Aze helped Chen Qi, while Ka Luo was sent by Chen Qi to cut the other potatoes into pieces. Ake separated several pieces of burning firewood from the big fire to a smaller pile and started a second fire. Chen Qi put the pieces of pig bone that Aze had broken previously into a pottery dish, filled it with water, and placed it over the small fire to make the bone soup.

After Ake finished making the small fire, he wanted to take over Ka Luo’s job, but Chen Qi ordered him to wash his hands before touching the potatoes. What a joke to want the hands that were just touching the firewood to directly touch the ingredients that were about to be cooked without washing them first. Would they still be able to be eaten then? Ka Luo playfully stuck out his tongue at Ake and acted as if he had seen nothing.

When cooking, it was natural to need some utensils to stir the food in the pot or pan. Currently, their home only had two pairs of chopsticks made from acacia branches, of which Aze’s were especially sharp. Although Chen Qi had taught him how to use the chopsticks, Aze was still not very proficient with them. Every time he tried to pick up something with them, it would fall off  several times, and he would end up still using his hands to directly grab roasted meat. There was no other way, so Chen Qi could only sharpen one end of the chopsticks so that Aze could at least eat the stew by using them as forks and stabbing the food.

However, the quantity of the dishes Chen Qi was going to cook was relatively large, so it was obviously inconvenient to use chopsticks as the stirring utensil. From a pile of wood, he chose a piece of wood from some type of tree that he wasn’t familiar with. The wood had a solid texture. Chen Qi drew the rough shape of a spatula on the ground with cooled charcoal to show Aze what to make, since Aze could cut faster than Chen Qi could with his knife.

Ake cut the meat quickly. When Ka Luo finished with the potatoes, Ake had already cut two big pottery dishes full of meat. Had it not been for Chen Qi noticing it, Ake would have cut up the whole warthog.

Chen Qi had used a lot of refined salt to marinate the meat yesterday, and now the remainder was just enough for this meal. Chen Qi took advantage of the time when Aze was making the spatula to put the potatoes and meat into a pottery dish. He added ginger slices and the last few pieces of the perilla leaves, mixed them with salt, and put them over the fire to stew. Because there was no pot lid, Chen Qi directly asked Ake to chop a piece of wood that had a very light scent. This wood would still have a little fragrance when burned, but if used to cover the pottery dish of meat and potato stew, the meat shouldn’t absorb any strange taste from the wood.

For the pig heart and kidneys, Chen Qi did not let them handle the processing. Instead, he took out his dragon-horn knife and sliced them himself. Although the appearance was not very even, the thinning effect was achieved. Later, he found that Ake was obviously better at this sort of meticulous work, so he asked Ake to cut them up like the meat slices. Needless to say, Ake was more consistent, even the thickness and the appearance looked much better than Chen Qi’s. Chen Qi comforted himself with the reminder that the taste of the food when it entered the mouth was the most important, and that his slicing looked good enough.