dragged them back, but he didn't rush to chop them all into firewood. This much firewood would be enough for him to burn for a long time.

Li Younan had a habit of stockpiling all supplies. A tall stack of chopped firewood had already been piled up at the entrance of the shelter, and there was never a shortage inside the shelter, so there was always firewood available whenever he wanted to add more.

After finishing all these tasks, he was a little hungry. When he returned to the shelter, the wild rice was indeed almost ready.

Next was a cooking demonstration. Li Younan turned on the camera and showed the complete process of cooking wild rice: "First, we need to steam this wild rice. Why not boil it? Because this is a high-altitude area, and the water can't actually be heated to 100 degrees Celsius; it can only be heated to about 90 degrees Celsius. Secondly, this is just the first step in cooking."

While he was busy, he had taken the time to boil the water for steaming the rice. Now he put the wild rice directly into the wooden steamer to steam it.

With pottery, he had a complete set of cooking equipment, capable of steaming, boiling, frying, and baking.

Meanwhile, he began preparing to deal with the waterbird he had hunted that day.

After cleaning the waterfowl, deboning and chopping it into small pieces, marinate it simply with salt, a suitable amount of melted butter, and a little wild onion extract.

The wild rice over there had already been steamed. Li Younan then used the pot provided by the production team to set up a stove, cut a piece of ghee and threw it into the pot to melt. He then said to the camera, "Today we're going to make a dish of wild rice stir-fried with diced waterfowl and ghee."

The melted ghee turned into a golden liquid, emitting a rich milky aroma, and bubbles rose to a boil.

He tossed the marinated diced meat into the pot and stir-fried it quickly. A look of delight appeared on Li Younan's face—after all, the waterfowl meat was fresh, much more tender than the smoked beef that was about to be dried out.

After the base ingredients were stir-fried to release their broth, he poured all the steamed wild rice into the pot and then quickly stir-fried it again.

After cooking, Li Younan served it on an exquisite plate, accompanied by a ceramic spoon and a cup of sweet tea. She also put some milk curds in a small dish as a snack.

After arranging the food on the plate and recording it with a camera, they would say, "The audience should eat first," before starting to enjoy their meal.

After his complicated cooking process, the wild rice had become very soft and delicious, and each grain had absorbed the soup.

Although the main seasoning is only salt, the natural meaty aroma combined with the milky aroma of ghee fully brings out the aroma of wild rice, which is similar to rice and has a primitive and rugged fragrance.

Li Younan ate with great satisfaction, and finally let out a contented burp in front of the camera.

After finishing the meal, I wasn't in a hurry to clean up the dishes, so I comfortably lay on the bed and turned on the crystal radio.

Although crystal radios don't require a power source, they don't use high-impedance headphones, and the speakers do require a power supply, so it's impossible for Li Younan to keep it on 24 hours a day.

At this moment, he didn't miss home at all, nor did he have any of the strange sentimentality he had before. He even started to look forward to staying here for a while longer, which seemed pretty good.

……

Rewind a few hours, and Kanna saw that the wild rice had completely absorbed the water in the pot. She couldn't wait to eat the wild rice right out of the pot.

When she took her first bite, her expression became a little strange. She kept chewing and chewing for several minutes, and then gave the camera an indescribable expression: "To be honest, I think the taste of this wild rice is not bad, but it is too hard to chew. It takes me at least 5 minutes to chew a bite of wild rice."

As for the taste…

Kanna thought for a moment, then suddenly realized something and said, "Wait a minute."

She then took out some salt, sprinkled a little on the rice and mixed it in. After taking another bite, a happy smile appeared on her face: "This is definitely the most delicious food I've eaten all year!"

(End of this chapter)