September 18-24, 2003

food

Out of the Frying Pan

FORCE OF HABIT: Co-owner Tom Peters finds Monk’s weekly output of 50 gallons of oil can be put to good secondary use. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

… Into the farming community, for Monk’s Café’s fry oil.

by Jenn Carbin

Glenn Brendle, in the tradition of people who grow their own food, believes nothing should go to waste. "I’m a piker," the owner of Green Meadow Farm in Gap, Pa., laughs. "I think it’s something about Pennsylvania Dutch stock. Anytime I see the opportunity to save something, I think it ought to be saved."

Brendle also considers himself "a guerrilla farmer," saying, "I make a living where I can." With a background in electrical engineering, he is, in addition, a pretty sophisticated tinkerer.

All this practicality means he's been able to squeeze a living out of his small-acreage produce farm -- even now it's just 15 acres -- for 20 years. He combines that with running a farm-products network that includes his own specialty vegetables, getting city chefs local goods and making the deliveries himself.

So it happened that in fall 2001, when he saw several containers of old fryer oil by the back door at Monk's Café in Center City, it struck him that vegetable oil equals fire, which equals heat. Couldn't old oil therefore be reused to good effect as fuel for, say, a greenhouse? He knew that crankcase oil and engine drain oil get reused to make heating fuel. "I thought, åWhy wouldn't vegetable oil burn in a regular waste-oil heater?' I knew there had to be a way to do it," he explains.

In the meantime, Tom Peters, co-owner of Monk's, happily agreed to supply Brendle with the restaurant's used peanut oil. There's plenty of it: Peters says the restaurant goes through 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of potatoes a week and up to 50 gallons of oil while making the popular frites.

Last winter, Brendle fueled one of the two greenhouses he had with the oil. He grew microgreens there and, finding that promising, recently added a 3,600-square-foot building. The idea now, from September to April, is to supplement cold weather offerings such as parsnips and Brussels sprouts with fragile greens and crops from an extended season of picked-ripe melons, cucumbers and tomatoes, using all three greenhouses.

Brendle, who says he went through "several design evolutions" including his own to find the easiest, most efficient way to burn the oil, recently invested several thousand dollars in a commercial system and central multifuel burner adapted for "waste vegetable oil."

The oil is key. Most local farmers who wish to grow tomatoes in January are prohibited by the cost of heating a greenhouse. The cost of all heating fuels is rising, and farmers are caught by that price hike, having to follow the market for what they charge. Free fuel, not surprisingly, makes the difference. As Brendle points out, after equipment costs, the food oil system "allows no cost, with the exception of depreciation of equipment" and the time it takes to pick up the oil. He says the oil "will make [warm-weather] produce possible and financially feasible" in the winter.

According to Brendle, many fuels have preservatives in them, and the fryer oil, by contrast, is "very, very clean. The [resulting] air is absolutely clear; it shimmers. There's no smoke, no vapors."

There's one thing, though. He says, "The first time I heated it up I kept smelling french fries. I was thinking somebody was up in the kitchen making french fries. After a while I realized the furnace was running." Brendle admits that subsequently he would occasionally stand downwind of the exhaust on purpose.

Part of what struck Brendle's fancy about using oil from Monk's was the amount produced. The kitchen at Monk's uses a fresh five gallons of peanut oil each day and changes it twice at least two days a week. The use of clean oil is arguably one reason the fries are so popular. They're ordered with burgers, as late-night "drunk" snacks and, most especially, with the mussels.

Monk's used to pay a grease disposal company to take the oil away; rates are about $30 for a 55-gallon container, according to Peters. The peanut oil ended up with a pig farmer who mixed it with feed to fatten up his pigs. Peters likes Brendle's use better, explaining, "It's more of a reuse; it saves fossil fuel. I think it's a noble idea." Of course, Brendle's dibs on the oil saves Monk's money.

Peters gives thought to reducing waste himself. For example, he's adding a couple of taps to the bar at Monk's to bring the total number of taps there to 20, to reduce bottled beers. Peters says he likes to reduce materials used rather than count on recycling to balance things out. "Recycling uses fuel too," he points out.

Back on the farm, Brendle hopes to share what he's learned with other farmers. "I want grant money. I would love to expand this thing and show other people how to do it."