Today’s tip is how to recycle your toilet paper rolls and repurpose your dryer lint. Recycled toilet paper rolls make excellent firestarters. Just save your toilet paper rolls and stuff them with lint from your dryer lint trap.
I find it useful to keep a few empty rolls by the dryer and then each time I empty the lint trap, I just stuff the lint into the paper roll. After a few drying cycles, the roll is full and I keep it near my woodstove along with kindling for firestarting.
This useful idea has been shared on many tip sites and I just love it. You use a lid and ring to re-seal a package. A recycled bottle top or small jug is used for re-sealing packages. Cut the top of the package open and insert it into the cut lid sleeve. Fold over the package and screw the lid on.
What a fantastic way to recycle a plastic bottle and keep your packages sealed for freshness and storage.
I had many green tomatoes left over after the gardening season. I just hated not saving them for future use. I had read that you can store green tomatoes for future use by wrapping them individually in newspaper. So I gathered all my green tomatoes in October and wrapped them separately in pieces of newspaper. I then put them loosely in a brown paper bag and put them in my basement larder.
Today I carefully unwrapped a few of the newspapers to check on the tomatoes. I needed a few tomatoes for a green salad I wanted to make. I was pleasantly surprised that many of the tomatoes were bright red and ripe. A few were still green or orange so I just re-wrapped them and put them back in the bag to use later.
So if you have green tomatoes, you might want to try out this useful idea for storing and ripening your tomatoes. Using this method will provide you ripe tasty tomatoes well into the winter months.
A heel roast isn’t the most tender cut of beef but it is very flavorful. Roasting a heel roast in a Dutch Oven is a wonderful way to slow cook the beef and results in a wonderful tender meal. Add carrots and potatoes and you have a complete one pot tasty meal. Here are the details on how I prepared and cooked my beef roast.
Ingredients:
3-4 pound Beef Roast (Heel Roast used in this recipe)
Olive Oil
Spices (garlic, salt, pepper, seasoning salt, sage)
Small onion diced
1 can beef broth
Carrots and potatoes (if desired)
Directions:
Rub olive oil over roast. Sprinkle roast with desired spices. I used garlic, salt, pepper, seasoning salt, and sage. Rub the spices into the meat and place meat on cast iron trivet inside the Dutch Oven. Pour a small amount of beef broth over the meat and put it in a preheated oven at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes to sear the meat with the lid off.
Add cut up carrots and potatoes around the meat. Top the veggies and the meat with diced onion. Pour the rest of the can of beef broth over the meat. Put the lid on the Dutch Oven and reduce oven heat to 325 degrees. Bake for 3 hours or until desired doneness. I did check the roast once at the 2-1/2 hour mark to baste it and I took the picture above. My meat wasn’t quite done so I left it for about another 20-30 minutes and then removed it from the oven. I let it set for about 15 minutes before serving.
I used the juice reserves from the pot to make gravy to top off my meal.
The results — A great meal of tender roast beef and tasty vegetables!
With hurricane Sandy’s devastation in the news, I can’t help but be reminded to stock up and do more prepping. The stories are just heart-breaking and many people just aren’t prepared to go without power for days or do without going to the grocery store for daily needs. For those that do have preparations ready for just such a disaster, I applaud you. But it is a good time to review your emergency preparedness and go over the what if scenarios. After reading some of the challenges facing people after hurricane Sandy, here are a few things to consider.
Do you have enough water available to drink, flush the toilet, and wash up with?
Do you have food on hand that you can eat without cooking, such as peanut butter, canned fruits or meats, crackers, bread, etc?
Is there an alternative to electric cooking? Do you have a BBQ you can cook on or a woodstove you can cook on or in? Maybe you have a fireplace, do you have a dutch oven you can place in the fireplace or on your woodstove for cooking?
How much food do you have on hand that you and your family can eat? Do you have enough for at least a week, a month, or maybe even a year? Prepping for long term can be expensive but if you buy an extra jar of peanut butter or a can of tuna each trip to the store you will soon begin to build your pantry.
Do you have batteries for your flashlights and portable radio? Many people without power still from hurricane Sandy say that their portable radio is the only way that they can get news and hear the latest information. Make sure you have fresh batteries on hand and that your portable radio works.
How about keeping clean? I mentioned above about having some water available for washing up. Maybe you don’t have enough water for this luxury. Maybe think about buying a few packages of baby wipes for washing yourself up.
Anyway these are just a few things to consider. I could list many more things but sometimes it’s good to just stick to the basics. Every little bit helps, so think ahead and don’t be one of those people who hasn’t at least made a few preparations for power outages, storms, and other such challenges.
If you have green tomatoes left over in your garden, here is a great tip on how to ripen them and turn them red. Pick the green tomatoes and place them inside a paper bag along with a ripe banana. Apparently the ripe banana gives off a gas that helps ripen the green tomatoes naturally.
Here is a photo of a few tomatoes that I placed inside the bag that were very green. After just 5 days with the ripe banana they have ripened up nicely.
Instructions:
Place green tomatoes for ripening inside a paper bag. I used a small lunch sack and then added a ripe banana. Close the bag and check it in a few days. If the tomatoes aren’t ripe yet, close the bag and check it again in a few more days. Tomatoes should be fully ripened within 7 days.