We’ve had an email from Sara R, asking:

What can I do with plastic forks? I always used to carry a proper one in my bag so I didn’t have to pick one up when I got a pasta pot for lunch but now the forks are inside the pot so I can’t refuse them. I’ve now got a stack of little forks that I don’t know what to do with. I reuse or recycle the pot itself but I don’t know about the forks.

Wikipedia informs me that plastic cutlery is usually Polystyrene – type 6 plastic – and that can’t usually be recycled easily so I guess we’re looking at reuses.

I guess they could be melted/moulded into jewellery or some of the other suggestions we had for metal cutlery but any plastic specific ideas?

(Photo by asolario)

We’ve had an email from Carla, saying:

I’ve recently developed an obsession with sardines and my green bin is now full of cans! Is there anything I can do with them?

We’ve already covered standard food cans but most of the ideas take advantage of those cans’ cylindrical nature and height.

The shallow nature of sardine cans might make them useful for under small plant pots (but watch out for rust) or for candles – both to catch drips of tall ones or a mould/dish for making new ones.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by stroinski)

My beloved laptop died last week. It’s actually been dying for about a year but my patience/unwillingness to buy a new one combined with a few last ditch life-extending efforts by John meant it only shuffled off the.. electro-magnetic coil last week.

John bought it five years ago for work and (ab)used it for a couple of years, then I inherited it and have used it as my main PC ever since – and given I work on it all day, every day, it’s really quite impressive that it’s lasted this long.

But now we’ve decided to finally lay it to rest. The power supply (which has been replaced once before) and batteries are utterly shot, meaning it frequently lost power when I was in the middle of my work – and not just once but over and over again until the planets align and it decided it’d accept/store power again. The screen’s casing is physically damaged after an accident a few years ago and something either to do with that or the graphics card meant there were constantly glitches appearing and disappearing from the screen. The airport (wireless) hasn’t worked for years and last time we opened it up it seemed to have melted (??!) and the paint has worn off the edges of the keyboard bit, leaving electric-shock inflicting bare metal. I was happy to live with the latter things – using a wire instead of wireless, wearing a jumper to prevent the shocks – but the power thing became unworkable. There is only so many times something can turn on then off then on then off then on then off… before you want to throw it through a window.

We’re going to see if anyone in our local geeky world can use it for its non-broken parts but if it’s not any use to them, I don’t know what else to do with it. Our usual computer recycling place refurbishes old PCs but I suspect, given this is an Apple and so uses all sorts of proprietary Apple connectors and whatnot, it’ll be too much hassle/expense to fix it.

Any suggestions though?

(Photo by John from when it was shiny and (quite) new, and we didn’t have piles of crap on our shelves)

(Also apologies for the couple of hours downtime that we had yesterday – our server was being moved or something.)

We’ve had an email from Suzanne, asking:

What do you do with dry cake that you can’t stand to throw out? Trifle? Or rebake by slicing in pan and covering with a lemon something or other?

My first thought was “old cake? there is no such thing! there is cake and eaten cake!” but as much of a cake-fiend as I am, there are times when I’m in the same situation as Suzanne – banana bread when it’s past its best or the remains of a giant panettone that will not disappear (I swear those things regrow in the tin).

So suggestions?

In the past, I’ve microwaved old but not very dry cake (or muffin) and covered it in a healthy portion of custard for a speedy pudding. But I also like a biscuit-y idea – re-baking it in slices, maybe with a sprinkling of icing sugar on the top when it’s done – but am not sure it would work for (originally) really moist cakes. Anyone out there a cake expert?

(Photo by marsy)

Following on from the soggy apples earlier in the month, I have some VERY brown bananas sat on my kitchen counter at the moment.

I bought them a few weeks ago to make a loaf of banana bread for my friend’s birthday but they were under-ripe when I bought them and my banana bread always works best with slightly over-ripe ‘nanas (great for using them up once they’re just past eating-raw best) so I left them to ripen. Then I didn’t end up seeing my friend when I thought I would and got distracted by the billion other things going on in my life at the moment and so the banana bread never got made.

I think they’re past the eating point now – even in bread form – but I’m still keen to use them. Like with the apples, I know they can be mixed with honey & oatmeal to make a facemask, or with cream (or yoghurt) & a little honey to make a hair conditioner.

But any other suggestions what I can do with the remaining couple once I’m pampered to oblivion? And any natty suggestions for using the peels?

(Photo by pzado – mine are considerably browner than these!)