I’m still on my lard kick because I’m still on my pork crackling kick, and I need ways to use up the excess rendered lard. I have now made lard lotion twice as well as two batches of cold pressed lard soap. I am very pleased with how these two batches have turned out, given that this is the first time I have attempted to make soap. I mixed the lard with different fats, liquids, and scents each time to see the different effects. The orange one is my first attempt and it’s orange because I used palm oil alongside the lard, as I had some leftover from my yam pottage phase. I also used olive oil, rose water, and rose geranium essential oils. The scent is lovely and has really lasted, so I will be rose geraniuming again one day. I made the batch in November and it was cured
As a mad-for-walking person with mash-up feet, I thought I would write a gear review comparing two pairs of hiking boots: the Hoka Tor Ultra Hi and the Inov-8 RocFly G 390 GTX. As a reminder, I have Morton’s neuroma, osteoarthritis in the ball of my right big toe with a small bunion, and historical achilles issues. Whilst the latter has mostly cleared up since starting a ketogenic diet, I have discovered that I can still get a little stiffness after a long hike. Or at least I do with one of these pairs of boots… Right off the bat, I should say that I love Hoka shoes. I switched to them on the advice of my physiotherapist and podiatrist after wrecking my achilles wearing Vivobarefoot shoes. I have not looked back. I have Challengers for the gym and every day, and Cliftons for road running. I unreservedly recommend them. As
I’ve gone mad for walking and will need to update my bio from an obsession with microbes and fungi to one with hiking. I am starting to suspect that my carnivore experiment earlier this year slaughtered a colony of fibre loving microbes which were controlling me and making my every act be one of microbial veneration. Sorry bacteria, but at least the residual colonies are getting nice days out. Anyway, hiking. I love it, but alongside my achilles tendinopathy, I also have Morton’s neuroma which makes walking very painful after a few kilometres. Thankfully my Hoka Tor Ultra hiking boots are helping the achilles element, but they unfortunately do bugger all for the Morton’s neuroma element. The pain I get when the neuroma kicks in starts off with a kind of tingling numbness at the base of the middle three toes, and then very quickly turns into a sensation of burning
I really cannot express the depths of my love of pig fat. I eat enormous quantities of crackling and would eat more if only I could get more of it. If you can sell me some pasture raised pig skin, please do get in touch. Weirdly, I do not like to eat pork itself, aside from some bacon with my liver and caramelised onions. Anyway, lard. Yum. Delicious and (if you buy pasture raised pig fat which I do) nutritious, as it’s also chock full of vitamins D, E, and A, and omega 3 fatty acids. Despite loving crackling (aka pork rinds) more than even lamb fat (*gasp*), it never occurred to me to do anything with it other than eat it. I use the rendered lard from my crackling to fry just about everything bar beef and venison steaks, as I think they taste better with butter. However, this left
I loved Sinéad O’Connor. Somehow, despite multiple moves, I still have her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, on vinyl. It was one of the first albums I bought when my taste matured beyond asinine pop music, and it remains one of my desert island discs. I won’t pretend that I followed her throughout her career, because I didn’t. But that first album of hers still has my heart. There was something about her, and that cover, which genuinely awed me when I was young. The juxtaposition between the fierceness she embodied, how delicate her voice was, the range she was able to cover, and the stories she told with her lyrics. I know every word and melody of every song on that album, and listening can easily transport me back to a self I’d rather not remember being. I did not like being a teenager at all, but that makes