Pie Less Plastic

Bing cherry pie - Gluten-free, casein-free, plastic-free

In the interest of spreading the love of pie as far as possible, while keeping our collective plastic footprint as small as possible, I offer this: A very easy and very tasty recipe that works with all sorts of fruit,

Polly’s Perfect Blueberry Pie

You ought to click on that link and print yourself a copy of the recipe. Fold it and stick it in your favorite cookbook, so you’ll have it handy. It really is an amazing blueberry pie with a pat-in-the-pan crust and crumble topping.

With this recipe you will be able to eat more pie with less plastic. With this recipe, you are only minutes of work (and about an hour of baking) away from a pie. You will never need to purchase a frozen pie crust packaged in plastic again. Those finished pies displayed in their clear plastic coffins like Snow White’s apple-drugged body won’t look so appealing any more.

All of the ingredients are widely available in paper or glass packaging, plastic-free. If you have access to a bulk department, you can bring your own reusable packaging from home for a zero waste pie.

The crust recipe is so simple, even those with pie crust phobias will triumph. There is no rolling of dough, nothing that needs gentle handling. Of course, it’s not going to produce a flaky pastry crust. If you need that, go buy yourself a croissant. Then come home and bake this pie.

foraged blackberries make great pies

Use any summer fruit you like, it will most likely work – I’ve used apples, assorted berries, cherries, peaches, rhubarb, and odd combinations of all of those in the same crust with good results. I tinker around with amounts of sugar, alternate sweeteners, tapioca (balls or starch) in place of corn starch, various spices, extracts and liqueurs. I use my own gluten-free flour blend in place of wheat flour, no problem. I’ve used all sorts of non-dairy milks in the crust, and coconut oil in place of the butter on top of the fruit. Tinker away to suit your own tastes and dietary needs, pies can stand a bit of off-road travel without suffering.

strawberry rhubarb pie

You can make this pie, and it will taste good. The crust will not win you any blue ribbons, but pie is about more than crust. The magic lives in the synergy of toothsome filling and stalwart subtle crust, and this will give you enough of that to win hearts and minds.

If you’ve never made a pie because it seems too hard, if you think you need that plastic-packaged crust from the store, if you buy those finished pies in plastic clamshell tombs, now is the time to fight the power! Free yourself from the mental shackles of commercial food! Make your own pie! You can do it!

Plastic-free pie for all!

Month Less Plastic: Marshmallow Update

home made marshmallows meet their fate

At the beginning of our Month Less Plastic, I made a batch of marshmallows less plastic. That was back when we were sure summer really was going to happen. We were looking forward to long warm evenings around our fire pit, roasting marshmallows while our bat box residents flapped around above us snacking on mosquitoes. Instead, we ate most of the marshmallows in hot chocolate because it was still chilly like spring, or maybe like fall.  We saved a few of the puffy squares and found enough dry wood for an experimental roasting before the marshmallows went bad. The recipe we used says they’re good for 1 week if stored in an airtight container, and ours were closer to 10 days old when we roasted them. I think they may lose a bit of structural integrity as they age, starting to dissolve or deflate a bit.

Run! Run to the chocolate before it falls!

What we learned:

Our home made marshmallows quickly turned a beautiful toasty brown. It took mere seconds to achieve a perfect roast.

That’s a good thing, because our home made marshmallows liquefied within seconds when they met with heat from the coals.

We roasted the first round on our steel campfire forks. They slid off. We lost the first ones to the fire. We ate the second batch from our cupped hands, toasted marshmallow mousse that tasted like maple creme brulee.

We roasted the third round on wooden sticks. They slid off more slowly, allowing a few more seconds to get to the chocolate and graham crackers.

They were messy but delicious. They didn’t have the same firm mouth feel as commercial marshmallows, they were more like firm whipped cream.  That’s not a bad thing, just different. In a tasty way.

wood beats metal for roasting home made marshmallows

I’m going to make another batch next week so we can try again. This time I’ll make the marshmallows smaller and we’ll roast them while they’re fresh. This time we’ll be ready to catch them if they fall.

Month Less Plastic: DIY Dish “Soap”

DIY Dish Soap & Friends

This is even easier to mix up than the DIY Dishwasher Detergent…

It’s not really soap, and it’s not necessarily entirely plastic-free, but this will clean almost every dish in your kitchen sink.

And here is all you need…

Plastic-Free Dish “Soap”:

• Baking soda

• Essential oils. I like 10 drops each of Tea Tree and Lavender in enough baking soda to fill a 24-oz re-used marinara sauce jar

What, that’s it? Yes, that’s it. It seems diabolically simple, but really it’s heavenly. It works! It smells wonderful since you use oils you like! And it won’t dry your hands out! At least, it hasn’t dried mine out yet, and I’ve been washing dishes with this in my slacker way for the past 3 weeks.

hammer some holes in that lid

Now for the fun part. Make yourself a soap dispenser. This is a gratifying project – It’s fast and it involves hammering a nail through a lid, which is always fun. It’s like making a bug jar, but this one is for your kitchen counter.

Find a jar that fits well in your hands. Make sure there is a matching lid for your jar, a lid that fits on tightly.

Using a large nail and a hammer, poke holes all over the jar’s lid . You can get fancy and make a pattern or just go for random full distribution of holes. Hammer from the top of the lid down, so that the metal forms burrs on the side facing into the jar, not the side that will be close to your skin.

Fill the jar with baking soda, add your drops of essential oil, cover the lid with one hand and shake it well to mix.

scrubbing a dirty bowl in a dirty sink

Now, go wash some dishes. It’s best to use a few good shakes of baking soda on damp dishes. Too much water, and you’ll dilute the cleaning power of the baking soda. I set my dishes in the sink, spritz them with water, sprinkle on the soda, scrub them up, then turn the water on and give everything a good rinse.

Marvel at the way the baking soda cuts through pretty much everything. To enjoy your “soap” fully, use your hand to push some of the baking soda around a dirty pot – You’ll get to feel the schmutz give way with just a bit of pressure. Bubbles from plastic-bottled soap are pretty and all, but this cleanser has safe power that’s fun to wield; it feels good when the gunk dissolves  under your fingertips. And after you clean your dishes, you can use this same powder to clean your sink. Handy!

What about bacteria? If you have dishes involving raw chicken or some other potential bacterial hazard and you’re worried this won’t kill the nasties off, scrub the surface clean with this “soap” first, then pour equal amounts of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide onto your dish/pot/cutting board to evenly coat the surface. Let it sit for a few minutes if you’re so inclined, then rinse it off with water. The combination of regular white vinegar and standard 3% hydrogen peroxide, when they’re stored in separate containers, kills more things, more effectively than chlorine bleach. True.

Where’s the plastic? The caps of my essential oil jars are plastic. If I can find a local store to refill them for me, that will mean no new plastic. I’m just about finished with the 2-fluid ounce bottles of each that I bought over a year ago. A little goes a long way when it comes to essential oils, but there is new plastic involved if I buy through my regular source, a local buying club. If you know how to buy essential oils plastic-free, please share! Maybe we’ll have to start making our own…That sounds complicated.

The least expensive baking soda I know of is from Costco, but it comes in plastic bags that I can’t recycle locally. Fortunately, it’s not all that expensive to buy it in the largest paper box at standard grocery stores, or from the same store’s bulk department, where I can scoop it into my own large container.

You can skip the essential oils, of course, but I love the fragrance they add. Tea Tree has a host of purported benefits (antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, antiseptic). I just found this interesting study, and now I”m wondering if I’m adding to the habituation of bacteria to sub-lethal concentrations of Tea Tree by using so little of it. Perhaps I’ll switch to some other fragrances; I’d hate for my “soap” to be wreaking the same sort of havoc as the standard antibacterial soaps with Triclosan.

Vinegar and hydrogen peroxide are my favorite disinfectant, but I can only find hydrogen peroxide in plastic bottles. If anyone has a plastic-free source, please share!

Here’s to clean dishes, with less plastic!

this cast iron skillet was dirty; now it's clean

Month Less Plastic: DIY Dishwasher Detergent

DIY Dishwasher Detergent

So much for my nay-saying ways! I knew it was possible to make dishwasher detergent, but I was sure it wasn’t possible to make dishwasher detergent that would work in our incredibly hard well water. And I wasn’t convinced it would be possible to get the necessary ingredients without a pile of plastic packaging. I was so certain I’d be stuck buying dishwasher detergent in plastic of some sort, I didn’t even bother looking up recipes during our first Month Less Plastic last summer.

This summer, I promised myself I would confront the products I was still buying in plastic, the every day items we use up and replace on a regular basis: Dishwasher detergent, rinse aid, dish soap for the kitchen sink, hand soap for the bathrooms, shampoo and conditioner.

I tackled dishwasher detergent a couple of weeks ago, staring with a bit of online research into alternatives. I found the same basic recipe in many places, and since I had every ingredient except one already in my house, I figured I’d mix up a batch, discover that it didn’t work, and go back to my favored dishwasher tablets.

I am so happy I was mistaken.

Yes! DIY dishwasher detergent works! Even for those of us with nasty-hard water! It’s true!

Bonus: It costs much less than whatever you’re buying now, unless you’re already way ahead of me on this and make your own. This recipe comes close to filling a 1-quart Mason jar, and each dishwasher load requires just 1 teaspoon of the finished mix.

Another bonus: This is eco-friendly, and not just because there’s little plastic packaging involved; all of the ingredients are safe and natural. For more information about each ingredient, check out Planet Green’s version.

I’ve noticed that sometimes my glasses come out sparkling clear and sometimes they come out coated with a bit of a film. I’m still tinkering with that, but it seems to be related to the amount of vinegar in the rinse aid cup. If I remember to fill it for each load and keep it dialed to its highest release setting, this mixture performs as well as the fancy-shmancy plastic-wrapped but otherwise eco-friendly dishwasher tablets I’ve given up.

(See my update here – In a nutshell, if I add straight baking soda on top of 1 tsp of this DIY mix into my dishwasher’s detergent cup, my dishes are much less streaky.)

DIY Dishwasher Detergent:

1 cup washing soda

1 cup borax

1/2 cup kosher salt

1/2 to 1 cup citric acid (1/2 cup for soft water, 1 cup for hard)

Mix it all together. Store it in a jar with a nice tight lid.

Use 1 teaspoon per load.

use 1 teaspoon per load

For this to work well, you need a good rinse aid. Fortunately, that is easy to come by.

DIY Dishwasher Rinse Aid:

white vinegar

Fill your dishwasher’s rinse aid holder with plain white vinegar. Adjust your machine if possible to release the maximum amount of vinegar with each load, and refill with each load. I’m reusing the plastic bottle that my eco-friendly rinse aid came in – The squirt top makes it easy to get the vinegar mostly where I want it.

use white vinegar as your rinse aid

Now, you may be wondering where to find washing soda, borax, and citric acid in your local grocery. You should find both washing soda and borax with the laundry detergents or cleaning supplies. They’re usually tucked onto the top shelf, where the other lesser-used items are located, the ones without television advertising campaigns. And they’re usually packaged in cardboard, no plastic at all.

Citric acid can be a bit trickier. During canning season, you might be lucky to find a product called Fruit Fresh for sale near the pectin and other canning supplies. In my local stores, these things are tucked onto a shelf near the baking supplies. But Fruit Fresh comes in a plastic container, it’s a bit pricey in my store, and citric acid is not its first ingredient.

Fortunately, there is another product in pretty much every American store that has citric acid as its first ingredient: Kool-Aid unsweetened lemonade. This is a great example of just how far off my beaten track this life less plastic is taking me. I have never purchased any Kool-Aid product, for anyone in my family to consume in any way. But my rules have shifted, and I’m willing to overlook the artificial colorings and other suspect ingredients to get clean dishes without a load of new plastic.

Of course, nothing is quite perfect: Each envelope does have a hidden plastic layer, and that’s what makes this not entirely plastic-free. I think there may be a way to recycle the envelopes – I’m checking with my local disposal/recycling company about this. Perhaps it’s possible to find citric acid without any plastic packaging – So far everything I’ve found online ships in a plastic bag with more plastic tape on the shipping box. If you have a plastic-free citric acid source, please do share! But even if I’m stuck with unsweetened lemonade packets, the amount of plastic per dishwasher load is much less than with any commercial detergent.

For the record, I found my Kool-Aid on sale for 10 cents per packet, much less than the $9 1/2 cup container of Fruit Fresh. I bought all 25 lemonade packets the store had, and they measured out at just under the 1 cup the recipe calls for. That was close enough for me.

Edited to add: I’ve just learned that Central Market in Poulsbo, WA carries citric acid in their bulk department. Those of us who live nearby can bring in our own jars to fill and get ourselves all the plastic-free citric acid we desire. Radiance in Olympia, WA and Tenzing Momo in Seattle, WA might also have bulk citric acid and welcome customers who practice BYOJ shopping. Market Spice in Seattle has bulk citric acid. Many thanks to everyone who shared a citric acid tip!

Please let me know if you try this, or if you have a plastic-free or less plastic solution for dishwasher detergent. If you do mix up your own, please label it so everyone knows it’s poisonous. If you use the lemonade packets, the final product will smell good enough to eat, or mix up with some water to drink. That would be fatal, so please keep yours in a safe and secure place, away from children and adults who like to mix up lemonade. Really, keep it in a safe and secure place, properly labeled, whether or not you use the lemonade.

Beware: This smells edible but it is POISON!

Here’s to clean dishes, plastic-free!

Month Less Plastic: Yogurt in Glass

fresh yogurt in 4 oz jars

My mother made yogurt for us when I was growing up and I remember having that as an option for school lunches. Back then I hated being the only one with home-made yogurt in a plastic thermos from home, instead of the regulation peanut butter and jelly on squishy bread. Now I’m having a great time forcing my children into that same role, although these days they’re not the only ones with lunches free of corporate foods.

I stopped buying yogurt in plastic tubs during our first Month Less Plastic last summer, thinking I’d find a yogurt maker with glass containers so we could make our own. Then Liesl of Pioneering the Simple Life brought some of her cultured-in-the-jar yogurt to our first Bainbridge Barter Potluck in the Park. Miss M, my yogurt lover, pronounced it “so much better than the store yogurt!” and I knew I needed to figure out how to make my own, Liesl-style. She has a gas range and uses the heat from the pilot light, cooled down through a pot of water, to provide the heat needed for hers. Since we have an electric range, I don’t have a pilot light handy. I needed a way to heat things up without an official yogurt maker.

As my friend Christine puts it, you need a place as warm as an armpit for the cultures to turn your milk to yogurt. I tried my slow cooker as a water bath for my jars of yogurt, but it was too hot and killed my starter culture off. I tried that a second time, turning the slow cooker on for a few minutes every couple of hours, and that worked. It worked, but it was too fussy. So I used my mother’s method, heating my oven to about 100 degrees F then setting my jars inside on a tray, wrapped with clean cloth diapers to insulate them. I put my batch of would-be yogurt in the oven when I went to bed at 12:30 am, and we had fresh yogurt for breakfast at 8:30 that morning.

fresh yogurt with maple syrup

Here’s how to make your own yogurt. You’ll need these things:

High-quality fresh milk. Cow’s milk and goat’s milk work perfectly. I’ve heard that coconut, soy, almond, hemp, and other non-mammalian milks can work, too. You may need a bit of thickener for those, something like coconut flour, to make them as thick as dairy yogurt. I’ve been using non-homogenized whole milk to get the cream layer on the top that Miss M loves.

Some yogurt to provide your starter culture. You’ll need a few tablespoons per 1/2 gallon of milk. Your favorite store-bought yogurt with live cultures will work – Read the label to make sure that’s what you’ve got. Then you’ll want to save some of your first batch of home-made yogurt to start your second, and so on.

Clean wide-mouth glass jars with matching lids, any size. I love 4 oz jelly jars for kid-sized and sturdy yogurt to go; larger Mason jars are great to scoop adult servings from.

A spot as warm as an armpit.

Possibly, some clean towels or other thick fabric to insulate your jars.

yogurt-to-be, ready for insulation

Here’s what to do:

Heat some milk to scalding. I turn my uncovered pan of milk to 8 out of 10 on my stove’s dial, then hang about watching for that moment when a skin just starts to form on the surface and tiny bubbles gather around the edges. The second that happens, I turn the heat off, move the pan off the burner and leave it to cool to body temperature.

Wait, how much milk should you use? However much you’d like. You can measure the volume of the jars you’d like to fill and heat that quantity of milk, or you can just wing it and find jars to match.

Stir a few tablespoons of your starter yogurt into the cooled milk. Stir very well, so all those active cultures from the yogurt are evenly distributed in the milk. I use a generous 1/4 cup of yogurt for 1/2 gallon of milk.

Pour the milk & starter culture into your clean jars. Leave a bit of room at the top of your jar, so there’s no contact between the yogurt and the lid.

Put the lids on your jars.

Insulate your jars as necessary. Cloth diapers and towels work well for dry locations; a water bath works. too.

Place your filled jars in the warm spot and let them sit for 8 – 12 hours, or until the runny milk has turned into lovely, thick yogurt. You want a spot that’s between 80 – 100 degrees F.

yogurt-to-be, insulated and ready to be cultured in a warm oven

Here are some possible warm places:

• Set your filled jars on a rack in a pot filled to below jar level with warm water. Place this water bath next to the pilot light of your gas range. You may need to set a kettle next to the pilot light, then set your water bath pot so it’s touching the kettle, to keep the pilot light from overheating the water bath.

• Heat your oven to 100 F, then turn the oven off and turn your oven light on.  Set your jars on a tray, cover them with a thick layer of cloth, and set the whole thing into the warm oven. Leave the oven light on the whole time, and don’t forget to turn the oven’s heat off!

• Wrap your jars in an electric blanket or heating pad set on low.

• The top of your fridge, the top of your stove with the stove top light on, or next to your computer might be just the right temperature to culture yogurt if you keep the jars insulated.

• Thanks to Holly for this low energy suggestion: Stack your filled jars in a cooler next to one or two jugs filled with hot tap water. Close the cooler’s lid tightly and let your yogurt incubate in peace.

That’s it. No thermometers needed, no measuring required. People have been making yogurt since at least 2000 BCE. Get in touch with your Neolithic ancestors and do it their way, no fancy equipment required (although I admit electricity does make this a bit more predictable).

We like ours with a drizzle of real maple syrup on top. Add whatever you like to yours.

it was a tasty breakfast for Miss M

Here’s to yogurt in glass jars! No more yogurt in plastic containers!

Month Less Plastic

camping less plastic

Technically, we’re done with our 2nd Annual Month Less Plastic as of today. Since I took a bit of summer vacation from blogging during the second half of our experimental month, I’ll be catching up over the next couple of weeks. Yes, that’s right! You can look forward to exciting posts about:

Making your own yogurt!

DIY dishwasher detergent!

Soap-free dish soap in a shaker bottle!

Camping less plastic!

The incredible amount of plastic involved with getting a new roof!

A love letter to bar shampoo!

And more!

breakfast less plastic, to go

Is there something you’d like to know about living with less new plastic? Do you have any tips you’d like to share?