(Oooh, alliteration!)

We’ve had a Compost This email from Charlie:

Can I compost those paper fairy cake cases?

I’m presuming the question is about used ones rather than a box of new ones (you’re not going to use them? Freecycle!) and the answer is a big, definite ‘maybe’.

The tiny cases I’ve got in my cupboard seem to be just paper so I’d probably risk those but other ones – particularly muffin cases and ones on bought-in cakes – tend to feel waxier. It might be that they’ve just been treated (supercalendered to make glassine) and are still just paper, but it also might be that they’ve been treated with a plasticizing agent, which may or may not be natural, and so may or may not be something you want in your compost heap. If you’re not sure of the composition of the material, it’s probably best leaving them out.

(If you’re baking at home and your cakes are always going to be eaten in the home, it might be worth getting some reusable cake cases – although they tend to be made from silicone so have a higher initial impact than paper ones.)

Thoughts?

We’ve had an email from Anna:

Hi! I’ve just been reading how bad talc is (oh my god it’s bad!) and no longer want to use it on my body. Is there anything I can do with it instead?

I’m not an expert on talc – I’ve not used it for years anyway so not read up on it much – but from a brief Googling around now, it seems the main problems with it are an increased cancer risk (most notably ovarian cancer, often but not always related to the application of talc around the genitals) and pulmonary issues related to inhalation. The inhalation thing may limit the potential reuses – but does anyone know of any?

We’ve had an email from Siobhan:

I’ve got a repair question for you. A pane of glass in my greenhouse cracked over winter and I want to make it safe. Is there anything I can do short of replacing it? Thanks!

You can fix it temporarily with tape – duct tape works apparently or you can get special transparent UV stablised repair tape – but from what I’ve read, they’re really supposed to be temporary measures until you replace it ASAP, lest a giant shard of the weakened glass break off and spear you through the eye. (That said, I’m pretty sure my dad had broken glass panes in his greenhouses for the bulk of my childhood without any problems. No eyes gouged out here.)

Random pieces of glass come up quite regularly on my local Freecycle/Freegle group and from local sellers on eBay so if your area is anything like mine, you should be able to pick up a replacement quite cheaply.

Any other suggestions?

Our new furry food-processing unit is settling in well – she’s curled up in a ball on our office sofa at the moment – and we’ve been enjoying the woodland walks with her now that she can go off lead and tire herself out.

As with the cats, I’m trying to keep the waste produced by her food packaging to a minimum – and also, like with the cats’, it can mostly be recycled – cans, cardboard boxes and the giant paper sacks which are the focus of this post.

I bulk-bought the 15kg bags to save money and reduce packaging – but thought that, like with smaller bags of the same brand, the big bags would be plastic so could be reused as rubble sacks or similar in the garden. They turned out to be paper which is better in some ways – much easier to recycle – but less reusable. Or are they?

They’re a double layer arrangement – brown paper on the inside, shiny printed paper on the outside. The brown paper layer smells somewhat of dry dog food so can’t be reused for things I’d ordinarily reuse brown paper for (packaging items to post etc).

So any ideas?

Aside from the rain we had pretty much all day yesterday, it’s been a lovely start to spring – I’ve had the washing out on the line on a good number of occasions now, we’ve had a few breakfasts on the sunny balcony with the animals and the cats have been enjoying the novelty of sitting both in sunshine and in the house – something that’s never happened to them before – and they’ve been getting toasty warm … which made me think “what else can I make toasty warm in the sunshine?” (Plus, we got our gas bill through yesterday for the cold winter – even relying on just the woodburning stove in the evenings and wearing lots of layers, it’s still kerching!kerching!

Trying out a solar oven has been on my to-do list for a while – but they’re expensive and hard to get in the UK so it makes sense to make my own instead.

There are how-tos for making them out of cardboard boxes and aluminium foil and better how-tos to make them more efficient – but I wondered if anyone had any suggestions of things to reuse or recycle for the materials involved in such a venture.

And does anyone have any ideas of ways to make things a little more permanent/weatherproof? With our propensity for April showers on otherwise glorious summer days, cardboard outside in the UK sounds like a recipe for disaster, not a nice slow-cooked meal.

Anyone make their own? Anything that’s a must-do? Anything to avoid?

(Photo by margilevin)