Austin Resource Recovery is running a repair clinic tomorrow! Sign up to get help fixing household items, and keep an eye out for future events.
Making olives
Last fall, I made olives from fruit gathered from a neighbor’s tree. As it turns out, this neighbor had been interested in making olives for a while, but never looked into it. He was very excited about the project and readily let me pick his olives.
I hadn’t cured olives before, but I’ve did some research on it (and have a lot of experience with other niche food projects!). As it turns out, it’s pretty easy and makes an item that is relatively expensive to purchase, so definitely worth it.
There are four basic ways to cure olives: in water, in salt brine, in lye brine, and in salt (dry). The lye method is the fastest- it can take less than a day, but lye is rather dangerous, of course. Curing in water is also supposed to be relatively fast (a month), although it seems of questionable veracity to me. Dry-curing takes 1-2 months. This method is also called oil-curing, since these types of olives are often marinated in oil after being cured. The low water content makes them taste richer and oilier. The slowest, but one of the easiest and most common, methods is brining. It takes 6-12 months and produces a “normal” olive.
The salt-based methods rely on lacto-fermentation for flavor and additional preservation. The salt prevents the wrong types of bacteria from growing (which is why it’s important to use enough salt and why I’m dubious about the water-only method!); the fermentation adds flavor and acidity.
All methods can be used on all types and ripeness of olives, but there are combinations that are more common. For example, dry-curing is more common with ripe olives. Brining is more common with green (unripe) or half-green olives. Unripe olives tend to have a stronger taste, since they start off more bitter.
Here’s a review of the process, plus improvements:
- Collect olives by shaking branches towards a tarp. Gather olives from the tarp (e.g. pour into a bucket). Picking by hand is laborious and bumping the tree as you pick causes nearby olives to fall off and be lost.
- Many (~75%) of the olives I collected had been impacted by the olive fruit fly, which lays its eggs in the olive meats. Impacted olives are safe to eat, but may be more acidic and have a shorter shelf life. I didn’t use any of the impacted olives this time, but would in the future since I was left with so few olives!
- I dry-cured the olives, leaving them in a jar of salt for ~3-4 months. Turns out this was too long, as the olives were overly salty and desiccated, so make sure to taste-test periodically. I rehydrated and de-salted by soaking in plain water for a few days, then put the olives in a brine (because they started getting moldy…).
- Dry-curing works best on ripe olives. I cured some green and half-green olives that turned out kinda hard and bitter, so I would avoid those in the future.
I was impressed with how easy the process was and how olive-like the finished product was.
Discussion of how to make liquid castile soap
The zero-waste dentist also has a very thorough article on replicating Dr. Bronner’s castile soap at home. Castile soap traditionally refers to soap made with only olive oil, so Dr. Bronner’s, which contains a large amount of coconut oil, doesn’t actually count. Apparently the coconut oil makes a big difference in texture, smell, and cleaning ability, too.
On the topic of Dr. Bronner’s, awhile ago I was reading an article reviewing the company and was super confused when the article said “she has a lot of nice scents.” Who the heck was this “she”? It turns out Dr. Bronner is a woman… :'(
Zero waste toothpaste recipe from a dentist
Finally, some DIY toothpaste advice from a dentist! Although I do “believe in” fluoride toothpaste, it would be nice to have some dentist-backed alternatives available.
Clothing repair
I regularly patch clothes – mostly the knees of J’s jeans, and recently some of J’s socks. I do boro-style patches (like this but less polished) and other forms of visible mending. They never look super awesome, but they are durable. (I’m going to look like a hobo one day, though.)
If you aren’t sure how to repair an item, take a look at Make Do and Mend. It is a British WWII booklet on caring for and repairing clothing. It is super detailed! I’m sure everyone could learn a new technique from it.
Homemade yoghurt made easy, no special equipment needed!
My kefir culture (bought from a neighbor on Craigslist!) is no longer usable. The active culture went bitter somehow – probably contamination; the backup culture in the freezer died, apparently. I tried to make several batches of kefir with it, hoping for a revival, but nothing happened 🙁
Although kefir is easier to culture than yoghurt since it is mesophilic (grows optimally at room temperature), I prefer the flavor and texture of yoghurt. Unfortunately, yoghurt cultures are thermophilic (grow optimally around 110°F). It is difficult to maintain this temperature without special equipment (yoghurt maker or water bath) or lots of fiddling (e.g. with oven settings) for the 5-10 hours needed to make a batch of yoghurt. A recent read gave a good tip for getting around this: put the heated milk and starter culture into a thermos. Even bad thermoses are capable of keeping their contents hot for 5 hours, so it works out perfectly, no additional energy input necessary!
I tried the thermos approach with a squat, wide-mouth thermos from Goodwill ($2.19! Stainless steel! Thermos brand! Oddly, it is branded with images from some car movie). It worked really well! The yoghurt turned out thick (even thicker than the commercial variety I used as starter) and creamy. I will definitely do this again!
What came before vanilla?
We usually think of vanilla as ubiquitous in sweets, but it hasn’t actually been in use for very long. It used to be one of those super expensive tropical extravagances that only the wealthy could afford; the lower class people made do with rosewater (which, ironically, is considered fancier now). My mom originally saw an article on this topic on Atlas Obscura.
Unlike vanilla, you can make rosewater at home! Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health has instructions on how to make your own. You set up a simple steam distiller. All you need besides that is water and rose petals (forageable!).
Rosewater is used in fancy cosmetics. I don’t know if it actually does anything, but it makes the product smell nice 🙂
Darning
I have a pair of not super high quality socks that were getting major holes in them. (Oddly, the holes were under the ball of my foot…) I didn’t actually intend to repair them – they’re definitely not worth it – but in the end couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. At least I got to practice my darning skills!
A darn is basically a little patch of woven material. You sew back and forth over a hole, then go back and forth the other direction, running your thread over and under the crosswise threads. See this post for detailed instructions.
The blogger who runs that site seems very into obvious patching and the distressed look. For example, see this patch, where he specifically says to not sew too carefully. You wouldn’t want it to look good or anything. He’s going to look like a hobo one day – and I probably will also…
Making a rag rug
Rag rugs are a great way to reuse clothing that is too worn to wear, repair, or donate. As my mom says, you can always have more rugs! Basically you tear or cut the garments and fabric into strips, then weave, knit, or crochet the strips into a rug. Super easy!
This is a great use for clothes that are too worn to patch and too worn to donate. Any material (cotton, polyester, etc) and any type of cloth (woven, knit) can be used. However, I try to use a single material and type of cloth within a rug. Knits and wovens in particular behave differently.
There are a ton of rug-making methods:
A braided way (you can do the same technique using an n-strand braid)
A knit way (using linen stitch)
Crocheting
This is definitely an accessible craft. For the simplest method (braiding), all you need is rag strips! You should try it!
For the rug that I made, I used a child’s dress (pink flowered), a robotics t-shirt (turquoise), a scrap of single-knit cloth (pink), an old pajama shirt of Sibling A’s (light blue), and part of a fitted sheet (white with turquoise stripes). It ended up way more themed than expected. I’m used to rag rugs looking more mismatched, which is a nice look, too!
Pant project
I’m making a pair of pants for sibling C. We don’t have a lot of pants patterns around (and those that we do have are from a past era), so I drafted a pattern based on C’s measurements and Donald McCunn’s book How to make your own sewing patterns. (I have read another book of his that is slightly more useful for creating new designs from an existing pattern.)
To make sure the pattern actually makes an item resembling a pair of pants, I mocked up a mini version about 15 cm long.
The pants will be made out of silk dupioni (or maybe it’s shantung? It was bought used from Austin Creative Reuse, so there is some question and I’m not well-versed in silk fabrics). C want them to have a drawstring closure – hopefully the fancy fabric will be able to pull them up to dress or party level! The pants will be lined with flannel, since C gets cold easily.
This will be my first time fitting a garment – wish me luck!