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Last post of 2023
I posted every day in December and it wasn't even that much of a strain! The main issue was remembering. I can in no way keep this up every day of the year, but when I'm doing this "post every day in the month" thing, I tend to post about things I wouldn't otherwise - little everyday stuff, random pictures and the like - and I think it's good for me to remind myself that posts don't have to be big or detailed to be worth posting. So I plan to do it again some future month when I don't have a lot else going on.
If you're into Biggles, you'll definitely want to read this pitch-perfect A Christmas Carol AU:
Ghosts That We Knew by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blackbentley (8800 words, gen)
Zorotov was dead: to begin with.
It is delightful.
Since I didn't go to any fireworks shows, I looked around my hard drive for recent festive pictures to finish the post and came up with this:
The photo was taken a few days ago, and this is a candle my husband made himself from beef tallow saved off a roast. ("More like a lot of roasts, actually," he said when I asked him about how much roast it actually takes to convert to a candle; he was saving it for a while.) It was fairly early in the pandemic when he did this - if you think about it, this definitely fits the 2020 Mood™ - and then he just kept the candle around out of inertia and also curiosity to see if it would, say, mold or spoil. But it didn't! And it burned like a normal candle, and didn't even smell like beef except sort of, at the end. It did burn down fast, in just about ten minutes. So I guess we have post-apocalyptic proof of concept that lard does stay good pretty much forever, or at least for years, and also burns well.
Happy new year!
If you're into Biggles, you'll definitely want to read this pitch-perfect A Christmas Carol AU:
Ghosts That We Knew by
blackbentley (8800 words, gen)Zorotov was dead: to begin with.
It is delightful.
Since I didn't go to any fireworks shows, I looked around my hard drive for recent festive pictures to finish the post and came up with this:
The photo was taken a few days ago, and this is a candle my husband made himself from beef tallow saved off a roast. ("More like a lot of roasts, actually," he said when I asked him about how much roast it actually takes to convert to a candle; he was saving it for a while.) It was fairly early in the pandemic when he did this - if you think about it, this definitely fits the 2020 Mood™ - and then he just kept the candle around out of inertia and also curiosity to see if it would, say, mold or spoil. But it didn't! And it burned like a normal candle, and didn't even smell like beef except sort of, at the end. It did burn down fast, in just about ten minutes. So I guess we have post-apocalyptic proof of concept that lard does stay good pretty much forever, or at least for years, and also burns well.
Happy new year!
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Happy new year! I believe that is the first tallow candle I have had the opportunity to see burning.
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And happy new year!
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(Though honestly the thing that surprised me most about this candle was how very like a normal candle it was. It burned down faster, but otherwise could easily have come from a store.)
Happy new year! I look forward to all the Biggles fun ahead of us in 2024. :D
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From my childhood, I remember we used to keep (pig) tallow in jars lined up outside the barns, so I had the idea that it keeps good for years, but I also vaguely remember being told it can't be used for candles, or at least that it smells very bad if you do that! I wonder if there's just a big difference between which animal it's from.
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I've read about preserving food in tallow/lard; apparently that's still a thing among prepper folks, even! But that's really interesting about not being able to use pig tallow for candles.
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Happy new year! (And excellent candle proof-of-concept.)
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Happy New Year again. :)
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My hat is off to you. I can't even manage to post once a month, these last few years. But I'm always happy to see your posts!
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