Oh that's aweful! LOL! Did high school kids come up with that? What about that poor pillow case?

You're right. It's wasteful to run it through a wash cycle without a load of clothes, not even the pillowcase. Only high school kids would do that.

Jim

It may have once been more common :)....Several years ago there was a recipe for pickles in our local paper where running the cukes through a washing machine cycle to clean them was part of the directions. The author wasn't a high school student - she was French, elegant, my age now.

Never did use the recipe though....

Alton Brown recommends drying greens in a pillowcase in the washing machine on the spin cycle. I'd think that nothing would escape from the pillowcase except for water, if it were closed properly, so you wouldn't have to waste a wash cycle. However, it seems weird to attempt this with something as delicate as eggplant, maybe that's the problem - the mush can't help but escape.

Kay,

Or you could put the eggplant in a pillowcase and go out to your backyard and swing the pillowcase over your head REALLY fast!!! (LOL)

Just think what the neighbors would say!

my neighbors wouldn't even notice

We had to put our green beans through the dryer on air one year. My inlaws grew them. They had a whole field of thistles next to the garden. We could not rinse the thistles off, so my father in law came up with the idea. Hey, it worked ! We just had to clean out the lint trap.

Oh, you should hear the crazy things I hear. Folks blanching their corn in the dishwasher. Some try to can food in theirs, too ! At only 140 degrees....
Somedays I just shake my head, LOL !

I've always heard of thistles, but, even growing up in the country, I'm not sure what they are. Are they sorta like a tiny pine cone with stickers?
The thing I recall not being able to get off your clothes were some flat seed-like things we called beggars' lice. They stuck like crazy.

Wow! Thistles and Tansy, the bane of the farmer.

Here's a link with all the thistle pictures you'd ever want.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Thistles

Thistles, in my experience, grow mostly in pastures. They aren't a bother to the gardener. Those spines are sharp though.

Jim

Oops. Sorry, Linda Lou. Somehow I read everything but managed to overlook the crucial part of your story. I didn't mean to dispute what you said. Obviously thistles were a bother in your case.

Jim

Linda Lou, you made me laugh and remember -

The time we picked a couple of quarts of wild blackberries (natives, not the big himalayans) in the midst of a thistle patch that had gone to seed/fluff. I've never spent to much time at the sink cleaning berries for one deep dish pie in my life. Somehow I didn't think of the dryer on air, but bet I would have had more of a mess :)

I know with the thistles the more we ran water over the beans the worse they stuck.
That must have been a pie you truly appreciated after all the hard work.
I haven't had a good pie since my momma died. Not that I can eat it now, anyway.
I did make myself some good sugar free blackberry jelly last week.
The smell of fresh blackberries cooking is heavenly !