SC - reasonably safe water at Pennsic

[Par Leijonhufvud]

On Thu, 20 Apr 2000, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> This is a very good point. In the Boy Scouts, one of the tricks we used
> was to apply soap to the outside of the cooking pots. (We found out, don't
> use lemon Joy. It not only doesn't work, it burns on!). The smoke collects
> on the soap and is easily washed off, although certain soots such as that
> from pine trees are worse than others.

Personally I have never understood why people do this. The black pot has
a better black body behaviour (i.e. it heats up faster), and even if you
do clean it, it will just get black again the next time you cook. I
generally just do a "wet-wipe" to get rid of the loose soot, and let it
be. As long as you are carefull about cross contamination between
inside/outside everything is fine.

And I like the hard coating that pines leave: it is durable. 

> This is actually not a bad trick for SCA folks cooking over open
> fires since once the pot has been on the fire for a few minutes you
> can't tell if it has been soaped or not and it makes cleanup much
> easier.

The black soot covering also hides (or at least helps to hide) the fact
that it is not an iron pot, but rather aluminium.

/Par

- -- 
Par Leijonhufvud                                      parlei at algonet.se
This man spends his entire life pushing on doors clearly marked 'Pull'
(officer's personal record back in the days of the British Raj in India)