Chapter 433 Discussion with Everyone

Gumihou: Ah… a nostalgic super delete chapter. Starting word count 1470

“I’m home~”

“Good, I’m hungry.”

“”Same.””

“”Sui, too~””

“… …”

Well, they were gluttons after all… but still! What kind of greeting is this?!

“Don’t you think it’s a little rude to just declare your hunger the moment I got back?” I asked sternly.

“It can’t be helped, food is the most important thing in life.”

Well, he did become my familiar because of my cooking, so…

“”Ou!””

“”Yummy food~~””

“Well, I guess…” there’s no reasoning with gluttons, I should just get on with the cooking.

“”Well, I want Gigantic Minotaur meat!”” declared Dora-chan.

“Umu,”

“”Meaty~~””

“…you guys, we’re going to run out at this rate,” well, I guess it can’t be helped since it was really delicious.

I left them telling each other how delicious Gigantic Minotaur meat was and headed for the kitchen. I stared at the large trestle table in the kitchen and considered my options while scrolling through [Net Super]. [5a]

“Oh, mushrooms are on sale today. If I serve this with Gigantic Minotaur meat… hm, hm, I think… I’ve seen this thing here…” I switched the tab to the area where they sell pots and pans and other cooking paraphernalia and… “Yes! I knew they have it!”

The page stopped at an image of a steamer [9]. [8] It was an optional addition to the pots I have bought before. Since the pots and pans options were limited, there was only one type of steamer and it could more or less be used with most of my pots and pans.

After checking how many pots and pans I have that could be used with the steamer, I bought quite a few and got ready for the prep work.

“Right, now that I have the right equipment, let’s get started on the Foil Steamed Beef [10]!”

That’s right, when it comes to beef, it is usually either boiled, stewed or grilled. When I saw the mushrooms, however, I thought of serving a more refres.h.i.+ng Foil Steamed Beef instead.

“Right, let’s get all kinds of mushrooms, Maitake, s.h.i.+meji and Enoki. As for the vegetables, peppers will do and, oh, paprika is on sale, so let’s get those too. Hmm, I think I’m out of onions…”

After collecting all the necessary ingredients, I got started on the prep work.

First, split the mushrooms into bite-size pieces. Next, slice the onions, peppers and paprika into thin slices. The Gigantic Minotaur meat was cut into fairly thin slices. After arranging the meat, mushrooms and other vegetables onto pre-trimmed foil papers, I covered them with a seasoning sauce made with soy sauce, sake and mirin before folding the foil into neat packets and setting them aside ready to be steamed.

[9] Pots and pans of water had already been set to boil, all I had to do next was uncover a pot (or pan) and place the steamer over it and cover it back. So convenient!

Let’s make use of all the available stove s.p.a.ce!

“Oi…” Fer was wrinkling his face at the three opened packets of Foil Steamed Gigantic Minotaur meat in front of him.

“Are you going to complain about ingredients other than meat? You should know my skills by now, so eat it first before complaining.” I challenged him, confident of my skills.

“Muu…”

As for the other two…

“”Juicy~! It’s so juicy!””

“”Yummy~! Juicy~! Gushy~!””

“Fufun~ did you see how the other two praise my very delicious Foil Steamed Gigantic Minotaur? You can’t get this kind of juicy sweetness from grilling you know, and a lot of the sweetness comes from vegetables, you know? Vegetables!”

“…fine, I’ll give it a try,” Fer had this really reluctant look on his face. It was hilarious to see him stick his tongue gingerly at one of the foil packets, before slurping the entire content into his mouth with a single gulp.

Naturally, there were many ‘seconds’.

Partway through this eating fest, I said, “If you squeeze a bit of this sudachi over your Foil Steamed Beef, it will add a refres.h.i.+ng citrusy flavour~”

“Fumu, that fruit has an odd tingly smell. I’ll have some.”

“”Me too!””

“”Sui too~!””

I squeezed sudachi over everyone’s portion.

As expected, it was a great hit and, I swear their eating paces increased.

For myself, instead of chowing down an entire packet of Foil Steamed Gigantic Minotaur on its own, I prepared a set meal for myself, complete with instant miso soup, some pickled kelp, lightly pickled cuc.u.mber and, of course, freshly cooked rice.

Naturally, a j.a.panese man must have rice!

After stuffing a mouthful of the beef into my mouth, I chased it down with plenty of white rice.

“Delish~~”

Rice is justice!

Needless to say, we enjoyed our Foil Steamed Gigantic Minotaur meat very much.

After dinner, I let Fer, Sui and Dora-chan picked out their favourite desserts from Fujiya as I sip a bit of tea to help me digest.

It was during this quiet lull that I spoke up, “Hey, I want to talk about something with you guys.”

“Oi, what’s up with that serious tone?”

“Well, I collected the money from yesterday’s Drop sale and… well, it’s a lot. To say the least. So, I want to know, what do you think I should do?”

“Umu… I don’t care about human currency.”

“”I like that we can exchange food with the coins.””

“”Sui likes Aruji’s food~~””

“No, I mean, do you have anything that you’d want? I mean, things that could be bought with money.”

“Food.”

“”Delicious food!””

“”Yummy food~~!””

I really should have known better than to ask them for opinions.

“If you wish to use money, why not donate to the church again? Especially Ninril-sama’s church.”

“”Or, ugh, an orphanage. Those kids are really thin with their sharp elbows.””

“I see, I guess social services is still the way to go, huh.” Well, I don’t mind giving money to worthy causes. There are bound to be lots of poor people and orphans in this violent world. I just don’t want to end up funding a war, a weird cult or someone’s greed. “Okay, let’s do that, but we should always investigate any organisation before donating. Speaking of which, we could donate some of our loot too…”

I mean, we could leave everything aside from meat Drops during our dungeon runs, but… that felt like a criminal level of waste. Moreover, Tristan-san had been looking forward to us bringing something good from him, so it’s not like I could just let him down like that.

It had been a few days since we settled on doing social services to reduce my acc.u.mulated wealth. It was finally time to re-enter the dungeon. My familiars had insisted that five days was more than enough to rest and recover, I managed to extend that time by another day, claiming that I have a lot of food to make for our trip.

Regardless, the day we have to re-enter the dungeon finally arrived.

“I really want to stick around the surface a little longer…”

“Oii, let’s go!”

“”Ou!””

“”Dungeon, dungeon, dungeon~””

“Yeah, yeah, I know…”

The Guild Master was there to see us off. “We look forward to your return~!”

The grin on his face was so wide, I’m surprised his head did not topple back. Also, could you not rub your hands like a sleazy car salesman?

“Let’s go!”

That was Fer, I guess there’s no escaping the high-difficulty Brixt Dungeon once again.

[Gumihou: 1238 words left.]

[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs

[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs

[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue

[4] Structural Change: Change pa.s.sive sentence to dialogue

[5] Delete Repet.i.tive or Pointless Information… starting to delete pointless scenes now

[a] Deleted scene where Mukouda had a whole dialogue with himself about how he wants to discuss something with the familiars

[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose

[7] Add Dialogue Tag

[8] Creative Licence – Adjust explanation to fit with [9]

[9] 鍋にセットできる蒸し器 – literally steamer that can be set on a pot

[10] 牛肉のホイル蒸 – Foil Steamed Beef

Found a few recipes in j.a.panese sites, all of them recommend steaming the foils for only 15 min or even 10 min.

However, if you googled ‘Foil Steamed Beef’ you’ll get recipes that are more like descriptions of the cooking and they mostly needed at least one or two hour cooking time with thick cuts of beef.

Another j.a.panised recipe.

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Although… it’s, um, you only get half the benefits… but, the decision is in your hands!