Reduce Your Use of Plastic in the Kitchen
Friends of Portable Farms, we wanted to share a simple plan to reduce the use of plastic in your kitchen by using a simple technique to protect food instead of using plastic.
This is a fun project takes less than a hour to create a dozen Waxed Fabrics of various sizes. These Waxed Fabrics will last through months of regular use before they need to be refreshed. If they get dirty, just use cool soapy water to rinse them before reuse.
Tools:
- Beeswax. You can buy a block to shred the wax with a kitchen shredder. Make sure the wax doesn’t have fragrance or pesticides. We used organic bees-wax pellets for our project.
- 100% Cotton fabric scraps. You can also use old cotton t-shirts or other lightweight cotton fabrics.
- Scissors to cut the fabric.
- Wax kitchen paper parchment
- Iron
- Your favorite happy music playing in the background along with a glass of sweet tea or lemonade.
One pound, 16 ounces, beeswax pellets is about $10.00. We used 8 ounces to make the Waxed Fabrics shown in the seven examples shown in this article.
Place cotton fabric on top of of a piece of waxed kitchen parchment paper. Then sprinkle about 1/4 of a cup on HALF the fabric (about 12″ x 12) and then fold the fabric over. After your fabric has been prepared with pellets and place another piece of waxed kitchen parchment paper.
Set your iron on the highest heat setting and place the iron on top of the waxed parchment paper. Melt the wax by moving the iron around on the fabric for about 2 minutes. After melting the wax onto the fabric, remove the waxed parchment paper and pick up the fabric to open it.
Hang the piece of Waxed Fabric up for about 3 minutes to dry and then, it’s ready to use.
Here is a small apple to wrap to include in a lunch bag. The Waxed Fabric also protects the food unlike a thin plastic bag.
Fold and wrap the apple. The warmth of your hands seals the fabric to secure the apple.
We make homemade bread every three days on average. The Waxed Fabric keeps the bread moist and fresh.
Again, just wrap the bread and fold over the edges. Hold you hands on the seal to heat the wax to seal it.
This works great for packing lunch boxes. Use it to wrap sandwiches, sweet rolls, treats, chips or fruit. Again, if the wrap is dirty, just use cool soapy water to clean the fabric and reuse.
Waxed Fabric is ideal for putting over bowls or pie pans in the refrigerator for leftovers.
Pleat the Waxed Fabric along the edges of the bowl and hold your warm hands over the pleats to seal the fabric to seal it.
Here is a variety of selections of Waxed Fabrics of varying sizes and shapes. HAVE FUN and experiment with ideas for your personal choices.
