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pollinator

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Location: Western Washington

posted 5 years ago

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Hey, so butter and lard are all well and good but as far as cooking oil, at least in the Cascadian Sound and Salishan sea here and now in the 21st century the best cooking oils are clearly Grape and Hemp seed oils right? Mostly grown south of me for sure but totally west coast. Anybody disagree? What do you advocate? Soy? Canola? Whale oil?

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R Scott

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Most of the concerns over animal fast are Bad Science. They are either based on bad assumptions or on sick (grain feed CAFO) animals.

Grape, hemp, coconut, olive are all good of they are produced well from healthy soil. Grass fed tallow is right up there, too. It is more about the quality and care than the type.

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi
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Landon Sunrich

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I was mostly coming from a food miles prospective not a health prospective. I do LOVE Coconut Cream though. And it comes in awesome cans!

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Laura Sweany

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Location: Onalaska, Lewis County, WA

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I've been thinking about this too, and haven't really found great ways to press nuts or seeds to get oils. If I could figure out the pressing thing, then walnut & hazelnut would be great nut oils, and pumpkin & sunflower could be good choices for seed oils.

Do you have good ideas for presses, Landon?

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"It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." - Wendell Berry

Landon Sunrich

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So I swear that once for about 15 minutes their was a thread including pictures and an exploded diagram of a wind powered home scale oil press which looked like it was basically a screw inside of a tube. It was burnished copper and looked super slick but I was hallucinating or something I guess. That seems like a plausible start point for a design though.

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Laura Sweany

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I am no engineer. I got nuthin.

I can't really think of anything I wouldn't use animal fats for, though. Maybe salad dressing of some kind...

The press is the key!

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"It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." - Wendell Berry

Landon Sunrich

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Location: Western Washington

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I like a lighter oil much of the time and currently the pasture butter around here is very expensive and so wonderful in flavor that it's best savored on a good bread perhaps with some preserves. I could probably get some local pork fat more easily and cheaply, but call me crazy, I just don't like cooking everything in lard. It seem like both grape and hemp seed could be grown easily and with minimal disturbance - grapes being an established perennial in much of cascadia and hemp being a much less destructive crop than soy, rapeseed, cottonseed, palm oil, mink fat, or what-have your.

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Landon Sunrich

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Location: Western Washington

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Laura Sweany wrote:I am no engineer....
The press is the key!

I mean I'm not either but I've played around with an Archimedes screw a few times growing up and it seems like drawing up seeds into a crusher and then letting the oil run down and collect into a container at the bottom would be really easy to so . I mean I'm not a machinist. But it seems like the sort of Ikea snap together thing which would be really simple to mass manufacture and ship and quick like if need be. I'm sure many minds greater than mine have played with this particular idea.

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Laura Sweany

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Have you already cruised the permies threads for the topic of presses? What about youtube?

The reason I mentioned the nuts and seed I did is they grow well here in the PNW.

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"It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." - Wendell Berry

R Scott

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There was such a thread. You're not crazy. Or we both are

Cj Sloane

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Build your own oil press, yeilds oil and dry nut meal. Oh, wind powered too!
Your welcome

My project thread
Agriculture collects solar energy two-dimensionally; but silviculture collects it three dimensionally.

Fred Tyler

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posted 5 years ago

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Where you are i might try hazelnut. How do sunflowers grow there?

As for pressing, i would check out this hand crank oil press. It has gotten pretty good reviews, except for people that tried to use it with olives.

Laura Sweany

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Location: Onalaska, Lewis County, WA

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As for pressing, i would check out this hand crank oil press. It has gotten pretty good reviews, except for people that tried to use it with olives.

The detractors seem to have very specific and compelling arguments against this machine. Have you tried it, Fred? It's a bit pricy to purchase if it won't work easily, or rust, or add machine oil to the nut oil...

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"It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." - Wendell Berry

Laura Sweany

Posts: 317

Location: Onalaska, Lewis County, WA

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Cj Verde wrote:Build your own oil press, yeilds oil and dry nut meal. Oh, wind powered too!
Your welcome

Cool! Thanks, Cj. Now I'm off to ask my metalworking friends if this is as easy as he makes it look...

www.alwaysgrowingdesign.weebly.com
"It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." - Wendell Berry

Landon Sunrich

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Location: Western Washington

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Thank you CJ! I have embedded the video from http://davehakkens.nl 's site. The link above which CJ shared is most defiantly worth click on if you like the way this thing looks!

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Laura Sweany

Posts: 317

Location: Onalaska, Lewis County, WA

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Here's another cool link that describes sunflower oil hulling, winnowing and oil extraction, from the ever-valuable Mother Earth News of the 1970's:

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html

Lots of really great information here!

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