Something weird is happening with WordPress and photos and I’m tired of messing with it, so if these photos look small to you, please sit closer to your screen.
Last weekend I used some of the bacon grease paper towels to start out campfire, but I only had enough for two fires. Nowadays I buy pre-cooked bacon from Sam’s Club (which you should totally be buying if you aren’t. Bacon within seconds. Feel like eating some bacon? BOOM. You’re eating bacon.)
Back to the fire. I, in my obsessive way, looked up various methods of making firestarters, and among the old standbys was this interesting one: Wax-soaked pieces of cardboard. I put a couple of candles and rancid Miracle Bars in a foil-lined dish, stuck it in a warm oven, and commenced a-soakin’.
Dipping like this wasn’t very satisfying.
I went for the ‘How to Dunk an Oreo’ method, and it was very satisfying. I’d hold the cardboard under the wax and the air would bubble out of the corrugations. After several squares, the wax would cool enough that the bubbles would stay.
I laid them out on waxed paper to cool, then peeled them up. I test-fired one out back, but no photos. Lighting it in a cat-food can not only spared my sidewalk, but it collected the wax that melted out and turned the whole thing into a Danger Candle. One square burned for about eight minutes before I smothered the can with a pot lid. (It was raining a bit and I was cold.)
Very, very satisfying.
Brad says
This story is all kinds of good. Melted wax. Fire. Danger candle. I can go to bed happy. …or, er.. I can go to my truck happy. (That doesn’t sound as good)
The last picture looks like Keebler Deluxe Grahams. Mmm…
Rachel Sommerer says
Chocolate versions of deluxe grahams! Yum!