Vegetable oil---what's your plan?

[manu]

I like to fry stuff. Everything in fact. If it ain't fried, it ain't worth eating. So I use a lot of vegetable oil. Been weening myself off imported olive oil, and am now mostly using organic canola oil (US-grown as far as I know), supplemented with some conventional California olive oil for hummous, salad dressing, and the like. My ideal is to grow or gather >50% of my calories. The rest I'd like to obtain locally.

So is there any feasible way for the home gardener / very small-scale market gardener to make their own vegetable oil? Haven't done a ton of research yet as I've been offline for the last 9 months, but I have been perusing the articles about veggie oil production in the CD3WD collection. Doesn't seem impossible. Anyone tried it? I live in zone 8-9, so growing my own olives isn't really feasible, but there have to be other options. Sunflowers? They grow great around here.....

Make ghee (purified butter). Nothing is healthier. It can be stored for years. It is easy to make.

[davep]

Doing some math...
12k miles/year of driving at 15 MPG =800 gallons
1/2 GPH for electricity, 24/7/365=4380 gallons
total need=5180 gallons
At 100 gallons/acre, you'll need to raise 52 acres of rapeseed to offer the fuel you need.

12k miles at 60mpg = 200 gallons
make candles or go to bed earlier = 0 gallons

2 acres! And don't forget you can feed the high-protein cake to the animals (and get the candlewax from them)

[highlander]

Choose your crop wisely. Not all oilseed mash is suitable for livestock feeding. You do not have to "convert" diesel vehicles to run biodiesel. Also Biodiesel gives essentially the same performance as petroleum diesel (less BTU/lb, higher lb/gal).
If you are looking for cheap fuel, dumpster diving for used fryer grease is your best bet. If you want a "self sufficient" hidey hole, look to oilseed crops, solar and micro-hydro. Maybe a bit of wind thrown in for good measure. If you want good tasting fried food, lard is hard to beat! Just keep your artery roto rooter handy.

[blukatzen]

If frying with Olive oil, you may want to go with a cheaper grade, which is graded "Pomace", that is the one that I use, because you are only using it as the medium. (Not relying on Olive oil directly for it's vitamins and health benefits.)

I use the Extra Virgin stuff (I like Spanish but especially Sicilian for it's extra fruity taste) drizzled on food, I would never consider using that oil for frying! It would destroy the flavor.

Look at the differing "grades" of food when you are cooking as well. I do like Sunflower oil, NOT a big fan of Canola/Rapeseed oil at all!

Blu

[skyemoor]

My plan for ensuring sufficient levels of edible oils (we don't fry our food very often) in our diet includes our nut trees and oilseed flax. We currently have 5 Carpathian Walnut trees, along with another 11 other nut trees.
We look to have a diet with an Omega-3/Omega-6 balance of roughly 1 to 4. Saturated fats will be limited to what we get from our sheep and chickens (which are almost exclusively pasture-raised).

Make ghee (purified butter). Nothing is healthier.

I would highly recommend readers view this BBC article on ghee and saturated fats in general.

The father of six children is a Muslim and does not smoke or drink, but his diet was rich in ghee, the clarified butter which is composed almost entirely of saturated fat. Instead of a healthy pink muscle, his heart is covered in a layer of fat so thick that surgeons have difficulty seeing his coronary arteries.

[hermit]

My plan for acquiring edible oils (we don't fry our food very often) includes our nut trees and oilseed flax.

[/quote]

How does one press the oil out of the flax?

[yesplease]

12k miles at 60mpg = 200 gallons
make candles or go to bed earlier = 0 gallons

2 acres! And don't forget you can feed the high-protein cake to the animals (and get the candlewax from them)

Why stop there? If someone's going to all the trouble of growing/pressing/dewatering/filtering their own oil, I'd say go throw together a car that can do ~120mpg@60mph and half the work load.

[skyemoor]

My plan for acquiring edible oils (we don't fry our food very often) includes our nut trees and oilseed flax.

How does one press the oil out of the flax?

I was referring not so much to pressing oil as I was to including oils in our diet (I wasn't very clear). There are any number of oil presses one can make. I may try one of these, if the urge hits me one winter evening.

[skyemoor]

I'd say go throw together a car that can do ~120mpg@60mph and half the work load.

I've been thinking about such a project lately, and you've provided the intro line...

GM Lean Machine, 200 mpg



You might find the rest of the website interesting.

Btw, I've been hypermiling with my Insight on days I drive to work. Best run was 89.3 mpg, though I'm willing to bet I could do much better on straight and level (instead of undulating hills and ridges).

[Loki]

Journey to Forever has an answer for that too:

Here

Thanks for that link. This is by far the best description of DIY veggie oil production I've found so far: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_lib ... press.html

All you need is some basic welding skills and an auto jack. Oh, and a whole bunch of sunflowers. They estimate 2500 square feet would produce 3 gallons using their method of pressing. That's an awful lot of sunflowers for not all that much oil, but it'd be fun to try on a smaller scale.

Animal fats are an option, but meat and dairy are absurdly underpriced at the moment. Expect both to rapidly rise in price in the future, probably sooner rather than later. I also don't have the option of raising livestock at the moment, but I'm thinking of leasing a bit of farmland, and I can grow sunflowers.

As for the health implications of frying, doesn't really concern me. I don't plan on living forever.

[Loki]

I probably overemphasized frying. I forgot to mention that I make a ton of hummous. I can grow my own fava / garbanzos and garlic (still working on the tahini---maybe sunflower butter?). But hummous made with pig fat or butter doesn't sound all that appealing. Neither does salad dressing.

[mos6507]

Doing some math...
12k miles/year of driving at 15 MPG =800 gallons
1/2 GPH for electricity, 24/7/365=4380 gallons
total need=5180 gallons
At 100 gallons/acre, you'll need to raise 52 acres of rapeseed to offer the fuel you need.

12k miles at 60mpg = 200 gallons
make candles or go to bed earlier = 0 gallons

2 acres! And don't forget you can feed the high-protein cake to the animals (and get the candlewax from them)

Now you're talking.

[Pretorian]

One of my childhood memories is a piece of rye bread with freshly-pressed , brown-coloured sunflower oil on top of it, densely salted.. mmmm
I grew up on sunflower oil...

[manu]

My plan for ensuring sufficient levels of edible oils (we don't fry our food very often) in our diet includes our nut trees and oilseed flax. We currently have 5 Carpathian Walnut trees, along with another 11 other nut trees.
We look to have a diet with an Omega-3/Omega-6 balance of roughly 1 to 4. Saturated fats will be limited to what we get from our sheep and chickens (which are almost exclusively pasture-raised).

Make ghee (purified butter). Nothing is healthier.

I would highly recommend readers view this BBC article on ghee and saturated fats in general.

The father of six children is a Muslim and does not smoke or drink, but his diet was rich in ghee, the clarified butter which is composed almost entirely of saturated fat. Instead of a healthy pink muscle, his heart is covered in a layer of fat so thick that surgeons have difficulty seeing his coronary arteries.

First, the article does not say what his diet was. Does he fry meat in the ghee? Does he eat only fried food? I am doubtful about that article for a few reasons. One usually people who are waiters in restaurants in Bangladesh eat at the restaurant. I have never know a resturant in Bangladesh to cook in ghee. First it is expensive there, and second would be used in a veg restaurant and that would also be very rare. Also I doubt in Bangladesh even if it said it was ghee I think it would be cut with animal lard. Then at the end of the article there is a link to a website which is sponsered by Unilever which is a big corporate company who makes margerine which would benefit from propaganda like this.
I know many ayurvedic Dr.s who have treated thousands of patients who eat ghee and have no heart disease. Many of the Muslims who come for treatment to these Dr.s do have diseases from meat eating however. Many ayurvedic treatments require ghee in the treatment, like drinking up to 500ml to cleanse toxins out of the body. Ghee has been used for thousands of years whereas most heart diseases are from meat eating and fast food diets. This has been proven many times. Of course I would'nt suggest that someone eat fried food all the time nomatter what it was cooked in. But if you do, ghee is the best. You may die sooner but at least you will die happy! If you want to read some good articles on ayurveda there is a good website called ayurvedasara.com

[kpeavey]

While the term GHEE is new to me, I've worked with clarified butter extensively. It is an outstanding oil for sautee, imparting flavor and richness to the dish. I've canned it successfully, although once opened I've found that it can mold if left out for a few days.

[patience]

Historically, people got fat for their diet wherever they could readily, since fat is not so easy to come up with as, say carbs. If we are planning for a quite different, and less affluent future, then I think it is wise to consider what fat source you can come up with that fits the lifestyle you are planning, and the area where you live.

Depending on the circumstances, any of the fats mentioned here could make sense. Considerations include available land, and the nature of the land, that is, some areas favor raising cattle where grain crops are not suitable, so butter is the logical choice. The Midwest US has land suited to grain production along with some suited for pasture only, so cattle (butter/tallow), hogs (lard), and vegetable oils could work.

History is worth reading. No point in reinventing, etc. For us, it's going to be lard and butter. Comparatively easy to process, and they suit our area. I'm thinking we aren't going to have much choice here, as I believe we are going to all be a lot poorer, and have many more demands on our time as PO developes.

[rattleshirt]

Saturated fats are solid at room temperature. the ghee at the coop here is liquid in the cooler. bit odd that.

Make ghee (purified butter). Nothing is healthier.

I would highly recommend readers view this BBC article on ghee and saturated fats in general.

The father of six children is a Muslim and does not smoke or drink, but his diet was rich in ghee, the clarified butter which is [i]composed almost entirely of saturated fat[/i]. Instead of a healthy pink muscle, his heart is covered in a layer of fat so thick that surgeons have difficulty seeing his coronary arteries.

[/quote]

[yesplease]

I've been thinking about such a project lately, and you've provided the intro line...

GM Lean Machine, 200 mpg



You might find the rest of the website interesting.

Btw, I've been hypermiling with my Insight on days I drive to work. Best run was 89.3 mpg, though I'm willing to bet I could do much better on straight and level (instead of undulating hills and ridges).

Hybrids are funny like that, since the power split can't be dictated by the owner outside of systems like MIMA, so they can actually be more inefficient up/down hills than a normal stick shift vehicle in the hands of an efficient driver. For instance a real hardcore guy from Colorado was able to pull nearly 110mpg at thirty something mph average speeds in a modded Ford ZX2 since he knew what to do and how to drive. A 3L Lupo can supposedly pull that at 55mph on the flats, so a 1+1 low slung vehicle, kinda like Opel's (GM) eco-speedster w/ the 1L prototypes seating, should be able to pull ~120mpg@60mph w/ a few hundred buck IDI diesel engine, or ~150mpg@60mph w/ a TDI/HDI/whatever they call diesels these days. Speaking of which GM build's some neat prototypes, too bad they never bother rolling 'em out. Course, for the DIY'er something super high mileage built via a tube frame would only be ~$2-5k depending on what engine they went with and how financially slick they were.

[mgibbons19]

Between rape seed mash or bacon, I'll take bacon as a byproduct any day.

I could agree with that.

[manu]

While the term GHEE is new to me, I've worked with clarified butter extensively. It is an outstanding oil for sautee, imparting flavor and richness to the dish. I've canned it successfully, although once opened I've found that it can mold if left out for a few days.

Just keep it in a glass jar.