Orc Girl's Tribal Daily Life

Chapter 14 Making Jam

Jiang Luoluo washed the red mushrooms and berries clean and set them aside to drain, leaving only a thin layer of hot water in the stone pot.

Next, Jiang Luoluo put the washed red fruit into the pot and cooked it over low heat while pressing it into jam. During the cooking process, she broke one or two more fruit balls and added their juice to the pot, then cooked them together.

That's right, Jiang Luoluo is making jam.

Making jam is usually quite simple: boil sugar and hot water, add some lemon juice, and you're done.

However, even with such a simple method, Jiang Luoluo still couldn't meet two requirements—no sugar and no lemon juice.

But it's okay. Jiang Luoluo has tried it. The fruit has a lot of sugar, so it can be used as sugar... I guess so.

As for the lemon juice, the berries are a bit sour, but they're not very juicy, so let's skip it. I'll make some berry jam after I finish the red mushroom jam.

The taste of red mushroom fruit is actually quite similar to that of tomatoes, but with a fresher fruity aroma. The downside is that its sugar content is not very high, so you need to add water to increase the sugar content.

As for the berries, they have enough sugar, but they are too crunchy and not very juicy, so they don't quite soften when cooked.

Jiang Luoluo took the small stone knife she made and chopped all the berries into small pieces, then mixed them with water chestnuts to make a fruit jam.

Young Ge let the cubs do their work while he sat at the cave entrance and began polishing the new wooden door.

For a tribe whose tools were limited to stone tools, this should have been a very troublesome and tiring task, but the tribe's superhuman physical abilities made up for it.

So while Jiang Luoluo finished all the other steps of making the jam, leaving only time for slow simmering, the young man Ge had already almost finished processing both trees.

This refers to peeling off the bark of the tree and cutting the peeled tree into sections at the height of the cave entrance, making sure they are a certain distance higher to allow for later adjustments.

At this point, the first step is complete.

Jiang Luoluo remembered a saying about wood processing: "Dry for a thousand years, wet for ten thousand years, and neither dry nor wet for half a year." So, she walked over with a bit of curiosity, wanting to see what young Ge would do and how he would process the two pieces of wood.

It's also to observe the technology currently possessed by the tribe.

Well, whether you're drying or soaking, it takes time, right? It's not something you can use right away... Huh? Can I change into it now?

Jiang Luoluo stared at the young man Ge in shock. "Drying it? Soaking it? If we don't do that, the wood will rot quickly and be easily eaten by insects... Wait, there don't seem to be any insects near the fire."

Let's leave that topic aside for now. How do we deal with the problem of rotting wood?

“Just choose a thicker piece of wood,” the young man replied naturally.

According to young Ge, as long as the plank is thick enough, it will dry out before it rots—if it doesn't dry out, then a new piece of wood will be used to make another one.

Jiang Luoluo looked at the old wooden door, the thick planks, each over ten centimeters long, evenly cut into three pieces, which were apparently made to last longer than rotten wood…

Oh no, wouldn't it be harder to dry if it's thicker?

"Um, but thin wood rots away very quickly." Young Ge looked puzzled.

If it's a plank only as thick as a finger, it won't last more than a few days once it starts to rot before breaking apart. But thick wood is different; even if it rots, it can last a long time until it completely decays.

But if you're lucky, it might stop rotting halfway through, or the weather might be good for several months, neither too damp nor too wet, so it won't rot at all, and a sturdy and usable wooden door will be made.

Jiang Luoluo finally understood... It's just pure luck, right?

However, the tribe is not completely devoid of technology. At least, the trees used to make the wooden doors are carefully selected and passed down within the tribe. They are the least prone to rotting and the strongest and most durable, resulting in a high success rate.

Jiang Luoluo: ...Okay, that works too.

Jiang Luoluo wasn't a carpenter and didn't know how to handle it, but she thought that it would be better to dry it in the sun for a while before using it, and it would also be less likely to rot.

Anyway, the old wooden door can still be used by stuffing a piece of wood under it, so there's no rush to replace it with a new one right away.

Young Ge didn't understand, but he was very obedient; he would do whatever the cub told him to do.

After the two trees were divided and cut, two small wooden stakes, each about thirty centimeters high, were left over, which the boy, Ge, intended to burn as firewood.

Jiang Luoluo, however, found it like a treasure and immediately took it to sit on next to the fire.

Not only that, the cub even gestured enthusiastically to the boy, wanting a taller wooden stake, preferably one meter high.

This way, she won't need to squat on the ground to chop vegetables anymore.

Young Ge nodded in agreement to all of the cub's requests.

Perhaps seeing how easily the young man handled the wood, the cub boldly spoke up again, offering many ideas.

I want a big shelf to put things like meat, vegetables, fruit, and wooden bowls on.

I also want a box. You know what a box is? It's for putting things in, and you can hide things away.

While using gestures to depict their vision of the future, they carefully stirred the jam in the stone pot.

Jiang Luoluo quickly gestured to the young man, Ge, that there were more stone pots! One pot wasn't enough; they needed one or two more!

Jiang Luoluo poured the jam into wooden bowls. Fortunately, there were more than two wooden bowls in the cave. The tribe members also used wooden bowls as containers to temporarily store food and other things, so Jiang Luoluo could easily divide the wooden bowls to hold the jam.

However, this kind of storage is not convenient. Without proper sealing, it can easily spoil. Jiang Luoluo thought for a moment and gestured to the young man Ge, "Do you have any jars? Or containers with lids?"

Fortunately, the tribe really did have these things. Although only the young shamans used them, they were not unknown. Young Ge quickly understood what Jiang Luoluo meant.

At the same time, young Go nodded to the cub with great tolerance, "Okay, Luo, I will bring it back for you."

Such a doting attitude made Jiang Luoluo's conscience ache slightly, so she looked at the young man Ge and nodded seriously.

I also want a needle and thread!

In this situation, of course you should push your luck a little further.

Sleeping on a pile of clothes every night is inconvenient and uncomfortable, so Jiang Luoluo was thinking about whether she should modify a blanket herself to make it more convenient.

Moreover, the clothes that young Ge was wearing looked a bit inappropriate.