The children were delighted to see the candy given by their aunt. The old lady asked Wen Qian if it was malt sugar.
She had seen and eaten it before, but unfortunately after the natural disaster, it became rare to find, so her children had never tasted it.
She then asked Wen Qian how to make malt sugar, and the two children listened attentively.
Even if they didn't have a chance to make it now, they would know how to try making sugar after the grain harvest.
When the children left, they gave their jerky from their pockets to the aunt, as they felt it was a fair exchange.
Wen Qian was a little surprised but accepted it gratefully.
She held the jerky and wondered if there was a way to make it less chewy, as the simple jerky-making method she used initially, although tasty, was really tough to chew.
Then she thought of making smoked meat, which required mincing the meat into a paste beforehand and smoking it.
At this point, she realized she could make a smoker to smoke bread, meat, and naturally the smoked meat as well.
Moreover, she could make various kinds of bread for breakfast, introducing new recipes beyond steamed buns.
Wen Qian put down the smoked meat recipe and started searching for methods to make a homemade smoker.
Without microwaves, ovens, or stores, making a homemade smoker was the best choice.
She began considering a location, her yard had tiled areas near the house and the rest was paved with grass bricks where she had planted various things.
She had even planted a ring of flowers and plants outside the walls.
She didn't just scatter flower seeds randomly. When raising seedlings of vegetables and melons, she also prepared seedling trays for some flower seeds and kept them in the greenhouse.
When transplanting them later, the survival rate would be higher, and most importantly, it would save a lot of seeds.
Although they were flower seeds, she saw no reason to waste them and kept them all well.
Finally, Wen Qian chose a spot next to the well. The smoker wouldn't be built directly on the ground but elevated, with space underneath for firewood, and protected from rain.
Between the well and the smoker, a counter would be made with a trough in the middle to hold the hot coals taken out from the smoker.
A grill rack would be placed on top for barbecuing, and after cooking, the rack could be easily carried to the side counter for cleaning.
With the location and design planned, Wen Qian next had to choose the construction materials.
According to the pictures and different construction methods in the reference materials, different material configurations were required.
Some needed red bricks, cement, sand, and rebar, while others needed yellow clay, stone bricks, mud bricks, straw, and beer bottles.
Wen Qian wanted a durable one, so all these materials were used.
Unsurprisingly, these materials all came from her own space, from the scraps she had collected from various places.
First, she used old red bricks to build the counter and covered it with two stone slabs, forming a square surface.
A shallow pool was made on top, lined with a thick layer of crushed stones, then various glass bottles, more crushed stones and sand, and finally smooth perforated red bricks.
Next, she had to make a semi-circular dome with at least three layers. The innermost layer was a smooth mixture of mud and straw, the middle layer was perforated red bricks, and the outermost layer was a thick coating of mud and straw.
The first and second layers were built simultaneously, as she wasn't skilled at building semi-circular shapes. So she first made a semi-circular frame with wire and bamboo strips to support the bricks as she built upwards.
After the brick dome and chimney were complete, she removed the frame and smoothed the interior mud.
The exterior was easier to handle.
The oven door was also made of red bricks in an arched shape, and the door itself was a wooden board with iron plating cut by Wen Qian.
After coating the exterior with yellow clay, Wen Qian started burning firewood inside.
Meanwhile, the adjacent barbecue counter made of stacked stones was already finished.
As the temperature rose, the interior and exterior were dried, signaling the smoker was ready for use.
The first thing she tried was baking bread. The bread dough was made according to the recipe, and the pictures of the finished product were very appealing.
Wen Qian didn't expect hers to look exactly like the pictures, but as long as it was edible and didn't waste grain, it was fine.
Wen Qian kneaded the dough using the flour she had previously purchased in bulk, an all-purpose flour. While waiting for the dough to rise, she went out to tend the firewood.
After scoring the dough, Wen Qian placed the loaves on an iron tray dusted with flour.
Using tongs, she pulled out the remaining unburned firewood, revealing many crumbling hot coals inside.
She raked the hot coals to the side, shoveling out the excess into the adjacent barbecue trough, leaving a flat space in the middle to place the baking tray before closing the oven door.
While waiting, Wen Qian used the hot coals to grill meat on the side.
Instead of skewering the meat, she was too lazy for that and simply clamped the meat in a fine mesh grill rack to cook both sides.
She didn't know if the bread had turned out well yet, but she had already tasted the grilled meat.
Brushed with a mixture of cumin, sauce, and a little honey water, the flavor was excellent.
After the wait, the first batch of bread came out, baked a little too long so the outside was too hard, but the inside was still soft.
Wen Qian only ate half and went to restart the fire in the smoker, preparing for a second attempt.
This time, the bread had a nice golden-brown color, much closer to the pictures in the recipe.
Confident the smoker was functioning properly, the next day she began preparing to make smoked meat.
To make smoked meat, she first had to mince a lot of lean meat. She took out the hand-cranked meat grinder she had purchased.
After installing the small grind plate and cleaning and oiling the machine, she fed in long strips of meat, resulting in finely minced meat.
She then transferred the minced meat to a cutting board and chopped it even finer with a knife.
The meat was placed in a bowl, and seasonings and sauces were added according to the weight of the meat.
After brushing oil onto the baking trays, she took small portions of the meat paste and flattened them into thin layers with a small rolling pin, covering all the available trays in this manner.
Then she fired up the smoker and placed one tray inside to test the cooking time.
The first batch of smoked meat turned out quite successful.
Wen Qian used wire to make a three-tier rack with an appropriate height for roasting without wasting space.
The jerky was thin, so it didn't take long to roast.
She successfully made quite a lot on the first try, and the taste was decent.
After eating a bit, she put the rest of the jerky into jars and stored them in her spatial dimension. This was a rather successful homemade snack.
If she had to buy it before, it wouldn't have been cheap.
She didn't have so much time and meat for this kind of preparation before.
There were many ways to eat meat, and Wen Qian didn't mind learning a few more.
After succeeding with jerky, she began experimenting with roasting everything, like roast chicken, roast rabbit, and roast fish.
It then depended on how many roasting recipes she could find in books.
When the neighbors' kids saw Wen Qian building a roasting oven at home while delivering things, they were very curious.
When Wen Qian took out her roasted bread, they ran back and asked their parents to make one too.
Curiosity won over everything, and the parents agreed to help them make one.
(Two in one)
Wen Qian only had time to build the roasting oven after the spring farming was over.
After that, she became interested in the oven for a while, and the stove in the kitchen was used less frequently.
She couldn't keep taking materials to roast from her spatial dimension, so Wen Qian started going out to hunt.
The rabbits from the kitchen were released to the rabbit hutch in the backyard.
Since there were no suitable rabbits for roasting at the moment, she needed to set a few more rabbit traps in the wild.
The wild chickens appearing in the mountains and the wild ducks and geese in the river area were also her targets.
During that period, everything she saw looked like it could be roasted, and she wanted to put everything into the roasting oven.
She would wash and clean the fresh hunted game by the riverside, then store them together in her spatial dimension.
Before going out, she would heat up the roasting oven to the right temperature and put a rabbit or other prey inside.
When she returned at noon after doing her chores, the roast would be ready.
It would still be warm, so she could eat it right away or package it and store it in her spatial dimension.
As the work in the fields slowed down a bit, her enthusiasm for the roasting oven also started to decline, and she had some spare time to hunt farther away.
The forest was gradually becoming lively, so Wen Qian went into the mountains before it became too dense.
After walking for two hours, she was quite far from home, so Wen Qian chose a flat area to clear some trees.
This was the spot she selected for her first hunter's cabin, but for now, she might just mark the area as she didn't have time to build a cabin immediately.
As the temperature warmed up, she might need to come and build the house in autumn or winter when the temperature was above freezing.
Wen Qian didn't plan to venture too deep into the summer forest. She used an oil saw to cut down a few trees, collected the logs, and started walking back.
On her way home from this spot, Wen Qian followed the route along the fence she had set up earlier, so she had a ready-made path and wouldn't get lost.
The return journey took longer because she tried to open up a wider path.
Previously, she only needed to clear some grass and thorns for a single person to pass through, but this time she widened the path enough to pull a cart.
Some obstructing trees were also cut down because plants would grow quickly in summer.
By widening the path, she wouldn't have trouble finding the way when she came back in autumn or winter.
So it took her four or five hours to return home that day, but she made it back before dinner.
After clearing the path, Wen Qian didn't go back there again.
After resting for a day at home, she went hunting and fishing in areas closer to home.
The neighbors had finished making their oven using mud bricks stacked together.
Their oven was rounder than Wen Qian's because Da Jin's craftsmanship was better than hers.
As for materials, although both were made from mud and sand, the neighbors' oven functioned similarly to Wen Qian's, but it might need occasional repairs.
So the neighbors' kids also entered a roasting craze.
The two kids took on the tasks of grinding flour and chopping meat fillings, and even provided firewood.
At first, the adults experimented with roasting times, but later the kids could do it all by themselves.
They even brought some of their roasted jerky and bread to Wen Qian for evaluation, hoping to get her feedback.
After all, many of the methods and seasoning were taught by Wen Qian, but since the neighbors didn't have as many spices as her, their food didn't have as much variety in flavor.
The food they brought received good reviews from Wen Qian, and these two kids might be more talented in cooking than her.
Their parents initially couldn't refuse the kids' requests, but later found the oven quite useful, so they became even more grateful to Wen Qian.
As summer arrived and the trade with neighbors ended, Wen Qian needed to hunt for fresh meat herself.
Whether meat or grains, she had surplus, but she still set traps everywhere, lying in the grass to shoot game with her gun every day.
Or she would catch fish by setting traps in the river - at this season, according to normal schedules, people were still stockpiling food.
Now in most areas, there was no longer such thing as work, and all preparations were for survival.
The pressure to survive was a bit higher, but the mental pressure was lower.
Except for occasional breaks, Wen Qian worked like her neighbors for the rest of the time.
Who would complain about having too much food? Especially someone like Wen Qian with a spatial dimension.
In June of summer, Wen Qian originally thought she wouldn't encounter ferocious beasts, but unexpectedly met a wild boar in a not-so-dense forest.
Upon seeing the boar, her first reaction was to run away since there was still some distance between them.
After running a bit farther, she stopped to consider if she could kill the boar.
If it wasn't too big and didn't have tusks.
Then the next day, she returned and shot a boar from a distance.
Only then did she realize that the boar had piglets, so she stored the mother in her spatial dimension and carried the piglets away in a basket.
With so many piglets, she wondered if she should raise pigs, but they ate a lot too.
Even if they just ate grass, she would have to cut many pounds of grass for them every day.
If she raised pigs like they did in her hometown, she would also have to cook pig feed.
Wen Qian found it a bit troublesome to deal with everything by herself.
So she temporarily set up a small pig pen outside her home's wall, placing the bricks from her spatial realm outside and stacking them in a circle. She threw some grass to the frightened little pigs.
She wasn't sure if pigs could eat grass, nor did she know if these pigs were over a month old, as they looked quite small. The younger the piglets, the cuter they seemed.
After settling the piglets, Wen Qian caught two more and planned to ask her neighbors if they raised pigs. If they did, she would give them the pigs, and if not, she would still give them the pigs.
The elderly neighbor lady actually wanted to raise them. She told Wen Qian that these pigs should be over a month old, and that little pigs could eat grass after fifteen days.
However, how big could these pigs grow? The other two adults felt that raising wild pigs would be too much trouble, and didn't want the old lady to raise them.
After much thought, the old lady eventually decided not to raise them.
So Wen Qian decided to go back and roast the suckling pigs. She would give these two away.
