The Kitchen

All cooking is done in the small kitchen near the dwelling house. The fire-pit or oven is dug in the coral floor at one end of the kitchen. The bottom of the oven is covered with small, waterworn, coral pebbles, bleached on the beach. The coral breaks into tiny pieces after being heated and the fat from broiling fish gives it a strong odor; therefore a fresh supply of coral is carried in for each new oven. Every morning the girls who assist about the house bring back from the sea beach beyond the village limits a basket or two of coral pebbles which they pour into the oven. When the fire has burned down, the hot ashes are scraped away with the hottest pebbles. The used coral is banked around coconut trees for what little fertilizing value it may have.

Wood is scarce on the atolls today, and material for fires is gathered from the immense piles of coconut husks which accumulate from the copra industry. The dry flower sheaths (taume), which make excellent kindling, and the dead brush that gathers about vegetation supplement the dry husks.