The Old Butler choked on his words upon hearing this. He sighed inwardly; he knew right away that Jasmine picking so many vegetable leaves was certainly in preparation for the slaves again.
Why did this little princess from the luxurious Capital care about lowly slaves so much? Could it really be as the rumors said, that because her mother was also once a female slave, she had a special empathy?
Although the Old Butler rarely left the territory, he still knew a bit of news from the outside through the rare merchants who stopped by. Moreover, Jasmine was his direct superior; the Old Butler naturally had investigated beforehand and knew a little about the tumultuous situation of royal succession in the Capital, knowing that Jasmine's situation of being out of favor was not good.
But what surprised the Old Butler was that the other party did not seem to collapse or resent her fate because of it. On the contrary, on the first day arriving at this desolate territory, her spirit was high as if she wanted to do something big.
Furthermore, unlike other noble lords who always kept their distance, Jasmine personally did some manual labor that other noble lords despised doing, even considering it a humiliation.
After moving the vegetables back to the kitchen, Jasmine went out to call the slaves who had helped carry the wild boar earlier to come wash the vegetables.
The cool well water cleaned the mud from the vegetable leaves, revealing a fresh, delicious green color.
After washing, they still had to mince the wild vegetables; the sound of knives on chopping boards rang out steadily.
One part of the vegetables was used to stuff the intestines along with the meat filling and wheat flour; another part was also mixed with meat filling and flour to make meat pies.
Because there wasn't much wheat flour in the warehouse, dried bean powder ground finely was added to the meat pies.
Whether it was delicious or not was not yet discussed; Jasmine did it mainly to increase the quantity and the feeling of fullness. Although she couldn't make a big meat pie for each person, sharing one among three or four people would barely be enough to taste the flavor of meat.
Of course, Jasmine still had to set aside her own portion of the best meat for the next few days; otherwise, the Old Butler would certainly nag about etiquette and the Lord's health again.
Jasmine rejected the female cook's intention to bring up the salted pork to eat gradually. The moment she entered the kitchen, she knew where the few slices of fried meat from breakfast had come from.
Hanging on the black, soot-stained kitchen wall was a piece of meat cured with coarse salt. It was unknown how long it had been there; the surface of the meat had grown green and red mold, even having a greasy, fermented look, emitting a strange smell.
Below it was a clear cut mark; it must have been the part the female cook carefully selected and cut down, marinated heavily with spices to mask the smell, then fried and served to Jasmine.
It was unknown whether eating this kind of poorly preserved salted meat would cause illness. Jasmine had difficultly restrained her intention to order someone to throw that piece of salted meat away immediately due to the waste.
She firmly refused the female cook's intention to take the remaining half of the pig to cure in the old way for gradual consumption.
Jasmine did not want to harvest a similarly moldy, smelly piece of salted meat after a while, wasting a whole fat pig.
It was unknown if the female cook was sparing with salt or had poor technique, but looking at the salted meat on the wall, Jasmine maintained a deep skepticism of the female cook's meat-curing skills.
Even if she wanted to cure food reserves for winter later, she would definitely have to personally supervise and guide the female cook to follow a standard process.
Since most of the meat was used for mincing into filling, there wasn't much whole pork left. Jasmine told the female cook to roast all the scraps and bones, then take the pork fat, filter it, and put it in the pan to fry to extract the liquid lard.
Before long, the sound of sizzling fat rang out pleasantly. The whole kitchen was filled with the fragrant smell of meat and fat, a luxurious scent rare in this impoverished land.
Limited by crude and lacking cooking tools, the time to make a meal was very long. Moreover, the dishes Jasmine wanted to make were all novelties the female cook had never encountered. Even with Jasmine by her side dedicatedly directing every step, stumbling through the process took much more time than usual.
Jasmine's plan for a punctual lunch naturally fell apart. Furthermore, the slaves working outside would not return at noon to save travel time, so the lunch originally intended to be prepared grandly had to be moved and combined into the evening meal.
The slaves of the Black Dragon Castle returned earlier than usual today; as the sun just began to lean towards the west, they trickled back.
In this season, wild fruits in the forest were not fully ripe. As the weather heated up, wild beasts active in the forest also began to be more numerous and aggressive. Slaves without weapons dared not go too deep into the forest and could only wander around searching in the safe outer fringes.
In such a situation, the food they could find every day was very limited, mainly tree roots, mushrooms, and a few types of edible leaves. Even if they gathered wild fruits, they were both green and acrid; swallowing them only made their stomachs churn more.
Even so, being able to find unripe wild fruits made the slaves feel extremely lucky; at least it gave their stomachs something to squeeze.
Only the noble lords cared whether the taste of wild fruit was good or bad; they only needed to be able to fill their bellies and maintain life day by day.
Even though the slaves' requirements were that low, their harvest every day was extremely limited and precarious.
Today their luck was not very good; most people did not find anything edible, and their stomachs were rumbling with hunger.
They could only carry the bundles of dry branches they had picked up on their backs, hunching under the weight, dragging their exhausted, falling-apart bodies, legs heavy as lead, walking towards the castle with numb, soulless expressions.
Although being a slave for the castle was very miserable, as long as they worked hard, the castle would provide them with a meal of thin bean porridge in the evening every day.
The bowl of thin porridge, though not filling, provided some warmth and energy, keeping them from starving to death immediately.
For slaves who had to do a large amount of heavy physical labor like chopping trees and carrying rocks every day, that meager bit of food was completely insufficient for their consumption. Their bodies were always in a state of severe energy deficit; the slaves were still hungry to the point of burning guts, their heads spinning.
Fortunately, the weather was warm now, and edible things in the forest were gradually increasing. If it were winter covered in white snow, slaves who were too hungry could only go peel tree bark or dig for grass roots under the ice-cold snow to eat in order to hold on.