Building a Civilization and Raising Cubs in the Beast World – Chapter 09

Chapter 9

“I will teach you some wild grasses tonight.” After tying up the cow, Bai Tu told Bai Dong and the others that they ate less small animals like chickens, rabbits and voles, so they could just grab a handful at the foot of the mountain and feed them. Cows have a big appetite, so they need to be taken out in the future. There are poisonous grasses nearby, so teach the children to recognize them and ask them to avoid them when they go out in the future. Any animal that eats the poisonous grass will be a huge loss to the tribe.

In addition to the picking team and the children who often run out, other people in the tribe should also know these, just in case. After all, the consequences of accidentally eating some plants are very serious, and neither the orcs nor the prey can eat them. There are too many types of plants and it is impossible to learn them all in a short period of time. Bai Tu starts with the most common ones. In order to avoid biting off more than necessary, he only teaches a few types a day.

This is a required daily course. Bai Dong nodded and took credit with a group of half-grown children: “Tu, we loosened a lot of soil today.”

Bai Tu has already seen that there is a new piece of cleaned land next to the seedlings planted yesterday. No one is indeed lazy.

“I’ll give you a big piece of meat tonight!” Bai Tu promised.

“Let’s eat meat!” Several children were very happy. Everyone mainly ate meat, but children of their age could neither join the hunting team nor the picking team. They could only do easier things like picking branches. The food they were given was limited, and it was also the growing season, so they basically finished it on the same day. Most of the time, it was not enough. Bai Tu taught everyone several edible wild vegetables a few days ago, but the quantity is still small after all. The last time I ate a full meal was when I drank chicken soup.

The prey today is big, so everyone will get more than before. Even without Bai Tu’s words, everyone knew they would be full, but that didn’t stop them from being happy. For the first time, the children, who had been hungry all year round, truly faced the joy of having plenty of prey.

“Send this cow to the cave first.” In the open space, Bai An directed everyone to carry the prey. It was too hot outside and the meat would easily go bad. The cave where the meat was stored was the coldest place in the tribe.

Bai Tu didn’t intend to watch the scene of cutting beef, but took out the pork left over from the previous two days.

When dividing the prey that day, he picked out a piece of fat meat and planned to refine it into oil. He hadn’t found the time in the past two days, but today he happened to be free and could do it.

Fortunately, the temperature of the place where the food is stored is low, otherwise it would have been inedible if it was left outside. Bai Tu followed Bai An into a storage cave once and found that the inside and outside were two different worlds. It was in the shade and never saw sunlight all year round. In addition, the temperature inside the cave was conservatively estimated to be below zero degrees. No wonder the caught prey would not be divided up all at once. It would not go bad even if kept in the cave for seven or eight days. It was like a natural big refrigerator that did not consume much electricity.

Cut the fat into pieces and clean it. Put a little water in the pot and wait for the water to boil dry so that the fat can slowly release oil.

The stone pot was too big, and the five or six pounds of pork only took up less than half of it. Bai Tu slowly added branches and considered his next plan.

If we are lucky, the prey caught in the traps can make the rainy season in the next month or so less difficult for everyone, but we cannot stop planting the seedlings, as they are reserve food for the winter. And traps, like hunting in the past, always involve an element of luck. Not all seasons need prey to come here to drink water, and not all seasons have large prey groups. We must continue to make the necessary preparations, and cannot change them just because we have a big harvest today, not to mention that there is a tribe with bad intentions next to us.

Thinking of the Crazy Lion Tribe, Bai Tu couldn’t help but frown. The habits and practices of this tribe were disgusting, but there was no way to solve them for the time being. Regardless of whether there was a threat to the Snow Rabbit Tribe now, Bai Tu always felt uneasy with them around.

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help but sigh. It would take some time for the lard to be cooked, so Bai Tu called Tu You to help him watch the fire while he went to pack up the herbs he brought back today.

“Just add a few branches each time, and don’t make the fire too big. I’ll give you some lard residue to eat later.” When he was a child, the thing he looked forward to most when boiling lard was the lard residue at the end. Now when he sees children, he can’t help but think from their perspective.

Plants mature in seasons, so if you miss them you’ll have to wait until next year. Bai Tu picked most of the ones he saw, even those with seeds, so he can plant them himself next year.

These were pulled out near the trap today. Most of them have no roots, so they are relatively simple to handle. Those that need to be washed can be washed, and those that cannot be washed can be directly dried. The herbs that can be collected from the previous two days can be collected.

After a busy day, when the lard in the pot was ready, Bai Qi just brought the beef over.

“Tu, this is yours.” Bai Qi was carrying a large piece of beef leg. Every time someone captured a main animal, they would get an extra piece of food, not to mention that Bai Tu himself also prepared medicine for the tribe, so he got a lot of meat.

Such a large piece definitely could not be finished, so Bai Tu asked Bai Qi to help him cut off a small portion and send the rest back to the cave for storage.

Bai Qi guessed that he would do this, so without saying a word, he took out a bone knife and cut it horizontally and vertically, and a large piece of beef was cut off.

Bai Tu was watching with envy on his face. They should be about the same age, but Bai Qi was stronger and much faster than him. I don’t know if it’s the aftereffects of the injury, or the gap caused by lack of exercise in the past, or both, but his physical strength and endurance are not very good.

Unlike knives made with modern technology, the knives used today are basically made by simply processing the original materials, so the blades are naturally not that sharp. It’s no problem to ask him to dig some wild vegetables and herbs, but it’s a bit difficult to cut the beef. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have to trouble Bai Qi to help chop the chicken every time.

In order to avoid having to bother two people with one thing, Bai Tu asked Bai Qi to cut the piece of beef into thick slices. It was fresh beef, and he planned to fry it into steak.

Wash off the blood on the steak, beat it repeatedly, put it in a clean bowl and marinate it with salt. Use chopsticks to scoop out the oil residue in the pot and share it with the children. Pour the lard into a bowl. Only a small layer is left in the pot. Put the marinated steak directly on it. With a sizzling sound, the aroma of meat hits you in the face.

The bottom of the stone pot is not flat, so you need to constantly adjust its position. After both sides change color, turn it back and forth until it is fried, then take it out and put a piece down.

Bai Qi, who had been planning to eat barbecue today, suddenly couldn’t move.

The fried steak in the bowl exuded an enticing aroma. In addition, the picking team had just returned and everyone had not started eating yet, which made the rich aroma even more unique.

“Gurgle——” Bai Qi covered his stomach awkwardly.

Bai Tu was amused by the other party’s appearance: “Eat it later.” He had been near the trap and at most sorted out the herbs. Bai Qi and the others had actually run a lot of distance, and later they dug pits and resisted prey. They were much more tired than him.

However, eating food that is too hot is not good for the esophagus, so Bai Tu waited until the second piece of steak was fried before cutting the first one.

There was no complicated process, but the pure aroma of beef still attracted everyone’s attention.

There was enough beef and Bai Tu didn’t skimp on it. He cut the first steak into five pieces so that everyone could have a taste.

Bai Tu tasted it and found it crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with just the right amount of saltiness. Although the marinade only contained salt, it brought out the aroma of the beef and was in no way worse than the meat he had eaten before.

Unlike Bai Tu who had eaten fried food, the others wanted to swallow their tongues after taking a bite. The taste was completely different from grilled meat.

“Eat slowly, there will be more later.” Bai Tu pointed to those that were still being pickled. He only needed to eat one or two pieces himself, and he left so many so that everyone could have some.

A piece of steak weighs more than half a pound. After Bai Tu fried the steak, he also stir-fried the washed wild vegetables in the pan.

Facts proved that Bai Tu underestimated everyone’s appetite. In the past few days, he ate one piece of meat at each meal because he was only given one piece, not because he had to eat that much. The prey was big today, so the children got a big piece. Bai Tu saw with his own eyes that Tu You finished a piece of steak and half a bowl of wild vegetables, and then ate a piece of barbecue weighing more than one pound. A seven or eight-year-old child can eat about two kilograms, not to mention an adult orc, for whom four or five kilograms is no problem at all.

Bai Tu was shocked by the appetite and a small doubt arose in his mind: Could it be that the rabbit tribe is weak because they have never been full?

This thought flashed through his mind, and soon Bai Tu had no time to think about it, because he still had work to do. After dinner, as usual, he taught everyone about several plants. Seeing that it was not dark yet, he called Bai Qi and a few children to help cut the beef.

A cow leg weighs more than 100 pounds, and there are still over 100 pounds left after removing the bones, which is enough for him to eat for a month. He can eat different dishes every day, but no matter how delicious the food is, one will get tired of it eventually. Moreover, the tribe will continue to hunt prey. He wants to make some beef jerky with the remaining beef, which tastes better and can be stored longer.

Of course, Bai Tu had another idea. He was not always lucky enough to catch an animal suitable for raising. When he encountered large prey such as adult pigs and cows, he had to kill them immediately for everyone’s safety. Caves can store food for a short period of time, three or four days is fine, five or six days is even fine, but if it is stored for ten days or half a month, it will slowly deteriorate even if the temperature is low.

Bai Qi said that tribes with a lot of prey would eat the first ones caught and those that are about to go bad before eating the ones caught later, or they would roast them first and put them away, and then roast them again when it is time to eat. This way there will be no waste, but the taste will be average. The Snow Rabbit Tribe seldom does this because there is no such opportunity. After eating the prey they catch, they may not be able to catch the next one.

Now using traps to catch prey saves effort and reduces the chance of injury, so everyone can go out and look for prey groups all the time. In the future, when there are more prey, we can process them into delicious semi-finished products such as jerky, bacon and pickled meat without worrying about them going bad, or being sold at a low price when we exchange them for salt and other supplies.

Bai Tu has never been a person who likes to procrastinate. Once he thought of something, he would naturally start trying to do it. Since it was his first attempt, he did not touch the public part of the tribe, but used the part allocated to him for the experiment.

The beef is first cut into slices, then cut into long strips, and marinated with onion, ginger and salt. There are few seasonings. Bai Tu decided to marinate it overnight and it would be just right to start drying it tomorrow morning.

Both the stone knife and the bone knife were a bit blunt, and the five people, two adults and three children, worked until dark to cut and marinate the entire hind leg of the cow. Bai Tu rubbed his sore arm and sighed, saying that the tools were not easy to use and it was too tiring. He wondered if there was any tribe that could make iron tools. Even if not, he could at least find an iron mine and build a smelting furnace to smelt them himself.