We’ve had a clever “Reduce This” idea from “Someone else”:

I try to cut back, it’s true, but I love Doritos, so not having chips ever wasn’t an option. I did find a way which is perhaps a little easier on my health and the environment by baking some tortillas instead. We buy those tall stacks of 6 inch corn totillas, cut them up with a pizza slicer, and spread them out on sheets to bake them. we eat them with salsa, and you can find recipes online.

It helps me get the crunch I want, and one stack comes in a soft plastic bag, recyclable the same was as a bag on a loaf of bread, and contains enough to make quite a few batches. Yes, I still get Doritos occasionally, but I am weaning myself off them and those strange bags they come in.

That’s a great compromise – I love ideas that provide an alternative without feeling like a punishment.

For people that prefer potato-based crisps/chips, you can make them out of sweet potato in the microwave without needing tons of fat and packaging.

Any other suggestions for cutting back on snack waste?

• How can I reuse or recycle crisp packets?

It was my birthday (the big 3-0) last Monday and because I’m wild and exciting, I decided I’d like to spend the day making cheese. I’m determined to get quickly confident with soft cheese so I can move onto hard cheese as soon as I’ve got a room they can be stored in for 12 months (*insert misc house-moving grumbles here*).

I planned it out carefully to make sure we used up everything as efficiently as possible – we started making butter and used the leftover buttermilk to make buttermilk cheese (which was interesting because it was slightly sour), and I’d planned to whey ricotta from the whey leftover from the paneer and lemon-flavoured soft cheese making but there just wasn’t enough milk solids left to do it justice.

What else could I do with the watery whey? I’ve heard it can be a good protein drink for bodybuilders or people who just want to, um, build up their bodies — I tried to give some to our poorly-sick cat to help her bulk up but she was more interested in the leftover cream.

As I said, I’d like to conquer cheeses so will be producing a few litres of this a week – any suggestions? Recipes? Other ideas?

We’ve had a message from Anita on the Suggestions page:

Help! How do you recycle flavored butter that doesn’t taste good? We get heaps of it on prepackaged fish, but we don’t use it, now we have a lot of it. I read that you can’t compost it, which was my first inclination…

Yes, I’d avoid composting it in case the smell attracts undesirable vermin to the heap. (If you’ve got a completely sealed composter, it’s less of a problem.) I did wonder if it could be used to attract more desirable wild creatures to the garden – such as being used in making some sort of bird feeder – but from what I’ve read, wild birds are best fed vegetable oils rather than animal ones, and butter is, of course, going to be too runny to make into fat balls anyway. Someone please correct me if that’s wrong.

One reduce idea would be to avoid buying it in the first place – but depending where/when you shop, I realise that’s not always an option.

Like nearly all oily things, butter can be used as a lubricant but I’d probably avoid using to, say, oil squeaky door hinges around the home, because it’ll go off. The oiliness can apparently be used to ease glue off skin and tree sap off skin & cars though.

Other ideas I’ve see mentioned for butter include using it as a hand/foot rub or as an emergency shaving cream – although I suspect it would depend on what the butter was flavoured with (at a guess, chilli butter and shaving would. not. mix!)

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by superfloss)

We’ve covered orange peel, banana skins and pineapple bits, what about melon rind?

During last week’s super-hot (for the UK) weather, John consumed a fair bit of watermelon – leaving slithers of rind behind after he’s eaten the flesh.

A quick Google reveals that after peeling off the green outside layer, the remaining rind can be candied or made into a spicy pickle. Chickens also like pecking at them (in the same way they do just about everything) and if nothing else, it can be composted.

But is there anything else? Can the rind – the tough outer layer – be dried and used like a leather?

We’ve covered very, very brown bananas before but I was reading a Mrs Beeton-style book on home management from the 1930s the other day (as you do), and I saw a reference to using banana skins to clean brown leather shoes.

According to the hefty tome (which also includes chapters on engaging servants, etiquette for women and fortune-telling – all essential to the 1930s homemaker), rubbing the inside of a banana skin on brown leather shoes helps feed the leather. A bit of Googling seems to corroborate this and adds that the same idea can also be applied to silverware.

Any other cunning ways to reuse banana peel?

(We’ve covered orange peel before – that’s got loads of reuses…)