Cooking

Raw meat feeds the body. Cooked meat feeds the people. Learn the difference.

Cook in the fire, boil in a pot, and harden your clay.

Fire turns what you gather into food, and clay into vessels to hold it.

Cooking in the fire

1. Drop raw food into the bed of a lit fire.
2. Leave it. It cooks where it lies.
3. Take it out when it is done. Leave it too long and it burns, and then it is gone.

• Food cooks in a fire that is kindled, burning, or down to embers.
• Pick it up early and you get it as it was: raw.
• If the fire goes cold, cooking stops, and the food stays as it was.

Meat, fish filets, mushrooms, and small creatures like crickets, grasshoppers and earthworms can all be cooked. Burnt meat and fish leave something blackened behind. A burnt mushroom leaves nothing.

Too hot to hold

Whatever comes out of a fire comes out as hot as the fire. Anything too hot to hold cannot be picked up, and grabbing at it burns your hand. Let it cool first. Clay takes the longest.

Clay pots

A Fired Clay Pot holds five measures of water.

• To lift it, empty your main hand and hold Ctrl + right mouse for two seconds. A full pot takes both hands.
• To set it down, hold Ctrl + right mouse again. Set it upright. A pot that tips over spills.
• Throw or drop a full pot and everything in it spills.
• To fill it, hold a bowl of water, look at the pot and press Ctrl + right mouse. Each bowl adds one measure.
• To draw from it, hold an empty bowl and press Ctrl + right mouse on the pot.

Boiling

Stand a pot of water in or beside a burning fire. Embers are not hot enough. Once it boils:

• Water alone slowly boils away.
• Food in the pot becomes a meal in about half an hour. A known recipe makes the best of what is there. Anything else becomes gruel.
• Every bit of food in the pot goes into the meal.
• A meal makes up to five servings. Draw them out with a bowl.

The last serving leaves the pot dirty, and a dirty pot will not take water. Set it down in water to wash it. Upright, it fills itself clean.

Firing clay

Clay must be hardened in fire before it can hold water.

1. Set the unfired piece into a burning fire hot enough to fire clay.
2. Leave it about two hours.
3. Too cool, and it comes out still unfired. Try again. Too hot, and it cracks and is lost.

Fired clay does not burn, so it can stay in the fire.