Happy weekend, y'all amazing people!
Today was a challenging day for me. To start with, it's Saturday, and when we talk about Saturday, it's my free day. Sadly, however, this is not the Saturday I had anticipated. We had a 12-hour no-power period from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I understand the electric power company had to do some maintenance from time to time, but gosh, we're in the middle of summer, which has an average heat index of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I also needed to do the laundry, and just thinking about it almost caused me to have a heart attack. Beside that, I needed to do some primitive cooking since I was unable to cook inside the house. I use everything electric, including the stove and kettle, to boil water for my coffee.
I had to bring my country girl style on. So prior to doing the laundry, I needed to prepare something for breakfast. As it's common for Asians like me, I started by steaming some rice. Rice is life, you know? lol. I wanted to fry it, though, and yet we had no rice leftovers from last night's dinner. I started slicing some banana (saba) to fry while the rice was boiling. That was six pieces divided in half. Then, dried fish (tuyo) and some sunny-side-up eggs are ready to be fried next.
My tiny old clay stove, or Kalan, as it is known in Tagalog, serves as my substitute whenever the power goes out and I am unable to use the electric stove. I don't use a gas stove since I'm terrified it might explode or something like that. When I was growing up, my grandparents and my parents used clay stoves and pots for cooking, and frankly, the food tasted better. I want to continue with the traditional way of cooking I was raised with.
When cooking on a clay stove, you need a lighter and some charcoal or fire logs that serve as your burner. I used dried mango twigs and branches since I have a lot here that have fallen from our mango tree. When it started building a fire, I placed my rice pot on the clay stove and got it ready for steaming.
Primitive cooking with a clay stove provides an opportunity to take a step back and appreciate the cooking process in a different way in a time when many people have all the technological tools they need to survive. You can experience authentic country dishes off the grid while learning about survival cooking and its fundamentals by using a clay stove for primitive cooking. When you cook this way, you can enjoy the comfort of cooking over an open fire or over charcoal while also using traditional recipes that call for ingredients from the natural world, like vegetables and herbs from your backyard. I got the bananas from my backyard, by the way.
It was fun until I was sweating to death lol.
How was your day? Good, I hope. Bedtime for me. Goodnight, beautiful souls!
⊱ღ One love ⊱ღ
Published:
May 21, 2023, 12:25 a.m. PST
In between the farm and the beach
Philippines
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