Update

A few things going-on on the farm... The chickens have settled into their winter schedule; we're getting 1 or 2 eggs per day ( instead of 7-9), they have learned that they can go inside when it rains and then they don't get wet!

I have been shopping for a motor for my oil press... It's not cheap as it actually takes quite a lot of force to crank the thing. I have learned a lot about electric motors and how can be used.

Why do I want a motor... well my arm is tired!... We sold 10 bottles of oil this week and we have a local store that wants to start selling it in the new year. I have been trying to build up enough inventory that they can have a decent number on their shelves but we are selling it as fast as I can make it. The current innovation is that the press is now setup where I can see the TV so Rebecca and I can watch together in the evening while I press oil.

We had a big Christmas dinner last night; turkey, stuffing, brussel sprouts and potatoes... The potatoes and the celery in the stuffing came from the yard 

Slow Squeeze

It's been quiet on the blog but not on the farm... We made another 50 pints of Jelly from grapes that Peter brought us. The grapes were really on their last legs and about to start rotting. We had to throw a lot away but managed to salvage enough. The Jelly tastes... great... same as the last batch.

Meanwhile I am slowly churning out sunflower oil. The black seeds give me much greater yield per pound (hence they are called 'Black Oil Seeds') but it is much harder work to run them through the press. As a compromise I have been running a 50/50 mix of black and shelled. I'm going on Friday to look at motors; if I can get some mechanical assistance it will make the whole thing a lot easier.

The other change I am making is that I'm going to make a 'semi-permanent' setup down in the downstairs kitchen. For the last few years that room has been known as 'The Shop" but now it's going to revert to kitchen. I will have the press set up, seed storage, a filter/settling station, a bottling area and a storage area. This will save me a lot of time as currently every oil pressing session has 30 minutes of setup and 30 minutes of tear-down (not counting the cleaning that I will still have to do). This will also give us our upstairs kitchen space back.

Search result for Oil Regulation...

207       Sunflower seed oil

            (1)        Sunflower seed oil shall be edible oil obtained from the seeds of Helianthus annuus.

            (2)        Sunflower seed oil-

(a) shall have-

(i) a specific gravity (20°C/water at 20°C) of from 0.918 to 0.923;

(ii) a refractive index (40°C) of from 1.467 to 1.469;

(iii) a saponification value offrom 188 to 194 milligrams potassium hydroxide per gram; and

(iv) an iodine value of from 110 to 143; and

(b) shall not contain more than 15 g/kg of unsaponifiable matter.

On the Jelly Roll

Well it looks like we will be processing another batch of grapes next week. Peter is going to bring us another 100lbs or so of his fabulous Cab grapes.

Who is keeping us safe?

As I have been looking at various oil press designs I thought I would see what regulations are involved. The USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service, FSIS, sets the standards for such things in the US... I just wander how they pronounce the acronym... FSIS. 

For real information I found a great link that summarizes US and international standards: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FS119

A total nut

I guess I'm going to give the walnuts one more try... I suspect that the problem may be that the nut still had too high a water content. I left the nuts in the oven at 200 for a couple of hours last night... one more try.

Standing your ground on oil

It appears that you can find supportive evidence on pretty much any position with regards to healthy or unhealthy oils. For example:

Olive Oil is probabaly one of the worst things you could fry something in. Of course, you said you baked it...but, even then, olive oil should never be truly cooked. It gives off free radicals by the cupfull. Of course, Canola is worse...rapeseed...a relative of castor beans...poisonous as well as free radicals...very bad, or soy oil...even worse...no polyunsaturates, either...baaaad, bad, bad! I've been told that sesame oil, or sunflower oil are much more stable for cooking

or

Olive pomace oil and virgin olive oil are both highly monounsaturated oils and therefore resistant to oxidation and hydrogenation. Studies have shown oxidation and hydrogenation occurs to a lesser degree in olive oil than in other oils.  But in any case, the amount of hydrogenation is miniscule and no home cook would ever experience this problem.

I have been reading a lot of stuff on oils... personally I am no longer cooking with Olive Oil... but then I get to cook with freshly expressed home-made sunflower or peanut oil. There are some charts in earlier posts that compare various aspects of different oils.