Combine vinegar and steel wool in a jar to make homemade wood stain. No fumes! No VOCs! Spruce up bare wood with a rich, dark color.
scrap vinegar
15 Creative Ways to Use All the Food Scraps
Last week I rewatched Anthony Bourdain’s documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste in Berkeley on the big screen and spoke on a panel after the film. Anyone who eats should see it. (You can read my review of it here.) The chefs in the film came up with such creative dishes from food that […]
Raid Your Kitchen to Clean Your Bathroom
“Raid” is a bit of an exaggeration… I recently gave a workshop at the Menlo Park library on fermentation. I love facilitating workshops. The audience is so enthusiastic to learn about zero-waste cooking, fermenting, sourdough baking, produce bag sewing and so on. I thought homemade cleaners might make another great workshop but quickly realized it would last […]
16 Simple Tips to Clean Your Kitchen, Plastic-Free
When we first went plastic-free, cleaning presented a big challenge. How would we wash our dishes without plastic bottles filled with dish soap (not to mention filled with microbeads)? Sponges, made of plastic, come wrapped in yet more plastic. And how would we dispose of wet, stinky garbage? We found pretty simple solutions for all of […]
How to Eat Apples Nose to Tail
At the farmer’s market this past Sunday, my daughter MK bought not-so pretty apples to bake pies for the meal she would prepare Monday in our community kitchen. She also suggested I write a blog post about uglies (she’s a smart one!). At $1 per pound for these cosmetically challenged apples—compared to $2.75 per pound […]
Clean Your Home with Trash
Click here to go straight to the recipe This winter, I hoarded orange peels compulsively. I found so many uses for them: chai tea, candied citrus peels, frozen zest, fire starters too apparently although I didn’t have much luck with those—or perhaps I did seeing as I didn’t burn down my kitchen. I also used some […]
Make Soup, Not Waste
I find that when people realize just how much we throw into landfills and how much plastic finds its way into our oceans, most want to reduce their waste and many don’t know where to start. Unless you buy consumer goods compulsively, I would hazard a guess that your kitchen generates the most garbage—packaging and food. How bad is our food […]
Fermentation 101 Workshop
Thank you to everyone who attended my fermentation workshop this past weekend. What a fun group! My good friend Daniela took lots of fantastic pics. Everyone enjoyed tasting the goodies pictured above: sauerkraut, kombucha, scrap vinegar and buttermilk.
How to Make Free Apple Scrap Vinegar
Updated 09/24/22 In my home, homemade vinegar has been the Holy Grail of scratch cooking. My daughter MK tried a few years ago and came very close, but flies invaded her apple scraps and ruined it. It sure smelled great though as I tossed it onto the compost. I have tried making vinegar a couple of […]
Fried Potato Skins
Ideally, my daughter would eat mashed potatoes with the skins on. But as I have usually peeled the potatoes, I have personally trained her to expect mashed potatoes with the skins off. I hate to compost the skins and waste them. Fortunately, you can never go wrong with fat, salt and potatoes, even if just the […]