Chapter 41: Art Brings Bread

T/N: Title is a Japanese proverb meaning the skill you have might help your life one day.

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“Whoaaa~ What the hell?! This soup… Is super delishhhhh!”

“I’m glad it suits your tastes.”

The dish I served to Soncho-san was miso soup with scallops. I received some rare spices and ingredients from Sheila-sama as a thanks for the uni rice bowl. One of the spices I received was this miso. Miso was made in a similar process with shoyu but miso had a sweeter and more complex flavour. 

I added a lot of scallops in a konbu soup, brought them to boil and when the scallop’s shell started opening up, I dissolved the miso in a ladle before I mixed them up into the soup and there you go! It was a simple and easy light brown soup. 

“Especially… This… Scalloks-pe?”

“It’s scallops.”

“This is the first time I ever ate it and this thing right here, the more I chew, the more delicious juice bursts out of it. This thing is the best~”

I gave Soncho-san a bowl of soup since I had made plenty of them with this cauldron. At first, I wanted to serve oysters but it turned out the oyster’s glamorous appearance made him a little bit scared so I changed it up to scallops since scallop looked a little bit cuter than oyster at a glance. 

“Pwahhh!~ If I knew it’s going to taste this delicious, then I wouldn’t have minded if you used that oyster you whipped out before-pe!~”

“We still have a long way to go so please have some more. We need their shells to make limestone powder after all…”

“Huh? You can make limestone powder out of this-pe….?”

Soncho-san grabbed one of the scallops, took it out of its shell and stared at it incredulously. 

Back in my parents’ house, I used to grow edible weeds in the garden for me to eat. I heard the gardeners talking about it when I was tending to my edible weeds.

Lyran countdom was nearby the sea so there was an abundance of shell from the mollusk they caught in the fishermen’s house. The gardeners would take those shells from the fishermen and burn them in a similar way to making charcoal until the shells became pure white. This pure white thing was what the gardeners called ‘organic limestone’. 

Every now and then, I used to follow their method and used it to improve the quality of soil for my edible weeds garden. 

…..Who would’ve thought… That skill, which is unbecoming for a daughter of a count family, could be useful here…

“Yes, we just need to burn it and then grind it into powder.”

“Hoo~ Missy, you know a lot, huh~”

But still, there was only so much shellfish the two of us could eat. 

“Actually, it would be more efficient if we can get more people to eat the shellfish so we can use the leftover shell after…”

“Hmm~ Then can I invite those guys from my village here?”

That’s it! If we hold a shellfish party here, a lot of people will come to eat the shellfish and we’ll be able to collect a lot of shells! Maricle-sama had given me a written permit for me to use this fish pond and the other things in this estate as I pleased so…  It should be alright for me to use the stove and the furnace as I pleased too. 

Judging from my conversation with Soncho-san, he seems to be well acquainted with Bhadra-sama too… 

It was at this moment that I suddenly remembered what Maricle-sama had told me when we were doing an inspection over Lönnrot dukedom. 

『Miltia, come and take a look… Can you see it? Those fields. 』

We were looking down at the scenery from Maricle-sama’s room when Maricle-sama pointed his finger toward a well-maintained and beautiful vast greenery.

『The true treasure of our dukedom is the people… Ever since I was stuck with that horrible curse….I had been cooped up in my own estate for a year but… The people still stay in this land, bringing fresh produce every year and paying their tax dutifully. Even after all the things that had happened, the people still continue to follow the Lönnrot family without fail.』

When I remembered the gentle and loving look on his eyes, I knew for sure Maricle-sama would never stop me from serving fresh shellfish to everyone from the village. 

“Yes, of course! In the meantime, I will start preparing another meal made from shellfish for us to eat together, okay?”

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T/N: Miltia be like 

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