"Auntie doesn’t need to worry," Qin Xiangnuan thought for a moment, already having an idea in her mind, then continued to speak, "The scallion pancakes and the thousand-layer pancakes are not difficult to learn to begin with, and actually, just by watching a few times one could grasp them. As for the vegetables stuffed in the pancakes, every household can stir-fry them. However, as for the sauce, only our family has it—they won’t know about it. Without that particular ingredient, a lot of the flavor will be missing. At the very least, they won’t be able to make money off of that."
"But the scallion pancakes..."
Upon hearing this, Aunt Hua’s face turned pale again, sheet-white, which was quite worrying.
"Don’t worry, Aunt Hua," Qin Xiangnuan hurriedly consoled Aunt Hua, lest she become fixated on this and fall into despair.
"Auntie, we’ve been selling scallion pancakes for a long time now. Over time, everyone has probably grown tired of it, which is why many of our regular customers don’t come by much anymore."
That was true. Aunt Hua knew that because there were more food vendors, many of the regular customers came one day but not the next. However, even with so many food vendors, their family’s scallion pancakes sold the best.
But now, the Wen family was truly despicable. How could they do something so unscrupulous and shameless?
"So what should we do?" Aunt Hua didn’t know why, but she just trusted Qin Xiangnuan. She must have a solution, otherwise she wouldn’t have come here.
"We..." Qin Xiangnuan suddenly lifted her little face, the porcelain-white skin reflecting strands of sunlight. As it turned out, the distant horizon was already stained blood-red by the setting sun, and another day had passed. Time really flew by.
"Oh, is there a new variety today?" An old customer who often bought food from their stall noticed that they were not selling scallion pancakes today. He had actually wanted to buy a few to take home. Although the vendor opposite sold them cheaper, he was devoted to Qin Xiangnuan’s stall. The vendor opposite had dirty hands and nails, with uncleaned black soot; could food made by them even be eaten? They ate food, not poison.
But why were there no scallion pancakes?
Auntie is here? Chun Xiangnuan, upon seeing the regular customer, quickly took out a steaming lotus leaf pancake from the pot, stuffed a little bit of each vegetable in it, then bagged it in a plastic bag and handed it over to the customer.
"Auntie, you’ve come at just the right time; we’ve introduced something new. This here is the lotus leaf pancake with fillings. Scallion pancakes have been eaten so much they’ve become a bit bland, so we thought of this. The pancakes are steamed, and the flour is our own home-milled farm flour - very clean, for our own family to eat. Auntie, please have a taste first and let us know where we could improve?"
"How could I possibly impose?" Once the regular customer saw the lotus leaf pancake in her hand— it was freshly out of the pot and gave off a fragrant aroma of flour—the fact that she came out specifically to eat, and was indeed hungry, made it hard to refuse.
"Auntie has been our customer for so long; there’s no need to be so polite with us. Your opinion is more important than selling a few hundred pancakes," Qin Xiangnuan sweet-talked, also making one for herself and started to eat. The old customer also unreservedly took a bite of the lotus leaf pancake and placed it to her mouth.
Upon this taste, she discovered that it was indeed far tastier than the scallion pancake with fillings—a delicious aroma of flour, perfectly seasoned vegetables, richer in oils and juices, especially with a hint of meat flavor. And having this in the stomach, even after eating three to five of them, it would not hurt the stomach. After all, scallion pancakes were made of dead dough and deep-fried, but this was truly steamed. Plus, having eaten scallion pancakes for several years, she really felt tired of them now.