Mu Shuangshuang entered the kitchen. Mrs. Liu hadn't started the fire to cook, but the vegetables had been washed and placed on the kitchen table. She was carefully searching through a basket of rice for something.
Rice from the countryside is dried in muddy fields, and even if an oilcloth is spread underneath, it's inevitable that some dirt or stones get mixed in. Before cooking, the wives usually carefully sift through the rice once, and then again during rinsing, to reduce the chances of biting into something hard.
"Aunt Si, these wild vegetables were just picked and are a bit old. You need to remove the back stem, just keep the front leaves."
"It's not a problem, the old wild vegetable stems are tasty too, delicious..." Mrs. Liu adjusted her sleeves, which reached her elbows, and looked momentarily embarrassed when Mu Shuangshuang started talking to her.
