binnovel Chapter 208 Making Wooden Buckets
Chapter 208 Making Wooden Buckets
Yue became even more interested after hearing this. He really wanted to see how soybeans fermented, but he had to leave the house tomorrow.
Autumn is the season for orcs to stockpile food. Although they have enough food this year because they have planted fields, they have not yet stored enough meat, which is what orcs love to eat. The tribe's hunting teams must take advantage of the time before winter comes to go out hunting so that they can store more meat for the tribe.
The hunting party has stayed in the tribe long enough; it's time to go out hunting again.
As an important member of the hunting team, Yue was naturally going out with them, but he felt a little disappointed because he wouldn't be able to see firsthand how the beans fermented.
Seeing that Yue looked a little dejected, Bai Ling quickly comforted him: "Yue, the soybeans take a long time to ferment, so the sauce takes even longer to make. You can see the fermentation process of the soybean sauce when you come back next time."
Hearing Bai Ling say that, Yue cheered up again.
Chen didn't realize what had happened between his brother and Yue. He only heard his brother and Yue say a few words about "fermentation" and had no idea that Yue was feeling down and his brother was trying to comfort her.
Feng and Cang noticed. Feng glanced at his partner and slightly raised his chin towards his son. Cang gave a knowing smile and, when no one else was paying attention, secretly pulled Feng's hand under the table.
The wind tried to break free, but failed. Instead, Cang gently pinched its fingers.
*
Bai Ling stir-fried the flour until it turned yellow, then poured it into a clean earthenware bowl. After the flour cooled, she added soybeans to the flour and mixed them together. Then she used chopsticks to stir, making sure that every soybean was coated with a layer of flour.
Next comes fermentation. When fermenting, you need to choose a container that is breathable from all sides. Bai Ling put the soybeans coated with flour into a basket and covered them with paper.
Actually, gauze should have been used, but unfortunately Bai Ling didn't have any gauze on hand, so she had to use paper instead.
Next came the waiting. With nothing to do these past two days, Bai Ling found many more wooden boards and dug many small holes in them to use when making the vermicelli.
*
On the day Bai Ling taught the beastmen how to make cassava noodles, the square was packed with people. Almost every family in the tribe sent one person, and with the addition of beastmen from other tribes, nearly a hundred people were learning to make cassava noodles from Bai Ling.
Bai Ling first took out the dried tapioca flour, poured it into a ceramic basin, and started adding water.
"Don't add too much water or too little. It should be just the right consistency—you can pick it up with chopsticks, but it will break off. Then you can put it in a pot to cook."
"To cook cassava paste, you need to use an iron pot, and the fire shouldn't be too high, and you shouldn't burn very hard wood."
Cai tended the fire below, while Bai Ling was responsible for stirring above. He held a large wooden spatula and began stirring the paste in the iron pot continuously after it boiled.
"Once it boils, you can't stop stirring. If it burns, it won't taste good." Bai Ling's wooden spatula never stopped, though he didn't stir very fast; he just stirred gently the whole time.
The paste in the pot slowly turned into a jelly-like transparent substance. Bai Ling said, "At this point, the fire must be turned off, and the residual heat at the bottom of the pot should be used to dry the moisture in the cassava."
After removing the fire, Bai Ling used two wooden spatulas to scoop up the cassava jelly from the pot and put it into a ceramic basin.
Next, pour tapioca flour into the ceramic pot in small amounts several times: "Don't put too much tapioca flour in at once, add it slowly, and the same goes for water."
Under Bai Ling's movements, the tapioca flour turned into a dough-like substance with excellent elasticity and a slightly sticky texture.
"Now it's time to squeeze out the cassava noodles," Bai Ling said, placing the cassava dough on the wooden board and pressing it down hard, causing the dough to leak through the small holes in the board.
Bai Ling reiterated, "Cassava noodles must be cooked in the pot for a longer time, otherwise the toxins will remain and you will get poisoned if you eat them."
This is very important, Bai Ling emphasized it several times.
Once cooked, the glass noodles can be hung up to dry. After drying, you can use your hands or tools to straighten and separate the noodles, which will make the drying process faster.
Bai Ling explained the method to the beastmen, and then it was up to the beastmen to make it themselves. There were only a dozen or so iron pots in the tribe, so only a dozen or so people could make it at a time.
While the beastmen were making vermicelli, Bai Ling would take the initiative to supervise them, going back and forth between them. If anyone wasn't doing it well, Bai Ling would take the wooden spatula from their hand and stir it herself.
It wasn't easy for so many beastmen to learn how to make vermicelli. It took Bai Ling two days to teach all of them.
Having learned how to make vermicelli, Bai Ling was about to leave the other tribes of orcs. To be honest, she was a little reluctant to see them go, after all, they had spent so much time together.
Before leaving, all the beastmen invited Bai Ling to visit their tribes, and Bai Ling accepted their invitations one by one, saying that he would definitely go if he had the time.
*
Vermicelli can be stewed, boiled, or mixed. While glass noodles can be prepared in fewer ways than vermicelli, they are delicious in cold dishes. Bai Ling plans to make more glass noodles so that she can make cold dishes with them next summer.
Bai Ling soaked a lot of mung beans in water; these mung beans were intended to be used to make mung bean vermicelli.
Rinse the soaked mung beans several times, then grind them into a paste. Filter out the impurities from the paste, and then you can dry the mung bean flour.
Bai Ling lined up the earthenware basins filled with slurry in the courtyard and then went out the door.
This year, with crops planted, there's no need to gather as many plants for the winter. Chieftain Zhan assigned some orcs to gather, some to collect iron ore, and others to continue cultivating the fields. So, there aren't many people in the tribe right now.
Bai Ling walked through the tribe and arrived at the carpenter's work area, where he was going to make a water bucket.
The tribe now uses iron buckets to fetch water, but they start to rust after a while. The orcs who cook have cleaned them several times, but they still can't stop the iron buckets from rusting.
Wooden buckets are the best way to fetch water, so Bai Ling decided to make them. The beastmen are very good at applying what they've learned to other situations, so once the buckets were made, the wooden basins could also be made.
Bai Ling arrived at the carpentry group, and the orcs who were working greeted him. Bai Ling explained his idea: he wanted to make a container for holding water out of wood so that everyone could use wooden buckets to fetch water in the future.
The orcs put down their work and gathered around Bai Ling. Bai Ling picked up a few pieces of wood and began to explain to the orcs how to bundle the wood together to make a bucket for holding water.
After Bai Ling finished speaking, he took out his notebook and drew a wooden bucket on it, marking the dimensions of each plank. He then showed the drawing to the beastmen. The beastmen here had been working with Bai Ling for so long that they already knew a few numbers and could use a ruler.