Some of you might be curious about this soba contraption that I keep mentioning (Ehem – DAD). I have finally mastered (I think) making a fire in it and will continue to do so all winter so as not to die of cold (yay!). I am including, below, a photo-documentary of how to make a fire in the soba so that it becomes more clear for anyone who is curious. Enjoy!
Step 1) Get your materials. You need a small armload of thin pieces of dry wood, a small armload of dried cornstalks and dried corncobs to use as tinder, a bit of paper to get things going, matches, and a bucket of fresh coal, plus an empty bucket and shovel for the old coal.
Step 2) Clean up the last fire. If you made a fire the day before, there is used coal and ash still in the soba so you have to clean it out. You shovel it out 
with the little metal shovel, drop it into the bucket, then I deposit it behind the house by the chicken coop. If you’re my host family you wash it off so you can use it a second time, but they insisted that I shouldn’t try to learn to do that, so I just leave it for them to pick up when they want to.
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Step 3) Tinder. Once the small space in the soba is cleaned out, it’s ready for a fresh fire. I start by crumpling up paper and ripped pieces of cardboard and putting it in there. Then you light it. Paper starts burning fast so then you have to load the dried corn stalks and cobs into the soba fast so they get a chance to start burning before the paper burns itself out. After you get all the corn stalks in there, you add a few small pieces of wood to it. The nice thing about a soba is that it is almost impossible to smother the fire because the fire is actually being made on a grate, and if you have the smaller lower door open underneath the fire, then oxygen is being sucked in from below and prevents the fire from going out.
Step 4) Add more wood from up top. Once the fire is going nicely, you shut the upper door, being sure to keep the lower door open to prevent all the heat
from getting sucked up the chimney. Then you use a can opener (or a knife or whatever is lying around) to pry the burner off of the top of the soba. This is where, just maybe 25-30 years ago, people made food in the evening, and there Moldovans still leave soups and other things to stay warm. From here, you add the larger pieces of wood. You can just throw them in on top of everything and the fire won’t smother as long as the small lower door is open on the front of the soba.
Step 5) Once you’ve got all your wood in there and the flames are going nicely, you dump the bucket of coal in onto the fire. It starts heating up immediately and you can just put the burner back in place on the soba top. Then you’re done.
After about a half hour or so the coals reach their maximum burning rate and the soba starts radiating heat like nobody’s business. It can keep a small room like mine super warm all night. After the coals stop glowing orange you can shut the lower door to keep extra head in. The bricks of the soba, once heated, continue to radiate heat for several hours
and if you keep all the doors and windows shut the heat will be contained in the room all night. It’s pretty cozy and gives you a great sense of accomplishment. The only bummer about this method of heating is that by morning it’s pretty much freezing again and that isn’t too much fun once January roles around. But that’s what long underwear is for!
Noapte Buna!
