We’ve had an email from Jess:

Is there anything I can do with onion skins instead of just throwing them in the compost? I remember reading about using them to dye eggs at one point but I don’t want to dye eggs! Any other ideas?

Ours always go straight in the compost – usually because I’m getting into a panic about making the rest of the onion-based meal (burning! where’s the stock!? argh, we’re out of cheese! etc etc) – but I like the idea of doing something more with them too.

Apparently you can use them for dyeing other wool or cotton based things and not just eggs, but cotton stuff doesn’t tend to be very colour-fast so maybe use it for artwork or hardly-washed soft furnishings instead of your new favourite tshirt.

Is there anything else that can be done with them? Other practical or crafty suggestions? Or culinary ones (I have half a memory of them being good for reducing the taste of burnt stews…?)?

(Photo by grafbea)

We’ve had an email from Wen Rou (from Chile!):

Hi, I’ve got a box with cans of expired beer, how can I recycle it? The empty cans I’ll take them to the recycling center. I can just throw the beer away, just wondering if anything useful can be made with it.

If you’ve got a snail & slug-infested garden, the most obvious suggestion is to use it for beer traps to catch those slippery suckers. From what I’ve seen, they’re not fussy whether it’s lager, ale, in date, premium or the cheapest nastiest stuff sold in our supermarket for 88p for four cans (John tried the latter and said it tasted like bitter, gone-off water).

Beer is also supposed to be good for hair – mix with water as a final-rinse aid. It apparently leaves it silky and shiny – but I don’t know whether that needs a yeasty ale-type beer or whether a lager will do. (Anyone know?)

Any other suggestions for either this expired beer or other related stuff, like the sediment-y bit at the bottom of bottles/barrels?

(Stock photo by macleod)

We’ve had an email from Nina:

What can I do with leftover pickled beetroot vinegar? We did the pickling ourselves in July and it seems a waste to throw the vinegar down the drain just two months later because we’ve eaten the beetroots – but we can’t use it for cleaning because it would dye everything pink!

Man, I love vinegar. Is there anything more delicious and versatile? But I agree the pink staining thing could be a bit of a problem here.

There are possible some cleaning things it could do where a pink stain or whatever wouldn’t be a problem – like removing rust from metals before painting – and studies have shown its worth as a herbicide.

Any other suggestions?

Following on from the soggy apples earlier in the month, I have some VERY brown bananas sat on my kitchen counter at the moment.

I bought them a few weeks ago to make a loaf of banana bread for my friend’s birthday but they were under-ripe when I bought them and my banana bread always works best with slightly over-ripe ‘nanas (great for using them up once they’re just past eating-raw best) so I left them to ripen. Then I didn’t end up seeing my friend when I thought I would and got distracted by the billion other things going on in my life at the moment and so the banana bread never got made.

I think they’re past the eating point now – even in bread form – but I’m still keen to use them. Like with the apples, I know they can be mixed with honey & oatmeal to make a facemask, or with cream (or yoghurt) & a little honey to make a hair conditioner.

But any other suggestions what I can do with the remaining couple once I’m pampered to oblivion? And any natty suggestions for using the peels?

(Photo by pzado – mine are considerably browner than these!)

Ok, since you guys were so great coming up with ideas for lettuce last month, here’s a related one: cucumber.

Like with the lettuce, we don’t eat enough salad to get through a whole cucumber before it goes mushy and horrible – we find it pretty hard to even get through a half-cucumber unless we’re on an utter salad binge.

So once we’ve eaten our fill of it, what else can we do with it? There is the cliche cucumber-on-eye thing I guess and I have a suspicion you can use them in face masks – but any more concrete ideas?

(Photo by woodsy)