Rez Zircon

Rancid fat (doesn't matter if it's animal or vegetable) is very, very bad for you. Among other things it binds vitamin E to the point that the resulting catastrophic deficiency can cause retinal deterioration and irreversible blindness.

Tho I don't suppose there's any reason it can't be used as lamp oil, so at least it doesn't go to waste.

Someone did some experiments with commercial food oils as lamp fuel. They found that a 3 pound can of Crisco, using a standard candle wick, will burn for about a week. Smoky, but if the lights are out, better than nothing!

Caterpillars are just not something you think of as being as dangerous as a brown recluse or a venomous snake, but there it is.

I have a nonstick waffle iron, and I never grease it. I just put lots of butter in the batter. (Actually, that's how some old recipes said to do it, too.)


The bitter butter made the better batter bitter,
But the better butter made the bitter batter better.

That is interesting about eggs sticking less with butter. I fry eggs at very low temperatures (200-250 per the electric frypan) so it's generally not an issue, but now that I think about it... I think most things stick less with butter. So long as you use enough butter.

If you can still see the food, there's not enough butter!

I've thought about raiding the public parks for bagged leaves... elm and ash leaves make really good soil. But you do have to wet down or mix in the leaves, so the wind fairy doesn't take them!

In the yard, I usually just mow the dried leaves, if they haven't all blown away (not enough to be worth hauling back to the garden). Instant mulch. You can use a bagging mower to confine the output for other uses.

Hmm. Just occurred to me that I could use pine litter in the garden, since I usually want to acidify the soil a bit (helps prevent potato scab).

Philip McGarvey wrote:
My soap box:
I bet that refined oils are not healthy.  They aren't natural, require weird industrial/chemical processes, and only existed in the last ~100 years or so.  Animal fat, butter, or unrefined coconut oil if you are vegan, seem to me to be the best cooking oils.  These are mostly saturated fat, which you'll hear is bad for you.  I've done extensive research on this and believe that this was largely a scam to get people to eat refined oils and grains instead of real natural fat which is mostly saturated fat.  I haven't found any good evidence that saturated fat is unhealthy.  And, I've been eating lots of it my entire life and seem to be in excellent health.

You would bet correctly. The whole "cholesterol bad, animal fat bad" thing originated from a vegan with an agenda, who also had enough credentials to make it look convincing, and here we are today. (Dr.Eades at proteinpower.com had a whole rant on the subject, knew the guy and watched it happen in realtime, but now I cannot find it.)

A good general rule is if you have to do more to the oil than squeeze it out, wash out the acids, and filter out the impurities, it's not good for you. Soy and canola in particular (in its first life, canola was an industrial lubricant) are questionable. Corn oil is probably the only "safe" seed oil, as it can be processed with mechanical pressure, heat, and water, and does not require other solvents. But do you know how the company produced it? of course not. Olive oil is just mechanically crushed, centrifuged, and filtered, but be aware that commercial olive oil of uncertain source may actually be mostly soybean oil.

Coconut oil involves finely crushing the meat and waiting for the milk and oil to separate, but using a solvent would be a lot faster, so I'd kinda want to know how it was processed.

Bah. Just use butter and other animal fats, all good. Just don't burn 'em, any burned oil becomes not good for you. My inner biochemist wishes to also note that animal fats are a lot closer to your body's required balance of fatty acids, too.

I have my grandmother's 1960s "apartment sized" dryer. Usually I just hang stuff up (mostly on a frame in the porch, so the birds don't poop on it nor the wind fairy steal it) but sometimes I need something dry a lot faster, and this dryer will do one one or two large things, if you don't mind it being HOT (it only knows HOT). I've used it more during winter than I expected, mostly when the outdoor gear is taking too long and needs some encouragement to dry out.

Since I only use it in winter, it vents into the house -- might as well keep the heat and humidity inside where it's needed!

But wait! there's more! there are three more dryers here and there (garage, other house, basement of other house, none especially in the way), and they all work! they're also old enough that they will work forever, unlike the newer appliances. That alone is a reason to keep them out of the landfill.

I should do more, but it always gets swamped in the rest of oncoming winter. I still need to dig potatoes.

I do pull up my tomato cages and set them aside, so I don't run into them and kill myself -- I got tired of the crappy commercial cages, so I made some out of hog panels. They're about 2x3 feet and support two plants each (or rather, contain them so they don't attack passersby, I've grown some monster tomatoes).

Here is a paper on caterpillar venom and its effects on humans (if you want the short form, go down to "6. Clinical Time Course"). Some are really serious, causing acute kidney injury, hemorrhage, and even death. If the fine hairs get into the eye, they can cause irreversible blindness.

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/8/6/143

Remember when you were a kid, handled a woolly bear and got a rash on your hand? You got off light.

Io moth caterpillar spines. Yikes!

I believe I took this at 50x magnification (with a cheap little toy called an "Eyeclops"). You can see a drop of venom at the tip of the spine at the top left.