Drying fire wood

While I’m still on the subject of drying things, let’s talk about cooking. In the Philippines, and especially in Samar, many people can not afford a nice kitchen. The lucky ones have an oven with stovetop using LPG, a mixture of propane and butane. Next level down doesn’t have an oven, just an LPG stovetop. That’s where I’m at right now. Don’t really want an oven here anyways, as it gives off too much heat. The rest of the people make some kind of cooking fire. I have seen both charcoal, made from coconut shells, and wood fires. We will talk about coconut shells a different time. Today I want to show a couple of pictures of how people dry their wood for cooking fires.

This picture shows a Filipino style wood stack. First the bark is removed and the wood is split. Then the pieces are piled in such a way that air can get between them, and they are left to dry.

In this next picture, the person did not bother with piling the wood, and just spread the pieces out on the cement.

These pictures were taken along the National Highway between Calbayog and Catbalogan.