_sara's Profile

Replace the peanut butter with two shots of espresso (one per banana) for one of the best frozen coffee drinks.

Instead of rinsing out your filter over and over when it has wet messy grounds in it, set it aside (stand it in a bowl or place small plate over it and flip it over) and let it dry out. The grounds will fall out of the filter once they are dry.

Tip the grounds into the compost and give the dried out filter a good shake over the compost and it's mostly clean without any time or water wasted. Brush the dried-out filter with a dry toothbrush or scrub brush and it's clean. If you clean out your coffeemaker with a vinegar and water solution occasionally, leave your filter in and it all gets deep-cleaned at once.

If you make coffee often enough to need your filter before it's dried out all the way, you could buy a second one and use them in rotation.

I also recommend the french press or moka pot, though. If you really want to avoid specialty equipment there's always Turkish coffee or cowboy coffee.

My chocolate dream is to temper chocolate. I want to coat the rum balls I make each year (a family recipe) in shiny, shiny chocolate. I think I got the idea from the miracle pill in the movie The Princess Bride.

Every jar or container we buy gets reused. My spice rack is full of jelly jars. I use old bottles from herbal tinctures for vanilla and the like. My beans, rice, pasta, various grains, powders, and whatnot, all go in reused glass jars.

This implicitly involves shopping in the bulk department. It's far cheaper than buying pre-packaged goods. Spices alone are an enormous savings! Don't be shy about bringing your own containers. Just remember that you have to get the weight of the empty container before you put anything in it. I find the folks at the meat counter are always willing to weigh my empties for me. Sometimes they print out the weight on a scale sticker as well.

I avoid getting plastic as much as I can, but when we have plastic containers in the house, we use them the same way we use glass jars. Also, since they are less breakable, they are perfect for packing lunches, sending people home from dinner parties with leftovers, anything you would normally use a Tupperware container or the like for.

I can't compost in my backyard, but there is a huge compost project in town that accepts food waste. Rather than spend money on a bin or risk getting fruit flies, I put all the compost in a brown paper bag in the freezer. The bag itself is compostable, and I re-use it until it falls apart. For liquids or coffee grounds, I keep an old 32 oz yogurt container in the freezer.

When we cannot avoid getting plastic bags, we reuse them. We have 4 cats and three litterboxes. Need I say more?

and speaking of cats, clean aluminum foil that can no longer be reused makes a great cat toy. They love chasing a tight crinkled ball of it across tile or linoleum.