[TheForge] Food, Glorious Food....

[Phlip]

I believe I had mentioned attempting to cook over a coal forge, and an
aluminum pan, so I suppose I'd better 'fess up. Of course, I did have some
help....

Several years ago, when I was working full time in the insurance business, I
had taken up shoeing horses, mostly on weekends, to relax, and this one
particular day, I had been called out to a farm, where the animals required
custom shoeing- one needed egg bars, and the other needed a diamond toe
variant. Trimming and properly shoeing the first horse took a couple of
hours, and I knew the second would as well, and I had a founder case to look
at and likely redo in another county, so I had brought my lunch makings,
basicly hamburger and trimmings, and an aluminum mess kit, figuring I could
fry the burger on the forge. Set everything up, and told the farmer's kid,
about 10 or 11, not to touch the forge until I got back, and went off to the
house to use the bathroom.

Came back, and he'd followed my instructions, OK- he hadn't touched the
forge, but the handcranked blower wasn't the forge, was it?, and he loved to
see the sparks fly... Had a hell of a mess, melted aluminum all down in the
coal, black smoke from hamburger grease, and bits of half raw hamburger and
aluminum stuck to the coal rake, where the kid had started to try to clean up
the mess....

Fortunately, it wasn't my forge- I was using the farmer's little forge
because a friend had needed to borrow my atmospheric gas forge for some
horses she was shoeing, but it took a while to clean it up, and get another
fire up and running.

Lunch that day would have been onion, pickle and ketchup sandwiches, but the
farmers wife came out and handed me a couple of ham sandwiches when she found
out what had happened.

Oh, and the founder case later that day did need redoing, but at the end of
the treatment, she was back to 90% of function, which considering she was
basicly a trail horse meant effectively 100%. Pretty little Appy mare, with a
sweet temperment.

Oh, and soft coal works fine, as long as you cover the pan. If the smoke gets
to the food, it's rather nasty.

Phlip



MRScherm@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 2/28/2002 4:31:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> Hochewa@aol.com writes:
>
> << I have not tried to cook over soft coal.
>
>  Hochewa
>   >>
> Well, don't!  I tried this when I was a young man and can still taste it.
> YUCH!
> Michael