mud ovens

ah-ma and ah-gong from dad's side owned a kickass farm in the south. that farm provided endless hours of fun whenever us grand kids got to visit. bro and I were the only two grand kids for so long that we were pretty much the apples in our grandparents eye until their death. dad always showed us the various fun we can have around the farm and he tried to have a mud pit cookout each time we visited the farm.

All of us kids and adults would go around the farm to collect chunks of dried mud, preferably with burn marks, showing it was previously used the year before, having already been baked to contain heat even better. We would stack these mud chunks into a igloo/hive shape stuffed with newspaper. Grandma would clean a chicken and grandpa would pick up sweet potato, eggs and the kids would collect used cans to put the eggs into. Dad would set the newspaper on fire and we'd sit back and watch the fire go out once all the oxygen is gone, and newspaper completely disintegrated. We would then stuff the chicken, sweet potato and cans through the opening and seal the opening when we're done. By nightfall, we would tear down the mud chunks with the food all cooked inside and we'd have an outdoor picnic devouring the food as mosquitoes devour us in the summer heat of Southern Taiwan.