Kitchen Garden Forum

please can someone post something funny to cheer me up? Pretty please?

Thus did Mouse request, in a different thread. Hokay...

I've just read that a product made from compost bacteria Elbomix will be spread beneath the beer tents at Munich's Oktoberfest to eat up the bad smells (The Times 16th Sept 2010).

Great idea! Could we not spread compost itself in our smelly kitchens? In medieval times, I remember, we mixed compost from the midden heap with fragrant rushes, chamomile and orris root, tossed it on the floor and renewed it in spring. Nobody fell ill in those days.

At the same time, I overheard a television ad boasting of a new floor cleaning product that would kill 99.9% of all household germs! 'Along with our kiddies' immune systems,' I retorted.

Far better, think dirt. Think compost! You know it makes sense.

Elbomix

I understand it is a substitute for the old Spanish cleaner, El bogris

In medieval times, I remember, we mixed compost from the midden heap with fragrant rushes, chamomile and orris root, tossed it on the floor and renewed it in spring.

Blimey! I knew you were old, but not that old

Nobody fell ill in those days

Apart from bubonic plague and the myriad other ills that flesh was heir to - and an average life expectancy of 35

I'm sure you're right, Alan. Elbomix is probably an EC euphemism for that old English panacea, Elbow grease. And illness only began in English homes when side chimneys or flues were introduced in the mid-16th century. Until that time, fires burned in the middle of the living room and everybody was disinfected by wood smoke.

It was not until flues came along, I recall, that we got flu.

More on the bacteria, which appears here transgooglated from the German:


The company "Bavaria" by Hubert Hackl offers these "Elbomex" said bacteria, it has grown extra. For more than twenty years, Hackl busy trying to keep the Oktoberfest clean. With the bacteria he has already experimented in the past year in the Hofbräuhaus tent. When a stall under a beer- or pool of water had formed, from which it stank, people poured Hackl, the bacteria through the cracks in the floor and the smell disappeared. Also in the ground in front of the toilets the microbes, according to Ricky Steinberg have already achieved excellent results.

This year should, therefore, all parts of the tent, which often refuse or fluid seeps through the ground to be prepared with the bacteria. Every day, pour the staff of the tent after cleaning the floor planks on the bacterial liquid. The then seeps through the dirt and just as the microbes can start work. Only a slight "humus" -Odor should then be left.

In the Hofbräuhaus tent Ricky Steinberg wants the particular bacteria used in the hallways, an area in front of the kitchens and taverns, and, in the toilets. In two other tents will be the hosts this year struggle with the microbes of Hackl against the stuffiness in the tent. What are the tents, Hubert Hackl will not yet reveal. "We'll talk only to the Oktoberfest middle, if you can find it better in some than in other tents report," he says.

Perhaps one can see the difference even after the Oktoberfest. For if the bacteria have done their work remains, according to Hackl back only organic fertilizer that would have at the point of Theresienwiese, which "came Elbomex" is used to let the grass spriesen that way.

Very cheap, the use of microscopic helpers not meanwhile. Every day you have 200 liters of liquid bacteria in an average Oktoberfest distribute. The price according to the list: 160 € per day plus tax. Ricky Steinberg says he has not yet negotiated with Hackl on price. "It works," he is sure. "And that to me is worth a lot."