At the end of last year I came across instructions in a DIY magazine for making soap out of bacon fat. So of course, we decided we had to do it.

Well, after months of ingredient-acquisition, selfless consumption of bacon, and generalized thoughtless delay we finally got the gear together last night and went through the painstaking process.

Bottom line: we wouldn't last very long on the frontier -- and we had industrial lye, not even needing to leach it from campfire ashes.

I think I had more than half a gallon of bacon fat altogether. It's good to get that much refrigerator space back. I heated it on the outdoor grill and filtered it through an old t-shirt. When the Brydens came over we got started: plied ourselves with wine (for courage) then donned the protective gear in the makeshift lab set up in the garage.

The process lasted more than three frickin' hours. And we're not sure what we created is actually going to be soap. But we did drink a fair amount of wine, and the boys (knowing better than to stick around for longer than two minutes of this craft activity) had fun running the sidewalks, drawing pictures, playing Wii... anything but stirring the proto-soap goop we had in that big bowl in the garage.

The stuff is in my basement today, poured out in its mold, happily marbled with red-dyed goop for that classic bacon effect. It's not quite liquid, not quite solid, not quite grease-smelling. I'll let it cure for a few days before declaring it a failure.