After preparing the Sour Plum Soup, the people who had gone to borrow tables, chairs, and crockery from Local Taste returned, set them up, and gave the honored guests a place to sit before busying themselves elsewhere.
With time pressing, Qiao Xiaomai didn't bother with any fancy dishes; she made one batch of ribs in sweet-and-sour sauce and another batch fried in oil.
All the Pork Belly was braised in soy sauce, the offal were quickly stewed and the rest of the meat was thrown into a pot with vermicelli for a hearty stew.
Their arrival was so sudden that delicate dishes were off the menu—if they wanted to avoid hunger, they had to make do with a communal stew.
All the chicken was made into Salt-Baked Chicken, and the Stewed Lamb was turned into Lamb Soup—the simpler, the better.
However, to make it up to them, she still whipped up a dish of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.