幾品野菜 Only a Few Wild Greens
八戒道：「樵哥，我知你府上也寒薄，只可將就一飯，切莫費心大擺佈。」樵子道：「不瞞老爺說，我這山間實是寒薄，沒甚麼香蕈、蘑菰、川椒、大料，只是幾品野菜奉獻老爺，權表寸心。」八戒道：「樵哥，我知你府上也寒薄，只可将就一饭，切莫费心大摆布。」樵子道：「不瞒老爷说，我这山间实是寒薄，没甚么香蕈、蘑菰、川椒、大料，只是几品野菜奉献老爷，权表寸心。」
逐句解 Line by line
Bajie said, "Woodcutter, I know your household is a poor thin one. Just make shift with a single meal, and do not put yourself to the cost of a great spread."
This is Bajie — the greediest character in the book, whose entire comic function is wanting more food — telling a poor family not to over-cater. 寒薄 is cold and thin, meaning meagre circumstances, and 薄 is bó in that compound rather than the reading it takes for something physically thin. 將就 is to make do.
The woodcutter said, "I will not deceive you, reverend sir — up here in the hills we are truly poor and thin. We have no fragrant mushrooms, no button mushrooms, no Sichuan pepper, no big spices. There are only a few kinds of wild greens to set before your reverences, as a way of showing an inch of our hearts."
寒薄 and 薄 as bó again — he takes up Bajie's own word for his circumstances, which is how a proud poor man accepts an excuse. 大料, big spices, is star anise: the same spice the fiends proposed to fry his fellow prisoner with, two passages after the cave burned down. 寸心, an inch of heart, is the standard modest term for one's small feelings.
Bajie giving somebody permission not to feed him properly is the single most generous thing he does in the chapter, and it costs him more than anything else he has done. The novel knows exactly what it is doing by giving him that line.
The list of what the household does not have is doing quiet work. Mushrooms and pepper and star anise are not luxuries — they are the ordinary flavourings of a modest kitchen. Not having them is a precise statement of how poor this house is.
And star anise has appeared once before in this chapter, in the fiends' recipe for the Tang Monk. The spice the cave had and the cottage does not is the spice they meant to cook him in.