Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 375: Chapter 237: Bursting the Cage

As he waited for the sweet potatoes to cook through, his mind was already swimming with countless delicacies he could make with them.

The only problem now was that while it seemed like a lot of sweet potatoes, the actual amount of starch he could extract would only be about one-sixth of their weight at most.

He estimated he’d dug up a hundred-odd pounds of sweet potatoes. At a one-sixth yield, that would come out to... well, just over twenty pounds, he figured, which was about ten kilograms.

That amount should be enough to use freely for a month, but he couldn’t be sure exactly how long it would last.

’A month... I doubt many people could even last that long.’

’Oh well. It’s not like I can eat sweet potato starch every day anyway. The dozens of pounds of leftover sweet potato pulp can also be made into food. The potato starch I have isn’t that useful for much else, so it can help process this pulp. Anything left over can be spread on the fields as fertilizer.’

The two smallish sweet potatoes were cooked quickly. He broke them open while they were still hot. The inside wasn’t the orange or reddish-orange flesh you’d normally find in a supermarket; instead, it was rather pale.

His eyes lit up, and a look of delight was evident on his face.

’This is great! My luck is holding. The whiter the sweet potato, the higher its starch content. For pure white ones, the starch percentage can even reach over 30%.’

’Then again, the whiter the sweet potato, the less sweet it tastes. Only the red- and yellow-hearted varieties have a strong sweetness.’

He took a bite of the steaming hot roasted sweet potato. The texture was soft, sticky, and fragrant, but the sweetness wasn’t prominent. It only started to emerge after he’d chewed a dozen or so times.

’Just as I thought. Wild sweet potatoes must have evolved to be less delicious to fend off animals. Which works out perfectly for me.’

After a simple meal to fill his stomach, he immediately began the process of grinding the sweet potatoes.

Grinding over a hundred pounds of sweet potatoes was a massive undertaking. Without a grater or a high-speed blender, relying purely on grinding by hand was clearly unrealistic.

By the time he was done, the thenar muscles in his hands would surely be abnormally developed.

’I’ve got it! I can pound them!’

As long as he first cut the sweet potatoes into small pieces, then put them in some kind of container and smashed them into a pulp with a heavy object, he could save a lot of time and energy.

A bamboo tube obviously wasn’t up to the task of being a container. The internal nodes were too fragile; it would break before the sweet potatoes did.

’Looks like I need to get some wood. A tree stump would be best.’

If he were to cut down a tree, the saw he had might not be strong enough.

To avoid any accidents with his precious saw, he decided to use a combination of tools to fell the tree.

He found a relatively slender tree near the bamboo house. First, he used a stone axe to smash two rows of notches, one above the other, into the base of the trunk at knee height. Then, he used a bamboo knife to clear away all the shattered bark and wood chips from the surface and proceeded to chop at it a second time.

The chopping was confined to the area between the two rows of notches. He hacked away indiscriminately, as long as it broke up the wood.

Once he had clearly removed the outer layer of bark and trunk, he used the saw to make a few cuts into the relatively softer inner wood, then repeated the previous two steps.

The saw cuts were to define the area, the stone axe smashes were to destroy the trunk’s fibrous structure, and the bamboo knife served to pulverize it.

As for his combat knife, it was too small to exert much force, so he mainly used it to pry off bits of fiber that clung tightly to the trunk.

After more than half an hour of hard work, he finally managed to fell the tree completely.

After trimming and leveling a section of the trunk, he used the combat knife as a chisel and the stone axe as a hammer to carve out a circular groove in the center of the trunk.

The rest was just a matter of holding the knife in his left hand and the axe in his right, angling them to gradually chip and carve out the wood from the center of the trunk until a pit of noticeable depth was formed. Only then was the job finally done.

"Phew... I’m exhausted!"

He had only cut down a single tree, but his clothes were already completely soaked with sweat.

He used a bamboo tube to fetch some water and pour it over the stump, rinsing away the excess wood chips. At the same time, this soaked the wood fibers, letting them absorb water beforehand so they wouldn’t discreetly soak up some of the starch-water later.

Once that was dealt with, he sniffed the stench of sweat on himself and found himself unconsciously walking over to the pool, staring blankly at the clear stream water.

Originally, this pool was built to store water, but something Erica had said made him realize.

’I already have running water, so why am I storing it? A well like this, without a flowing water source at the bottom, is just a pool of stagnant water. If it sits for too long, it’ll start to stink and attract mosquitoes.’

’Why not just convert it into a bathtub?’

’After a bath, I’d just have to pull up the nearby bamboo slats a bit. I could make a hole in the corner, also lined with bamboo slat walls. The water flow would be forced down the hole by the difference in water level and then seep into the ground. That way, I could easily change out the water.’

’Once it’s drained, I can just plug the slats back in, and I’ll have a fresh tub of water.’

’The workload for this isn’t too big. I might as well get it done right now, before I take a bath.’

First, he brought over a split bamboo tube and two whole bamboo poles. He set up supports in front of and behind the well, placed the split tube on top, and rerouted the stream to flow over the well, preventing it from continuously pouring in while he worked.

Then, he pulled out all the bamboo slats, letting the collected water slowly drain away.

Finally, following his earlier idea, he further widened and deepened the pool to about 1.2 meters long and wide, and 1.5 meters deep. He dug an outlet at the bottom, and then resealed the entire "bathtub."

Because the depth had changed, the previous bamboo slats were no longer long enough. He had no choice but to build the walls of the bathtub again using new slats.