Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Boredom Takes its Ugly Toll

Today it rained.  I'd finished most of my projects.

I don't do boredom well.  I have an active mind.

Today, after all the chores, I noticed chicken fat in the freezer.

Unused.

Ha!

I buy marked down chicken and turn it into cat food.  Usually I just boil it up on the stove.  But then I have the fat to deal with.  I let it congeal then scoop it off the top of the water and stick it in an old cat food can and put in the freezer, until garbage day.

But, wow, there it was.  Now what could I do with that?

I go to ye old internet, for suggestions.  I type in "Uses for old chicken fat".  OMG!  I strike gold on that one!

I decide to not make soap because I don't have any crystal lye.  I don't have the set up either to make lye by leaching ash composed of the proper species of burned wood.  You need lye and fat to make soap.

If you want to get way back to the dark ages, make your own lye!
You can read how to do that by clicking here.

I settled on making chicken fat candles.

I didn't go fancy.  I liquified the old chicken fat, then strained it, then poured it into cat food cans.  I'd already added wicks to the cans, made from jute twine left over from winding cat scratch posts.  I stuck the cans with the fat and wicks into the freezer for awhile, to congeal again quickly.  I figured out only later I'd need a wick hook because the chicken fat would revert to liquid again and the wick would need supported.  I made a crappy one from some old wire after that but I hadn't yet when I made this video below.

Here's my finished product!  I'm so darn proud!


The darn thing burned and burned and burned, with just half inch of fat in the can.  After two hours of it burning like that, me amazed, I was juggling the wick and accidentally drowned it, so my experiment on how long half inch of chicken fat in a cat food can would burn, was over.

I could have been heating my place and lighting my place and cooking my food using old chicken fat all along and I didn't realize. Hahahaha. Oh, and Vision is doing much better currently. I let her out of the bathroom.

I am complete and satisfied now.

I poured old icky chicken fat into an empty cat food can and lit it up.  I timed how long that flame would burn.

It was good.


9 comments:

  1. Wow. Did it smell like chicken fat? That would be a turn-off for me.
    And I love that Vision is feeling better. So much.

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  2. Anonymous10:52 PM

    Sometimes I wish I had more time on my hands..... but not to make chicken fat candles, ha ha. Very enterprising of you though.

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  3. You are clever, you found use for the fat...good to know Vision came out.

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  4. Interesting. But didn't it smell?

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  5. Andrew, yes, most people do wish they had more time. I used to be one of those people. I used to work at the cat wrangling 80 hours a week some weeks and now I think of it wistfully as it is very lonely and often boring to not have a job of any kind. I shouldn't say "of any kind" as I do maintain this as a cat sanctuary and that takes at least four hours of chore work each day. At least. But I'm used to working far more. I am trying to find part time work.

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  6. Bored, bored, bored..how do you manage to come up with productive things? So often I find myself curled up daydreaming. The next time time I buy chicken for the cats, I will try this.

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  7. I don't have any problem day dreaming either Susan! Or dreaming. I slept hard this morning, early, and dreamed I had gotten everybody fixed, except then I saw an orange and white teenager crawl into a feral house. So I pulled him out and was lugging him around til I could get him fixed some way. Meanwhile two different women had no homes and knew my name and wanted to live in a spare room, and it made me sad because I didn't have any spare rooms, I realized and by then, I couldn't find where I lived. I tried to crawl up some very smooth very steep concrete wall, with the cat under my arm and it was so hard, but some little kid helped me in the end, so I made it. Then I was at a vet clinic and had screwed up recording prices and what a farmer who loved his two cows had paid on each to see the vet. Papers were scattered everywhere. The vet assistant was really nice to me, however, despite my screw up, and commented on the young cat I'd found. She knew the cat, even its name, and I said I found him with a large colony I'd just gotten fixed and she nodded and smiled, like she understood my mentality, that of course she'd gotten another huge colony fixed, and then she said, "look, he's even fixed." And I turned the teen cat over and sure enough, he was fixed, and I woke up.

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  8. I thought I should write down that dream, it was so odd, yet quite typical for me. I don't know, Susan, about productive. Sometimes I am so lonely and other times, just fine being alone with the cats. Depends a lot on if I can keep myself busy. I'm still trying for nonprofit status myself so I can amuse myself trying to raise funds for the cats here in other ways than begging online. But I am stymied by several questions. Did you apply, and get exempt status? I am struggling with Form 1023, a couple of the questions.

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