Animal, vegetable…. mineral oil? October 18, 2011
Posted by cheesefish in : Randomness , 3commentsI went looking around Nelson a few weeks ago for a non-toxic, non-petroleum based product with which to treat my wooden fruit bowl. I could only find mineral oil at a few places, which despite its ‘I am from the earth’ nomenclature is a petroleum distillate. When you look up the definition of mineral oil on Wikipedia you learn that mineral oil is “any of various colorless, odourless, light mixtures of alkanes in the C15 to C40 range” and that “it is considered generally safe for human contact and consumption and has been approved by the American FDA in personal care and cosmetic products, as well as for an additive for food to 10 mg/kg of daily consumption” yet at the same time the World Health Organization classifies mineral oils as Group 1 carcinogens to humans”. I found the list of the 25 pages of known Group 1 carcinogens and there on page 3 of 25 sits clear, innocuous seeming mineral oil. Yikes. Okay, maybe you need a lot of oil to spur on the oncogenes, but whether logical or not, I decided it was not something I wanted to rub on the wood that cradles my organic fruit.
The Building Tree provided a product that was food grade hemp oil so in theory I could make salad dressing at the same time as treating the furniture (though I am sure they don’t recommend it) and a beeswax based sealant. I am currently treating the side tables after a successful fruit bowl refurbishing with first the hemp oil and then the beeswax. I like that if my nephews come and take a nibble on the side table, I don’t have to call poison control and hide it from my sister.
I found out after further investigation that the beeswax sealant has some amount of mineral oil in it as well as carnauba wax. Sigh. Carnauba wax is from the wax palm (Copernicia cernifera)
Photo credit: Roberio Dias, Wax Palm
and incidentally is harder than concrete and one of the hardest natural waxes in the world. I didn’t have a problem with its inclusion, but again with the mineral oil. I made inquiries to the manufacturer of the beeswax sealant to find out more about the mineral oil in the sealant. He replied very promptly and cogently, and told me they had considered using jojoba oil, but determined that the price point would be too high and that they use food grade mineral oil and all their research showed this to be a safe and affordable alternative that would not go rancid. After doing a bit of reading in the toxicology literature it seems like the highly refined food grade mineral oil is the safest of the mineral oils out there and is certainly allowed in many foods and drug coatings. I likely eat it or use it in cosmetics or personal health products without knowing. However, there is equivocal evidence that even very refined mineral oil is still linked to some cancers when ingested and strong evidence that food grade mineral oil does not cause skin cancers like the less refined mineral oil may.
“Highly-refined foodgrade mineral oils did not produce skin tumours when applied to the skin of mice, although after intraperitoneal injection they
Knockout Mice by Wellcome Images under Creative Commons
produced plasma-cell neoplasms and reticulum-cell sarcomas in certain strains of mice. It was agreed that, in accordance with the previous evaluation, the significant latter finding is difficult to interpret.”. Source: IARC Monographs on the evaluation of the carcinogenic risk of chemicals to humans Vol:Suppl. 7 (1987) pp 252-4
On the whole food grade is definitely much better than non-food grade mineral oil and I am happy to know that it is the oil in their product. I will be honest. I find it difficult to make this much time to investigate products. I try to be ethical and green, but sometimes, I just get overwhelmed and just want a goddam can of paint to finish a project in the 2.34 hours I have coming up free that evening. But, for some reason this little project got me going. For now, I will use the product with the food grade mineral oil component to it and I have let the producer of the beeswax sealant know that this consumer would pay a couple extra dollars for something I could spread on my furniture and on my toast if I was so inclined.
Irrational Mind and a Few of its Little Animal Friends October 16, 2010
Posted by cheesefish in : Randomness , add a commentThere are two parts to my mind. The part that converses normally with people, can learn and figure and use logic and then there is the part of the mind that was trained in its abilities solely by exposure at a young age to the bad horror films of the 80′s. This part of the mind has no link to reality or at best, a tenuous, snaky tendril of a link that wouldn’t bear up under scrutiny or a large finger flick. This is the Irrational Mind. The one that keeps me awake at night with endless loops of senseless, salty fear and terror. And it has friends, animal friends. I have met them and they are legion.
I travel for work. Work is often dictated by tight budgets and timelines. This usually involves staying at the cheapest motel that can still be described by local denizens as ‘clean’ and ‘family owned’ in the small towns where we work. I have never had a problem, but the recent media furor over bed bugs has been on my rational mind. Irrational mind obviously was out for a stroll around my gray space sometime and picked up the high potential fear quotient rampant in the topic of bed bugs. Irrational Mind held this knowledge in reserve for just the right moment… I was walking up the home-welded safety metal steps of a clean, family-owned motel recently when my co-worker said ‘I had some bites in a line on my neck last week. I found out they were probably bed bug bites’. My clanging footfalls on the steps slowed as my mind raced. We had stayed at this same motel last week. She quickly followed up her statement by saying, ‘but I am pretty sure they were from the other place I stayed’, but the seed of fear had already blossomed and was swiftly bearing fruit. I opened the door of my room and was somewhat surprised not to be overrun immediately by a leggy, scuttling horde of bedbugs. I quickly determined that the only place to sleep was, in fact, the bed (the carpet didn’t seem any safer somehow). Although I had not had any bites from the week before, now I was itching all over and quite sure that it was only a matter of time before I had a rampant infestation that would force me to throw out all home furnishings and never enjoy a peaceful sleep again. The eerie theme music from a horror film was on repeat loop in my head as Irrational Mind pulled out all the stops. I irrationally decided (which is the only type of decision that can be made when Irrational Mind is in control) with no scientific basis whatsoever that I would be safer from the bedbugs if I slept under just the duvet and on top of the sheets. This ridiculous decision allayed my fears enough that I could turn out the light and scratch for no reason and not sleep for the rest of the night. Watch this video and play along! You too can scratch the night away with the good time antics of Irrational Mind…
A few nights later, I was again at work while snorkelling at night. My logical mind was innocently doing its job counting spawning kokanee and trying to keep track of where I was in my lane of observation as I finned slowly forward in the dark. This part of my mind was fully engaged and therefore unprepared for a sneak attack from Irrational Mind’s animal friends. I scanned left with my underwater spotlight, repeating my search pattern, I started to swing right with the light and as I illuminated the greenish haze in front of me, I saw a very large, rather rotund beaver steaming towards me and only about 1.5 metres distant. Irrational Mind took over bodily control and frantically started avoidance manoeuvrings which involved frantic back finning, arm splashing and general flailing as well as squealing into the snorkel, thus alarming my co-workers. A large, non-domesticated furry mammal swimming towards me at speed was all it took to flip the switch.
I had visions of killer rodents, large, yellowing teeth gnashing off my snorkel mask and various other non-logical thoughts. Irrational Mind was sure it was a killer beaver rather than just the ordinary Castor canadensis who is cute as a button and the poster child for industriousness.
Another treacherous animal friend of Irrational Mind is the ruffed grouse. They lie camouflaged and quiet as you stroll innocently in the fall forest. Your rational mind is thinking things like ‘what a beautiful autumn we have had, and I wonder what I will do with that unfinished bathroom later today’ and other normal, inane internal banter when Irrational Mind notices a lurking grouse animal friend and gives him or her the special signal. When you are most vulnerable, the grouse leaps up, beating its wings to simulate a small bomb explosion and causes a near heart attack reaction while Irrational Mind rubs its metaphorical hands in glee. Another triumph….
Hypoglycemic in Ikea or One More Reason to Shop Local September 15, 2010
Posted by cheesefish in : Randomness , 4commentsFor its size, Nelson has a lot of shops. I appreciate the diversity and quality of merchandise afforded by living in a town that makes its living partly based on the tourist trade since I have lived in a lot of small towns across Canada and often I could, and did, buy my underwear, power tools and lunch at the same store. However, there are times when the big city calls for meetings, workshops or flights that don’t get cancelled and whatever reason I am there for, I try and take the opportunity to visit stores we don’t have or that can’t be found by a wee drive to Castlegar or Trail or Rossland. One of the stores on this list is likely Ikea for decent looking furnishings that are affordable for the starting Cheesefish trying to set up their house.
Last week I drove to Vancouver and was somehow struck by the brilliant idea that after 9 hours of driving, it would be far more convenient to go to Ikea in Coquitlam IMMEDIATELY after driving. I had packed a lunch of delicious cheeses from Creston, homemade bread and dark chocolate, but all that was done and gone by Midway and by Hope which is always so, so, so much farther from anywhere than I think it is no matter how many times I drive from the interior to Vancouver, I was entering the weird surreal world induced by the hum of highway speed and lack of food.
First obstacle for the hypoglycemic Nelsonite with the brilliant immediate shopping impulse was finding the entrance to the parking lot due to the major construction panic that sets in across Canada in September when every contractor realizes snow is only a breath away and they start randomly placing orange blinky lights and tearing up asphalt willy-nilly in hopes of meeting their completion goals before the site turns into a slushy nightmare from Siberia. It looked like a sugar frenzied game of pick-up-sticks crossed with Hallowe’en.
Safely negotiating my way into the parking lot and into the voluminous entrance of the blue and gold world, I stared blankly at the fat, well-thumbed catalogue for some time before I remembered why I was there. By this time, my husband had gotten irritated at my lack of apparent focus and had wandered off. I remembered why I had to be here – bookcases, bookcases, bookcases. Index? Yes, but the index is for every Ikea store in the entire solar system, so no guidance on where to actually find them in this particular store so that I can find the magic red card that has the aisle number and pick up spot for the flat pack of my dreams. After uncountable minutes with the index though, I now know the meaningless (to me) Swedish word for the bookcase that looks like it might work. Time to start the endless wandering through fake, perfectly clean and coordinated little rooms and shelves and shelves of mass produced swedish cleverness. The sheer scale of the store coupled with walking after sitting for far too long and low blood sugar made me dizzy and confused. I stumbled around and wondered aloud (and scared a nice Vancouver family) if this might be the occasion where I finally tried the meatballs with lingonberry sauce.
The wandering could have gone on for hours had I been left to my own devices, but my husband managed to hold it together and directed us past the large blue and white arrows through the dashed line ‘shortcuts’ to get to the bookcase zone. After accomplishing this mission, he then went totally hypoglycemic and started mumbling about ‘we have to get out of here’ and uttering random Swedish words which prompted my windsprint with the cart through the zone of Ikea where you actually find things to get out of here.
I see this whole hypoglycemic adventure as one more encouragement to shop local. Have a balanced breakfast or lunch and make decisions calmly in a store that matches its scale to you.
Welcome to Cheesefish…Randomness by any other name is still random August 27, 2010
Posted by cheesefish in : Randomness , 2commentsI sometimes wonder if I have undiagnosed ADD. I seem to skip between work, picking up chickens and running them around the property, making bread, reading blogs, seeding grass, throwing the kong for the flying monkey dog, rummaging around for chocolate in the baking supply drawer, and back to work. Today, it seems more random than ever. This is the joy and pain of working based out of the home and based off of the home computer. My potentially undiagnosed issue may have been exacerbated today by a new coffee. I purchased the coffee it in a post-huckleberry picking, hypoglycemic gas station stop blur, and have regretted it since. I am quite sensitive to caffeine and moderate my dosage accordingly. 2 scoops decaf, then 1 scoop of the usual caf coffee and I am golden. Woken up, but not jittery and scattered. Today, that more delicate than a jelly kitten balance was ruptured. In theory, blogs have to have a purpose, but I am not sure this one will. Just ramblings about life, the cheeses and everything might be enough for me. The new graphic inserted in this post is my first attempt to create some MS Paint art. I have been inspired by others in the blog world (or if you must use the icky blogosphere word, insert it in your mind) by their MS Paint art, so here is the first draft of the cheesefish. I work with fish and I love cheese and that is as profound as the name of this blog is. Yours in randomness, the cheesefish. 