We’ve had an email from Catelin:

I misfired with a bag of pasta yesterday and it went all over the floor instead of into the pan! With our dogs, the ten second rule definitely does not apply so we can’t eat it now but I can’t bring myself to just throw it away either.

What can I do with it? Can I compost it?

It’s probably ok to go on the compost heap – because our compost heap is very close to our house, I’m overly cautious and I usually say don’t compost cooked pasta in an open heap or bin in case it (or rather stuff it’s been cooked with) attracts vermin, but not-cooked stuff should be fine.

Aside from that, you might be able to reuse it in a non-culinary situation. We’ve used dry pasta in place of poker chips (worked fine until John started eating his pieces) and of course kids can use it to make art – macaroni being the most common for that but other shapes like bows (farfalle), shells (conchiglie), and twists (fusilli) would work just as well. Kids could also use tubular pasta – like penne and tortiglioni – for threading practise (be warned: you might end up with a billion pasta necklaces…).

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had another email to Compost This which I’m pulling over here instead. This is from Joann:

Can I compost the mushy leftover veg after I’ve made stock?

Like I said regarding Weetabix, one of the general rules for a basic compost heap is to avoid putting things in there which will attract vermin. Just about all food stuff will rot down to compost, the key is to avoid the heap or non-sealed bin becoming a nuisance in the meantime.

In terms of those stock veggies, I would say a big giant no if they’ve been cooked with any meat, fish, bones or animal fat: the scent will probably cling to them and might cause a problem. If it’s just a veg stock though, it’ll be less of an issue so I’d probably compost them.

Before flinging them though, can they be put to any other ultra-thrifty/non-wasteful culinary uses?

I’ve heard some people keeping back starchy things to use as a thickener for soups or stews. I’ve also heard about people using them as a bulking agent – alongside plenty of meat/fish and grains – when making homemade pet food.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

We’ve had a query from Alison Bailey Smith:

Can we have suggestions for what to do with divided yoghurt pots, you know the kind that have muesli in a small triangular pot with larger triangular pot for yoghurt? I mean beyond using as paint and water pots…

I have used them for the basis for papier mache. We go through tonnes of them and give them to school and playgroup but wondered if anyone had converted them into anything unusual.

We’ve covered the single pot type of yogurt pots before but these ones are quite different – so any ideas?

We’ve had an email from Fiona, saying:

We eat a lot of dried fruit, nuts and seeds and, when we’re in a jam/marmalade/chutney making mood, a lot of sugar too. Which means we have a lot of empty plastic food bags.

Would love to know how to re-use or recycle these.

I would love to know how to re-use or recycle them too – I suspect those type of bags make up the bulk of our to-landfill waste at the moment.

I saw some storage boxes/baskets made from old chocolate bar wrappers at a cool hippy shop the other week and I’m thinking of giving that a go with these type of bags and other wrappers once I finished The Great Can Weaving Project of 2008 (don’t ask) – I’ll post on how that turns out if/when it turns out.

But what about other ideas?

(Photo by sritenou – and if you’re interested in pistachios, check out the post that started this whole website nearly two years ago :) )

We’ve already covered a multitude of Valentine’s Day-themed items but Tamara came up with a new one for us:

I’d like to know if anyone has a suggestion for how to re-use Valentine’s candy hearts? The chalky kind with writing on them, I mean. They passed them around at work yesterday. I only like the orange ones, and so I’ve been left with a card-deck sized box of other colors. I thought they might look cute as pins, but i think they’d melt if I tried to shellac them. So what to do?

From their pages on Wikipedia, the UK Love Hearts and the US Sweethearts sweets look a bit different but since Tamara (who I’m presuming is based in the US from her use of the spelling “colors” ;) ) refers to them as being “chalky”, I guess the texture and ingredients are pretty similar.

So any suggestions? I like the cute jewellery/badges idea but agree that it might be problematic – any ideas on how to get around that?

(Photo by kymmie_xox)