In Which I Contemplate Consuming a Major Component of Oil Paint

I picked up some flax seed oil at the "Nature" grocery the other day.  It is supposed to help people with cold hands/feet to not be quite so cold.

Apparently flax seed oil is supposed to have a nice nutty flavor.  Curious, I opened the bottle and smelled it when I got home from the grocery store.

It smelled like my last two years of college: like oil paint.

And then I realized something I should have realized a long time before.  Flax seed oil is linseed oil, the binder component of oil paint.  Linseed oil is a drying oil, meaning that as the oil film ages it cross links and becomes insoluble, making it good as a paint binder.  Other drying oils include walnut oil and safflower oil.  Olive oil, on the other hand, is a non-drying oil.  You can wait as long as you want to, but a oil paint made with olive oil is never going to dry.

Flax is historically a really important plant.  Not only can you make linseed (or flax seed) oil from it, but the fibery part of the stem is what is spun and woven into linen.