Cooking oil is purified fat of plant or animal origin, which is liquid at room temperature.Some of the many different kinds of edible vegetable oils include: olive oil, palm oil, soybean oil, canola oil, pumpkin seed oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, grape seed oil, sesame oil, argan oil and rice bran oil. Many other kinds of vegetable oils are also used for cooking.The generic term "vegetable oil" when used to label a cooking oil product refers to a blend of a variety of oils often based on palm, corn, soybean or sunflower oils.Oil can be flavoured by immersing aromatic food stuffs such as fresh herbs, peppers and so forth in the oil for an extended period of time. However, care must be taken when using garlic and onions to prevent the growth of Clostridium botulinum (the bacteria that produces toxins that can lead to botulism) in this medium.

Something's cooking 17,000 feet over the Nevada desert, and, despite what passing geese may smell, it's not french fries. It's Green Flight International's BioJet, a 39-year-old Aero Vodochody L-29 Delfin with a single-stage turbojet that was engineered to burn anything from pump gas to home-heating oil.

A Swiss study calculated the merits of each crop according to their greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact. The best biofuels came from recycled cooking oils and grass- and wood-produced ethanol. The worst came from Brazilian soy, Malaysian palm oil and U.S. corn, all of which are central to their respective countries' biofuel programs.

At first glance, Tom Tilton's 1985 Mercedes-Benz hardly seemed the poster car for environment-friendly Alternative Transportation Day. Its owner, Tilton, begs to differ: "The Beast," he says, runs on B-100, or 100 percent biodiesel - a clean-burning alternative fuel that can be processed from vegetable or animal fats, including used cooking oil.

If you think the high price of gas has been irritating, wait until you see the cost of french fries.

I can't wait to see Dick Halliburton spin his way out of this one! "Iraq, a country with world's third largest proven oil reserves, is in the odd position of having to import oil products [from Hizballah-supporter Syria] to solve a fuel shortage. It is currently suffering from an acute shortage of gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas."