Chapter 25 Three-legged Pottery Tripod
The successful purification of salt ore means that the Teng tribe will no longer be short of salt. If the tribe grows stronger, it can even sell salt as a commodity.
After Jiang Xuan made a small jar of salt, he temporarily stopped this very time-consuming work. The remaining salt ore could be kept for purification on rainy days when he had nothing to do.
The next day, when Jiang Xuan ate a pot of stewed meat with salt, he was immersed in a great sense of happiness and was almost in tears.
This is what good food should taste like! Meat without salt tastes really bad.
After solving the salt problem, Jiang Xuan used clay to make two relatively large three-legged round pottery tripods, as well as some pottery blanks such as spoons and ladles, and placed them in the bamboo house to dry.
Because there are more people eating now, it is obviously not enough to cook food with those two clay pots.
Cooking utensil such as the three-legged pottery tripod can solve this problem very well.
The tripod pottery tripod has a large capacity and three legs, so it can be placed directly in the fire pit for burning without being placed on stones.
In addition, the tripod has two ears. When the food is cooked, you only need to use a wooden stick to pass through the ears and you can easily lift the tripod to another place.
Peaceful days always pass quickly.
In the blink of an eye, nine days passed.
On April 9th, the weather had obviously changed from warm to hot, and the drizzle turned into heavy rain and even rainstorm.
Whether it was the plants in the jungle or the grains and vegetables grown by the Teng Tribe, they all began to grow wildly, and everywhere was green.
All this shows that spring has quietly left and summer has arrived with heat.
"April 9th, sunny, the beginning of summer."
When he got up in the morning, Jiang Xuan carved the solar term "Lixia" on his bamboo tube calendar, then put the bamboo tube away and walked out the door.
At this time, the sky was blue and the sun had not yet risen, but a few rays of sunlight penetrated the clouds, turning the white clouds into the color of red.
"Go and see if the pottery has been fired successfully."
Jiang Xuan put the dried pottery into the horizontal flame kiln yesterday and burned it for most of the night before going back to sleep.
"Chief, wait for me."
Uncaria rhynchophylla also ran over excitedly, and red peony root, stone loach and Arisaema confusa all ran over here.
Jiang Xuan walked to the Hengyan Kiln, reached out and touched it. The kiln wall was still warm, but it was no longer hot.
Jiang Xuan took off his stone knife, dug up the mud on the side of the horizontal flame kiln that was used to seal the feed port, and moved away the large piece of sintered mud, revealing the finished pottery in the furnace.
The first things taken out were five soup spoons. They were made relatively thick and had long handles. During the firing process, the handles of two of the spoons broke, but the other three were fired successfully.
"Here." Jiang Xuan handed the ceramic spoon to Uncaria.
"Okay."
Gou Teng happily held the five spoons. He knew that these were good things. With them, he would no longer have to hold the clay pot to pour soup. He could just use the spoon to scoop it into the bowl.
With excitement, Jiang Xuan carefully took out a pottery tripod from the furnace of the Hengyan Kiln.
Jiang Xuan checked it carefully and found that it was fired very successfully without any cracks!
This is a round pottery tripod with three legs and two handles. It is about 60 cm high and 40 cm wide. It is very heavy and has a lid on it.
The most eye-catching feature of this pottery tripod is that its outer wall and lid are engraved with the totem pattern of the Teng tribe: a huge ancient vine, entwined around a steep stone mountain, like a giant dragon coiling around a pillar.
When Tao Ding appeared in front of everyone, everyone became excited.
It's not because of how perfectly it was fired, but because of the totem patterns engraved on it.
Totem patterns are of great significance to the tribal people, and things engraved with totem patterns will naturally be given special meanings.
Even though this pottery tripod is not so round and is even very rough, for the people of the Teng tribe, it is the best thing and they will not accept any objection from outsiders.
Uncaria asked, "Chief, are we going to use it to cook in the future?"
"Yes, with the pottery tripod, we can cook enough food for twenty people at a time."
"Great! The food cooked by Tao Ding must be delicious!"
Others also nodded. This is a pottery tripod engraved with the totem pattern of the Teng tribe!
"There's another one inside."
Jiang Xuan also took out another pottery tripod from the furnace.
This pottery tripod also has totem patterns carved on its walls and was fired successfully.
With these two pottery tripods, not only will cooking be much more convenient in the future, but purifying salt ore will also be much more convenient because it is large enough to hold more salt water at a time.
"Wash it first, then go back and try our new pottery tripod."
Jiang Xuan picked up a pottery tripod first, and Chi Shao picked up another one. The two went to the stream and carefully cleaned the pottery tripod.
Afterwards, the two pottery tripods were carried back to the bamboo house and placed in the fire pit.
The three legs of the pottery tripods allow them to stand steadily in the fire pit. There is no need to bother to set them up, you can just burn the fire directly.
Jiang Xuan placed the burning firewood under the pottery tripod, and the flames kept licking the pottery tripod, gradually heating it up.
In the first pottery tripod, Jiang Xuan first added water, and then put in various edible plant tubers, such as stone eggs, round potatoes, and Polygonatum.
This is the meal that the Teng tribe usually eats.
For the second pottery tripod, Jiang Xuan waited until it was thoroughly heated before adding some mutton fat, wild ginger and wild onions, and then added water after frying them until fragrant.
Then he put in the dried animal meat cut into small pieces and many edible wild vegetable stems and leaves. Finally, Jiang Xuan added some precious salt, covered the pot with a lid, and slowly simmered it.
This is the meat dish they usually eat.
Sometimes it is animal meat that is cooked, sometimes it is fish, sometimes it is shrimp and crab, or even some edible insects.
It would take some time to cook the food, so Jiang Xuan asked Nanxing to watch the fire while he and three other people went to the farmland to check the traps that had been set yesterday.
With continuous land reclamation, the Teng tribe now has more than ten acres of arable land, on which neat rows of grains and vegetables are planted, which is very spectacular.
But problems also arise.
Because all the edible plants were gathered together, herbivorous animals in the nearby forests, including a large number of insects, gathered here and destroyed the immature crops and vegetables.
To deal with the insects, tourists can only catch them with their bare hands.
To deal with those wild beasts, Jiang Xuan and others need to set traps.
In order to protect the crops that were planted with great difficulty, Jiang Xuan and others set up a large number of traps around the farmland, including noose traps, trigger traps, ground bows, etc.
These traps capture or kill some wild animals that come to steal crops almost every day, providing the Teng tribe with more meat.
Even the insects were caught one by one by the tourists, strung into strings with sticks, and roasted. If Jiang Xuan had not forbade them to eat them raw, they would have even eaten them raw.
The way of eating it is so fresh that it bursts with juice when you take a bite.
"A fat mountain rat. Take it back with you."
Jiang Xuan walked to the first trap and found a fat mountain rat weighing about two or three pounds, whose head had been crushed by a wooden stick and had triggered the trap.
This is also a good meat that you can take home and roast.
Jiang Xuan threw the mountain rat into the wicker basket and continued walking forward.
The second trap was a noose trap, but the noose rope had been bitten off.
Chishao carefully observed the traces left on the ground and said, "It should be a rabbit. The lasso must have caught its feet, so it bit the rope and escaped. If it had caught its neck, it would not have been able to escape."
The four continued to move forward. Some traps successfully captured prey, some traps failed to trigger, and some traps were triggered, but the prey escaped.
But after walking around, they actually caught more than a dozen small prey and filled a wicker basket.
"Good harvest, let's go back."
Jiang Xuan was in a good mood. When he was clearing the land and cultivating the crops, he did not expect to be able to harvest meat.
When they returned to the bamboo house, the food in the two pottery tripods had been cooked and the air was filled with fragrance.
"I'm so hungry, let's eat!"
Jiang Xuan removed the firewood under the pottery tripod, then opened the lid of the tripod. The steaming food immediately gave off a more tempting aroma.
Jiang Xuan took out his ceramic bowl and chopsticks, and used a long-handled spoon to scoop out half a bowl of cooked plant tubers. He then scooped out some animal meat and wild vegetables from another ceramic tripod, and began to eat them while blowing on them.
“It smells so good!”
Jiang Xuan ate with great satisfaction. With the addition of salt, all the food seemed to be infused with soul and tasted especially sweet.
Others also started eating. After they were full, they put the food in clay pots and sent them to the tourists so that they could eat and continue working.
In order to give these tourists enough energy to work, Jiang Xuan was not stingy. There was almost no difference between the food the tourists ate and the food they ate, including adding salt to the food.
If these tourists were not given salt, they would work so hard and sweat so much every day to open up wasteland. It wouldn't be long before they would fall ill from lack of salt and would not be able to continue working.
Thanks to book friend "JKcolin" for the reward of 500 book coins.
(End of this chapter)
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