I was stunned. It took a full five seconds for my taste buds to send a signal to my brain.

Holy crap! This thing... it's just...

It's so delicious!

If beggar's chicken made from ordinary free-range chicken is already very tempting, then this grouse, seasoned with only simple seasonings, takes the crown of beggar's chicken with its back-to-basics flavor.

Soon, Top and I devoured the grouse along with the taro.

We've only eaten about half full so far, because a giant frog weighing several pounds is waiting for me to prepare later. If we eat too much now, we'll just be sighing later.

After lunch, although it was still early, it seemed unlikely that we could make pottery today.

However, I don't intend to waste time. Even with the little time I have left, I can still install the axle and make some clay figures with the turntable.

The remaining wooden boards are still needed to fix the pivot. First, the wooden boards are made into a grid-shaped insert using mortise and tenon joints. The square hole in the center of the grid is just right to fit the bottom conical base pivot.

Place a smooth pebble as a base in the central hole of the grid-shaped insert, and then insert the axle into the hole of the grid-shaped insert.

I turned the wooden disc on top and found it to be quite stable. Because the wooden board is quite heavy, it can rotate continuously for one or two minutes if you push it around.

The kaolin clay is of good quality and contains no impurities, so it doesn't need special processing. Just add an appropriate amount of water and knead it like dough to make it a little soft.

I took out some kaolin clay. Since I was making pottery using a rotor, I added a little more water to the clay. Slightly softer clay is more suitable for shaping.

Place a lump of well-mixed clay on top and rotate the rotor below. Due to inertia, the wooden base begins to spin rapidly, carrying the lump of clay with it.

I wet my hands and began to embrace the rapidly spinning lump of clay. As it spun rapidly, the clay in my hands slowly became rounded.

Kaolin clay has a delicate texture. Although this is my first time using this material to make pottery, the warm and smooth feel as it slides in my hands and watching the clay slowly take shape is really relaxing and comfortable.

No wonder many master craftsmen who make Yixing teapots are so engrossed in this work. The work itself can relax one's mind and isolate one from all worldly distractions.

I kept wetting the clay, and the clay spun in my hands, gradually taking shape. The outline of a large soup bowl was now becoming clear as my fingers moved.

Watching the sample take shape is a very pleasant experience.

The rim of the soup bowl was still jagged and uneven from the clay. I took out a small, sharpened wooden knife and gently dabbed water on the rim of the bowl with the tip of the knife.

As the base turntable rotates evenly, the uneven areas are precisely and completely cut into by the wooden knife, a process similar to the decompression of a workpiece by a mechanical milling machine.

Remove the cut-off part, and a flat, round soup bowl will emerge from the clay, almost identical to the ones sold on the street.

I think that as long as it's glazed with white clay and fired, it should look just as nice as those white bowls sold on the street.

I only made one soup bowl. It's just me and Top here, making too many would just be a waste of ingredients.

Then I made two or three basins with rims out of kaolin clay for washing vegetables and other daily uses.

I also made some everyday utensils like soup spoons and ladles, as well as plates of various sizes for serving dishes. There were five small everyday plates and one large, elongated plate for serving fish.

Basically, I put in as much as I can, as long as it can fit in the kiln and I need it.

This batch of pottery will consume a lot of my firewood, so it's only worthwhile to fill the kiln with ceramics.

I made quite a few more utensils, until finally I made a 1-meter by 1-meter tile out of kaolin clay. I made this just to have a clean tabletop for eating.

Thinking about it, only ceramic tile tabletops are relatively durable and easy to clean, so I sprinkled some wood ash on the clay pottery blanks I made to prevent them from sticking together.

Then I created a huge mud pile, which was the same as the previous one, but its area was more than ten times larger.

I carefully placed all the finished pottery pieces inside. Then, just like before, I attached some raw branches and started to surround the pottery with firewood to fire it, slowly steaming the pottery inside until it was dry.

This firing took much longer, lasting for three hours, until it was completely dark.

Fortunately, Top and I ate quite late, so we didn't feel very hungry.

It's already a good thing that we were able to dry these clay blanks today, which will save us a lot of time for tomorrow's firing.

Although it was already dark, that didn't stop the weather from changing. I could already smell the dampness in the air, and there seemed to be flashes of lightning above the dark clouds.

I didn't have time to wait for the pottery, which had just been baked, to cool down completely naturally. After opening the clay seal, I put the dry pottery into the basket on my back.

It's not far from where I live; it only takes a few minutes to go back and forth.

However, the pottery pieces this time were of different sizes, and because I was worried about damaging these unfired pottery pieces, I didn't dare to carry too many at once.

After five trips back and forth, carrying all the pottery pieces, large and small, I finally managed to move them all into my residence.

Now I can relax a bit. I finally managed to dry these pottery pieces. If a rainstorm soaks them all again, then all my hard work will have been for nothing.

This time it's still my fault; I was too eager to make pottery. I didn't even build a basic rain shelter, which is a big no-no in the unpredictable weather of the rainforest.

Fortunately, we're not firing pottery today. If the high-temperature kiln were exposed to rain, it would suddenly cool down, causing the kiln to crack and lose its heat-insulating effect.

What follows is a catastrophic chain reaction: the pottery inside is definitely not going to survive, and even the earthen kiln might collapse.

Just thinking about it makes me feel a chill. It seems I can't be lazy. I need to set up the rain shelter first tomorrow.

It was probably past 8 p.m. by then, and it was completely dark outside.

The jungle at night was too dangerous, and I didn't plan to go out to deal with the giant frog. By the light of the fire in my shelter, I gutted the giant frog.