Anyone who follow my recipes will know by now that I am pretty obsessed with coconut oil. I fry with it, casserole with it, spread it on my bread, have even taken to using it for cleaning my face. (If you want more nitty gritty details see here….) But I bring you this further wonder with my Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management hat on.
Coconut oil does not stain…….
I was having a piece of rye toast with coconut oil three days ago and a large splodge of the melted coconut oil percolated through the toast and down onto a pair of clean blue trousers leaving a large and very dark oil stain. I muttered suitable imprecations and debated scrubbing it with soap and a nail brush, but previous experience of doing that with olive oil stains suggested that I would probably take the colour out of the trousers but was unlikely to get the stain out. So I sighed and resigned myself to adding yet another pair of trousers to my ‘gardening’ pile.
As it happened, because there are various house upheavals going on here at the moment, I went on wearing the same trousers the next day, and yesterday during which they got gradually dirtier – and I noticed that the coconut oil stain had faded slightly, as most oil stains do. However, last night when I decided that they really had done as much as could be expected of a pair trousers and needed to head for the wash, I looked, just for interest, for the coconut oil stain. It had gone. No, not just faded – completely, totally and incontrovertibly gone….
So how did that come about? Are there any scientists out there who can explain to me why coconut oil (90% saturated fat, medium chain triglycerides with 45% lauric acid) does not stain while butter (63% saturated fat and also high in medium chain triglycerides) does? Or are their fat contents irrelevant? I am happy to live with the fact, but I would love to know…..
And while on the ‘household management’ theme, can I warn anyone out there who is happily growing lots of lovely green leaves for their summer salads in their gardens that, if you thought that slugs and snails would not like parsley – they do……. Along with delphiniums, hostas, marguerites, cosmos and petunias!!! I planted three vigorous parsley plants last weekend and when I went to pick some last night, they had all vanished! All that was left were a few chewed stalks……. I even found a snail oozing its way up the delphinium stalk next to the parsley – having munched the parsley, on to the delphinium!! Aaaarrgh….. I think I am currently keeping ‘Organic Slug Stop’ in business!
PS….. 3rd September…. Another wonder……
Alex Gazzola has just sent me a link to a BBC News article about how coconut oil can combat tooth decay!!! Admittedly, it does need to be treated with enzymes to do the trick but the enzymes could not have done it without the coconut oil!!! Read more….
2 lots of new parsley have also disappeared. Slugs or pigeons? Starting again with pots in the green-house
Oh lumme…. Never thought of pigeons! But I am sure it is slugs and snails. I even caught two snails half way up the new delphinium next door to the late-parsley!!!!