Legend of Concubine's Daughter Minglan 知否知否 应是绿肥红瘦

C182. One Day Working Report of a CEO (116.2)

Minglan, having directly ignored their grievances, took someone to open the storeroom. First, she registered all the subjects in the book and arrange them in different categories. After that, she told the servants to move out lots of stuffs such as the tripods, stoves, porcelains, gold vessels, jade vessels, enamels, bronze vessels, screens and the jade caving scripture according to the list she had drafted before. She also took out twenty to thirty bolts of fine cloths and gave them to the needlework room in order to make new summer clothes for everyone in the mansion. After the servants had known about this, they got very cheerful instantly. The clothes they had worn in the last year had all been bought from the clothing shop. Not only did the clothes have inferior materials, they were also not fit at all-- In this ages, the garment industry hadn't been fully developed.

When thinking of the storeroom, Minglan got angry again. Yesterday when she had opened the storeroom to have a check, she had smelled a faint scent of the medicine. After she had bypassed a few large rooms, she finally found a pile of precious medicinal materials in a corner. There were ginseng, angelica, rhinoceros horn, calculus bovis, musk, corn cervi pantotrichum, cordyceps sinensis, tiger bone, os pardi, monkey bezoar, testiset penis phocae, fel ursi... etc. All the medicines in great abundance were about to fill half of the room.

Minglan only gazed at those precious medicines in a trance. Some medicines had already lost part of their properties because of where they had been placed. What a waste! Then she put a query to Gu Tingye indignantly about the cause of this. However, she never realized that Gu Tingye only replied her joyfully, "...There are tiger bones and fel ursi? Perfect! My friend Chengqian is going to garrison the Miao territory. His knees haven't been recovered from this injury before. The southern territory was wet and full of parasitic infestation. I was thinking of presenting him two doses of tiger bone cream. Don't forget to fetch me the tiger bone tomorrow!"

Minglan was speechless. This man had completely ignored the key point in her words. She wondered if he was exactly like this when listening to the emperor.

While Minglan sighed and shook her head, she sorted out all the medicinal materials to register them on the book. Her hard work was not in vain. She found a few pieces of fat and stout old mountain ginseng and then sent the biggest one to Old Madam Sheng. She also sent some medicines and tonics which were beneficial to the pregnant women and the newborn babies to Hai shi and Hualan.

As Minglan was busy dealing with the medicines, she suddenly realized that it was already a quarter to one o'clock in the afternoon and she hadn't eaten the lunch yet, which was against her daily health-preserving routine. Also, her afternoon nap would also be influenced, which annoyed her even more. As a result, she declared sternly, "Today's official business is over. Everything can be wait until tomorrow."

After Minglan had cleaned up, she sat by the small round table while looking at the whole table of dishes. Only after Minglan had taken a sip of the soup did she feel comfortable. As she put down her spoon, she saw Xiaotao leading an elder servant who had a food box in her hand.

The servant who was around forty years old looked tall and strong with big eyes and bushy eyebrows on her face. That was a plump woman. The clothes she was wearing were rather clean and tidy. The looks on her face showed that she was a straightforward person. After she had entered into the room, she gave her obeisance to Minglan gingerly. Then she took out a dish from the box and put it onto the table. A green lotus leaf covered the blue and white porcelain plate which was in octagonal shape. When the leaf was uncovered, the room was suffused with delicious smell.

"Madam, this is the lotus scent steamed ribs with glutinous rice. I have already used the ginger water to remove the blood and the fishy flavor and preserved the fresh ribs in the salt for two hours according to your orders. Then I stir-fried the ribs with scalding oil. At last, I put the ribs and the glutinous rice which had been softened by the water as well as the leaf which had soaked in the rice wine into the food steamer. After two hours, the dish was ready. But I still left it in the food steamer to preserve the heat and only took it out just now." The servant had a hoarse and loud voice but still tried her best keep her voice down, in order to sound obedient.