Cooking Oil

If you think your thesis in college was grueling, try this out: Take a go-kart and modify its engine so it can run on both diesel fuel and used cooking oil, the kind with chunks of fried stuff in it. But that's not all. For a handful of Naval Academy seniors trying to complete their "capstone" mechanical engineering project, the challenge requires them to build an engine that can power the go-cart on diesel fuel from their engineering building to the...

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- Abraham Lincoln couldn't have imagined it: 136 years after the biggest battle ever fought on North American soil, caretakers of these hallowed grounds are battling a new foe -- vegetable oil.In a mysterious act that may be connected to a religious ritual, someone last month poured cooking oil on 17 Civil War monuments here, then moved on to deface six monuments at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.The oil, which has left dark splotches on the gray stone memorials, is difficult -- maybe impossible -- to remove.

LEEDS, England -- Anything you ever wanted to know about fish and chips you can learn from Arnold Scholes, who has skinned, battered and fried Britain's most famous fast food for 50 years.The man knows his cod and can talk for hours about potatoes. But please, don't get Scholes started on quality of cooking oil, for if there's anything he loathes more than a McDonald's, it's a bag of limp and soggy fish and chips served up by a disinterested fryer."The fryer is letting himself and his trade down by turning out an inferior product," he says.

Since 1930, 30 million copies of "Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook," an unfailingly accurate, red-and-white checked kitchen companion, have rolled off the presses and into the country's kitchens. Dog-eared, gravy-spattered copies of the spiral-bound cookbook have served as culinary bibles for generations of American cooks.An 11th edition (Meredith, $25.95) has just been issued, which assuredly will introduce a new crop of users to its common-sense, mainstream approach.Lemon grass, mascarpone, quinoa and mesclun are some foods that have moved into the cookbook.

A two-alarm fire started by cooking oil left unattended destroyed a house in Columbia, displaced four residents and injured one firefighter Friday afternoon, Howard County fire officials said.The firefighter was treated for heat exhaustion at Howard County General Hospital and released.The residents -- Eric Rall; his wife, Karen; son, Eric Jr., 13; and daughter, Christina, 4 -- were seeking housing through their insurance company Friday, fire officials said.According to investigators from the state fire marshal's office, the fire started after the teen-ager began heating oil for deep frying, then left the kitchen.

MOSCOW -- The line for sugar stretched along the sidewalk, but the sidewalk was too cramped and the line too slow, so it soon curled into a dark low passageway leading to a rear courtyard.Faces, motionless, peered out of the gloom. Five o'clock brings nightfall to Moscow. For three pounds of sugar, a month's ration, several dozen people had come to wait 45 minutes in the gathering cold.Ella Murashkavskaya tried to decide if she had time for sugar. "Our people seem to be doomed to waiting," she said.

Get 'em while you can! It's peak season for plump crisp-tender snap peas.Snap Peas with Walnuts8 ounces snap peas, cleaned2 tablespoons water1/4 cup apple juice2 teaspoons walnut oil or cooking oil1 teaspoon cornstarch1/4 teaspoon salt2 tablespoons broken walnutsRed leaf lettuce (optional)Apple wedges (optional)Edible marigold petals (optional)In a one-quart microwave-safe casserole combine snap peas and water. Cook, covered, on 100 percent power (high) for 3 1/2 to five minutes (low-wattage ovens: five to six minutes)

I love my microwave oven and use it for just about every meal. But that doesn't mean that I cook everything in it. Rice is one food I prefer to cook on top of the range, because the microwave just doesn't cook it any faster or better. That frees up my microwave oven to do something else.For example, in making these stuffed peppers and tomatoes, I simmer the rice filling on the range and cook the seasonings in the microwave oven at the same time. Of course, once I've stuffed the pepper and tomato shells, I pop them into the microwave oven for some easy heating.

A 23-year-old Easton woman died late Friday in a fire tha started after she left some cooking oil heating unattended on the kitchen stove.Dana Lynn Krumwied, a native of West Chester, Pa., had moved to her two-story duplex in the 300 block of Maple Avenue just one month ago, said Bob Thomas, deputy chief state fire marshal.The fire started about 11:15 p.m., Mr. Thomas said, when Ms. Krumwied and her 21-year-old boyfriend, Victor Joseph Brown, forgot about some cooking oil heating on the stove.

MOSCOW -- Democratic reform is great, but will it put food on the table?Following the euphoria over political upheavals in the Soviet Union, the liberal economic managers appointed in the wake of last week's failed coup are facing that question, and the answer is discouraging.Even before the coup, the old distribution system, inefficient and corrupt, was teetering. Now, the nation wants a market system, but it can't be built overnight."We cannot permit a breakdown in the supply of food and fuel to the population," President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet yesterday.

THE PROBLEM A barrel of old kitchen grease has been sitting behind an abandoned fast-food restaurant for months. THE BACKSTORY Louis Fields had been calling city officials and agencies for more than two months, trying to get a steel drum removed from an alley off the 600 block of N. Franklintown Road in West Baltimore. Liquid from the 55-gallon barrel, behind a former fast-food restaurant, was dripping down the alley toward the drain. Fields was concerned that the contents were spilling near yards where children play.

If the planet runs out of oil just a smidgen later than it otherwise would have, Mark Nagurney will deserve some of the thanks. The Laurel physicist isn't waiting for auto companies or the government to act when it comes to alternative fuels. As The Sun's Tom Pelton reported, Mr. Nagurney has taken matters into his own hands, converting his diesel car so it can run on used vegetable oil. It's seemingly a triple win: Mr. Nagurney avoids pain at the pump, a local restaurant is rid of its waste oil, and the environment is a bit cleaner (most scientists believe that vegetable oil is less polluting than petroleum-based fuels)

Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay, Calif., mechanic, had attracted a media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento called, he figured officials wanted advice on alternative fuels. Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a tax cheat. He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier's license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he burns and paying a tax on each gallon. "All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck, who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I said, `Not a problem.

If you think your thesis in college was grueling, try this out: Take a go-kart and modify its engine so it can run on both diesel fuel and used cooking oil, the kind with chunks of fried stuff in it. But that's not all. For a handful of Naval Academy seniors trying to complete their "capstone" mechanical engineering project, the challenge requires them to build an engine that can power the go-cart on diesel fuel from their engineering building to the...

If you think your thesis in college was grueling, try this out: Take a go-kart and modify its engine so it can run on both diesel fuel and used cooking oil, the kind with chunks of fried stuff in it. But that's not all. For a handful of Naval Academy seniors trying to complete their "capstone" mechanical engineering project, the challenge requires them to build an engine that can power the go-cart on diesel fuel from their engineering building to the...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- It's Friday afternoon, and that means Daniel Chitungwiza is putting another package of rice, cooking oil and other basics on the overnight bus to his beleaguered mother and brothers back home in Zimbabwe. "They won't die without it," he said of the weekly shipments from South Africa, "but they will be hungry." As once-prosperous Zimbabwe's seven-year economic slide deepens, legions of expatriates like Chitungwiza are keeping their families afloat. They regularly send staples that their relatives - amid a 1,700 percent annual inflation rate - can no longer afford or even find on bare store shelves.

The chemistry lab at the Naval Academy smelled faintly like a fast-food restaurant or a doughnut shop. But the thick, purplish liquid swirling in the flask was nothing a midshipman would want drizzled on his dinner plate. Midshipmen had picked out all the bread crumbs and crusts from the used vegetable oil in King Hall, and Chad Theriault, 20, was adding, drip by drip, a potassium hydroxide solution, waiting for the syrupy goo to turn pink. Theriault, a sophomore, tinkered with the solution, eyeing the flask through his safety goggles and pouring in more and more potassium hydroxide until it changed color.

CHICAGO -- The people at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) could give meddlesome busybodies a bad name. In fact, that almost seems to be the point of their latest lawsuit, which targets KFC's use of cooking oil with trans fat. CSPI thinks that if companies and customers don't shun this type of fat, the courts should step in and force them to. Scientists generally agree that trans fat is not the healthiest thing to include in your diet....

BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y. - Talk about culture shock. I'm writing this on the patio of a mansion, looking out at a swimming pool set in an expansive lawn kept green by automatic sprinklers and surrounded by hedgerows. Not far away, fields of corn stand high, others are rich with potatoes and all sorts of vegetables. There are vineyards and flowers. The sky is overcast, but it's still beautiful here. The only concern is that the sun may not get through for long enough to make a good beach day. This time last week, I was in Kawa Fako, a village in the province of Dogondoutchi in Niger with a team of Americans and Nigeriens distributing food rations to the starving people of that community.

There is a delicious scent drifting out of many homes this time of year, a mix of shredded potatoes and cooking oil that can mean only one thing: Hanukkah. Although a Hanukkah without potato latkes would be tantamount to treason in most families, there are many other wonderful dishes to prepare during the eight-day festival that rely on traditional Jewish flavors, seasonal ingredients and time-honored recipes. The celebration that began at sundown yesterday commemorates the liberation in 165 B.C. of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by the Maccabees.