Mrs. Green took them to the market to buy groceries. Since it was the middle of the month, she brought along all the family's remaining meat and fish tickets. It wasn't much—just one ticket for a pound of meat and another for a pound of fish. Their entire monthly ration was only two pounds of meat and two pounds of fish, but thanks to Mrs. Green's meticulous planning, they could almost always manage to have meat or fish on the table every week.
This month, however, she wasn't planning on being so frugal. She wanted to give her daughter a proper welcome. They hadn't seen each other in nearly ten years, and Mrs. Green wished she could prepare a magnificent feast for her: fried hairtail fish, pan-fried eel, braised pork belly, sweet and sour pork tenderloin, boiled shrimp, white-cut chicken… These were all her daughter's favorites. Unfortunately, you couldn't get them now even if you had the money. All she could manage was some fried hairtail fish and braised pork belly.
