Some weeks, we get through a loaf of bread in about a minute and a half and other times, we have a couple of slices of toast the day we get the loaf and the rest just sits there forlornly as we fill up with other carbohydrates instead. This week is somewhere inbetween and we’ve got about half a loaf left.

But what, oh what, can I do with it?

I suspect throwing it all out to the birds would a) be overkill since they can’t eat that much and b) literally overkill, because of the cats (or at least overpounce-and-miss because our cats are tubby and generally inept when it comes to that sort of thing) but it seems such a waste to just throw it in the bin.

Any suggestions?

We flipped to roll-on ones from aerosol anti-perspirants for environment reasons – both big, out-there environment (the aerosol bit) and little, in-here environment (the spray quickly made the bathroom unpleasant as it deodorised your lungs) – but now we’re left with lots of roll-on bottles instead.

I suspect the bottle and the ball are different types of plastic so am wary to throw them in the recycling bin – anyone know if they can be recycled? Does it help if you pop the ball out first?

But better than that, are there any reuses for them? Either complete or in parts.

And what about stick deodorant containers (the narrower, ball-less ones)?

Friday is usually dilemma-day but anyway…

A suggestion from my dad:

Daughter,

So then?

Garden uses would probably be best but I’m sure he’ll consider anything. And he’s promised to take photos of anything he does with them : )

Turning over our compost bin is a ineffective nightmare. It involves precariously balancing on a metre-high brick wall and digging down, now below foot level, into the flimsy bin without using the sides of it for leverage in any way (because of the aforementioned flimsiness). Needless to say, it doesn’t get turned that often.

But every time we do turn it over, egg boxes return to the surface, almost completely unchanged by their weeks of being surrounded by rotting matter. I suspect we would do better if we tore them up or soaked them with water before throwing them in, but it did make me think: they’re clearly not as disposable as I thought, so what else could they be used for aside from the compost heap?

When I left my last but one job, I was given a juicer as a leaving present. Since I abhor fruit in its many evil forms, we swapped the fancy be-tapped blender for a breadmaking machine since we love bread and thought it would be a darnsight more useful.

Oh, we had such good intentions. We made bread at least twice a week and made pizza dough too. We made quick white bread and long slow wholemeal. We used the timer so we’d wake up to nice fresh bread in the morning. Ah, happy days.

Then after about a six weeks, like I guess about 95% of people that own a breadmaker, the novelty wore off and suddenly we just had an unused appliance taking up half the worktop and a couple of big bags of buy-one-get-one-never-use flour in the cupboard.

Time passed.

Then, recently, I found I had a bit more time on my hands and I decided to make a pizza base-esque garlic bread. I turned to our good old flour mountain with glee. Our now out of date flour mountain. Our now out of date with ick, some tiny crawling things in it. The glee wore off and I learnt a good lesson about buy-one-get-one-free products and novelty devices.

I’m not obsessive about best-before dates but I draw the line at cooking with tiny crawling things. So what non-culinary uses are there for old flour?

(Photo by melaniemar, c/o www.sxc.hu)