Reborn as a landlord in Shanghai

Chapter 5, First Time Cooking Lunch

Mao Xiaoyu took her younger sister shopping until 10:30. Feeling that it was about time, she took her sister back. When they got back to the store, the business had already started to pick up.

Of course, it's not that busy. It just looks crowded. After all, most barbershops like Mao Xiaoyu's mainly do haircuts. They can finish a haircut in three to five minutes, or ten to twenty minutes. They can cut faster when they're busy and slower when they're not. It all depends on the barber's skill level.

The reason why it takes half an hour or an hour to shave a head in those large beauty salons is mainly because they charge such high prices, such as 58, 88, 188, 288. If it could be done in three to five minutes, customers would feel that they have wasted their money.

Therefore, large beauty salons usually have regulations on haircut time, requiring a minimum of half an hour. If the time is too short, the salon will fine you.

The reason for doing this is to make customers enjoy the pleasure of spending money, so that they feel that the high price of a haircut is worthwhile.

Furthermore, during the conversation between the hairdresser and the customer, the hairdresser can promote various hair care products or offer coloring and straightening services, thereby boosting their own sales.

After all, a barbershop isn't that busy. The number of people who come to get their hair cut each day is limited. Usually, a shop only sees a few dozen people a day, and even with so many barbers on staff, they can't cut more than a few heads a day.

Actually, the busiest time for a barbershop is from Friday night to Sunday. The rest of the time, it's pretty much the same. So, as a barber, with a limited number of customers, of course I want to make sure every customer gets a full service so that I can earn money.

This is the difference between beauty salons and ordinary barbershops. Ordinary barbershops mainly focus on shaving heads, while beauty salons mainly focus on selling products, persuading customers to get haircuts, big services, and beauty treatments.

So if you want to enjoy life and appear sophisticated, go to a large beauty salon. If you just want to get a haircut, just find any ordinary barbershop and if you feel the barber is skilled, you can get your haircut there for life.

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Now that she was back, Mao Xiaoyu couldn't just stand there like an idiot. She wanted to do something she could. So, after arriving at the shop, Mao Xiaoyu let her younger sister go play by herself. Then, Mao Xiaoyu looked around the shop and saw that everyone was busy and she didn't need to help. There were just a lot of customers, which meant that no one was cooking lunch. Seeing that it was getting late, Mao Xiaoyu decided to cook some dishes for lunch.

Normally, Aunt Liu and her own mother do the cooking, but their cooking skills are only so-so. So the dishes they make are just edible, not delicious. So today, seeing that everyone is busy and has no time to cook, Mao Xiaoyu decided to show off her skills.

Since the restaurant provides lunch and dinner, the quality of the food needs to be considered. The cost of the food is relatively consistent each day, which results in the food not being of very high quality. After all, if the food were too good, the cost would be higher.

Therefore, each meal usually consists of three dishes and a soup. At noon, there is one meat dish, two vegetable dishes, and a vegetable soup. In the evening, there is usually another vegetable dish, plus the leftovers from lunch, which is enough to make do.

If the staff are not satisfied, they will usually wait until 9 pm when they get off work to go home and make themselves a late-night snack, as a way to replenish their energy.

Of course, employees can also cook some of their favorite dishes at home and bring them over for lunch or dinner. However, it is rare for employees to do this. After all, they have worked together for so many years, and it would feel awkward to eat alone if they didn't share the food they brought. So, unless it is a holiday, very few people bring food over.

As for saying that Mao Xiaoyu's family is stingy, that's not fair. After all, that's the general situation. Some people's food is not as good as what you get at a barbershop. At least there's a big meat dish at noon, and everyone gets a lot of meat.

At lunchtime today, Mao Xiaoyu glanced at the table and saw green vegetables, radishes, pork belly, and chives. Seeing these vegetables, Mao Xiaoyu frowned, feeling that there weren't enough. Then she looked around to see if there were any leftover vegetables. Sure enough, she found quite a few potatoes next to the gas cylinder.

When Mao Xiaoyu saw the potatoes, she realized it was almost time, and it was getting late, so she quickly rinsed the rice and started cooking it in the rice cooker. After the rice was cooked, she started cutting the pork belly, then washed it twice, and then added scallions, ginger, garlic, and cooking wine to boil it in water.

After processing the pork belly, I started washing the greens, chives, and radishes. While washing the vegetables, I also cleaned up the minced meat. By the time the greens, chives, and radishes were washed and chopped, the pork belly had been simmering in the soup for 10 minutes.

Sometimes Mao Xiaoyu would quickly scoop the pork belly out of the broth and then put the chopped radish in to make a radish and pork soup. Although the meat was no longer visible, it still had the flavor of meat, and it was much tastier than a simple radish soup.

Then, on another stove, oil was poured in to cook the meat. After the meat was cooked for a while, water was added, and Mao Xiaoyu began to peel and dice the potatoes. By the time the potatoes were diced, the radish soup on the other stove was also ready.

Mao Xiaoyu took the radish soup from another stove and started cooking some greens and chives. While cooking, she added chopped potatoes to the pork belly and simmered them together. After the greens and chives were cooked, Mao Xiaoyu turned up the heat to reduce the sauce. While reducing the sauce, she cleaned the stove and removed the trash. By the time she finished cleaning the entire kitchen, the braised pork with potatoes was ready.

Just then, all three dishes and one soup were ready, and the rice was also cooked.

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"Dad, dinner's ready." Although Mao Xiaoyu didn't call anyone to eat, her voice was so loud that everyone heard her and knew it was time to eat. However, since hairdressers work in the service industry, they couldn't eat with customers. So, those who weren't busy went to the kitchen to continue their business.

For example, Mao Xiaoyu's father, Mao Jun, is not busy right now, while Mao Xiaoyu's mother is busy. The same goes for the other mentors; some are busy, and some are not.

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Hearing his son's call, Mao Jun called to his daughter while urging those who weren't busy to eat. When he brought his daughter to the kitchen and saw the dishes his son had cooked, Mao Jun was a little surprised, but he didn't say anything at the moment. After all, some things are not good to say in front of outsiders, so Mao Jun simply urged everyone to eat.

"Not bad, Xiaoyu, this meat is very flavorful and cooked until very tender, which is perfect for me. Not bad at all." Old Master Dong was getting on in years, and after taking a bite of Mao Xiaoyu's braised pork with potatoes, he felt that the meat was cooked very tender and was perfect for someone his age, so he couldn't help but praise it.

"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Dong. If you like it, please have a couple more pieces." Mao Xiaoyu quickly replied politely upon hearing Mr. Dong's praise.

"Look, this soup is cooked quite well. It even has a meaty flavor. You can tell it's made with meat." Uncle Zhou likes to have a sip of soup before meals to moisten his throat. So today, he drank Mao Xiaoyu's radish soup and found it quite fragrant and rich, much better than the vegetable soup he usually drinks.

"I first put the meat in the pot and cooked it for a while to let it smell like meat, and then I added the radish. That way, the soup won't taste like just radish. If Uncle Zhou likes it, he can drink more," Mao Xiaoyu explained to Uncle Zhou.

"It's not the same as your mother's cooking, but it tastes alright. I didn't expect that after you've been here for more than half a year, I still didn't know you could cook." Sitting next to Mao Xiaoyu, Mao Jun couldn't help but praise her while eating.

"Back in my hometown, I often watched my grandparents cook, and after watching so much, I learned how. But when I came to Shanghai, I didn't need to cook, so I didn't. But today, seeing everyone so busy, I felt bad, so I cooked this meal." Mao Xiaoyu made up a lie after hearing her father's words.

After all, Mao Xiaoyu only learned to cook after she left home. Back in her hometown, she didn't learn to cook from her grandparents at all. The main reason was that the elderly people of that era probably came from hard times, and they were very frugal when cooking. They were always short of oil or something else, so Mao Xiaoyu didn't think her grandparents' cooking was particularly delicious.

When Mao Xiaoyu was in elementary school, she had no choice but to eat at home with her grandparents. After entering junior high school, she started eating at school. Since junior high schools have evening self-study sessions and a school cafeteria, Mao Xiaoyu usually ate lunch and dinner at school because of her heavy academic workload. This shows just how good Mao Xiaoyu's grandparents' cooking skills are.

After all, if the food were really good, Mao Xiaoyu wouldn't need to keep eating in the school cafeteria. After all, the food in the cafeteria isn't necessarily better than the food at home. But Mao Xiaoyu would rather eat at school than at her grandparents' house, which shows how bad her grandparents' cooking is.

It's not that Mao Xiaoyu's parents didn't give him money. It's that Mao Xiaoyu's grandparents were harsh on him. After all, he was their son and grandson, and Mao Xiaoyu's parents sent money back every month.

However, the elderly, who are used to hardship, are frugal in everything they do. In addition, they have fields and land at home, so they can just pick some vegetables from the fields. It doesn't matter to the elderly, but if young people eat the same vegetables every day, they will get tired of it, not to mention that there is no oil in them.

At school, as long as you have money, it's not a problem to make meatballs and eat some meat. Mao Xiaoyu is not short of money either, so it's obvious that she would rather eat at school than at home.

"It seems your mom can have an easier time cooking lunch from now on." Mao Jun didn't doubt his son's words, but thought that since his son could cook, there would be one more person to cook lunch.

Hearing her father's words, Mao Xiaoyu didn't reply. Instead, she buried her head in her food. After all, Mao Xiaoyu had her own ideas. She was already planning to run away with her buckets. How could she possibly continue cooking in the barbershop every day?

Mao Jun didn't notice that his son hadn't said anything, assuming he had tacitly agreed, and continued to eat with relish.

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Because it's a service industry, even if the food is delicious, people can't eat slowly, so everyone eats quite quickly. In about 10 minutes, the first group of people who ate first finished and left. As for Mao Xiaoyu, she had already finished eating, but she definitely couldn't leave. After all, she had a good younger sister.

The little girl is only three years old and eats too slowly. Mao Jun can't keep an eye on his daughter while she eats, so this important task was handed over to Mao Xiaoyu. Of course, Mao Jun didn't expect his son to do anything special, just keep an eye on her.

Mao Xiaoyu was helpless in this situation and could only watch her younger sister eat one bite, stop three bites, eat one bite, stop three bites, and talk a lot. She would say this one minute and that the next, never stopping for a moment. It was so frustrating to watch, but Mao Xiaoyu couldn't call her over, lest this little princess throw a tantrum and refuse to eat anymore.

After all, the only person in the whole family who could keep this little tyrant in check was Mao Xiaoyu's mother. As for Mao Dou and Mao Jun, they couldn't control them at all.

So, Mao Xiaoyu sat at the table, idly chatting with her younger sister, urging the little girl to eat faster. When Mao Xiaoyu's mother came in after getting her head shaved and saw that her daughter had only eaten a little, she scolded Mao Tingting. Mao Xiaoyu was overjoyed and quietly ran out of the kitchen, leaving the entire kitchen to the mother and daughter.

As for what happens next, Mao Xiaoyu thinks that it's none of her business; it's her mother's and sister's problem.

However, Mao Xiaoyu also knew that after her mother finished eating, she would definitely feed her, and only after that would the two of them come out of the kitchen.

Now Mao Xiaoyu sat bored in the chair, no longer in the mood to read the newspaper. Instead, she was thinking about where to go for a stroll in the afternoon, since sitting in the hair salon was quite uncomfortable!

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"Xiaoyu, come here for a second."

"They're here!!!"

Just as Mao Xiaoyu was lost in thought, she suddenly heard her father call her name. Mao Xiaoyu instinctively answered and stood up, looking towards her father to see what was wrong.

When Mao Xiaoyu looked closely and saw the guest sitting in the chair next to her father, she suddenly panicked.

Oh no, something's happened!