Still more weird crap for the compost stew

According to its website, Prima water bottles are made from 100 percent “plant material.” Corn, actually. They’re supposed to biodegrade in a commercial composting facility, though I‘m guessing a bottle left lying in the grass would be there for an awfully long time.

We’re dumping this one in the compost, where it will join “the world’s first 100% compostable chip bag” (Sun Chips), some allegedly biodegradable balloons and a cardboard pizza box, along with some of the more typical natural ingredients you find in a compost brew.

How nature recycles leftovers

Cassie found yet another example of thrift in nature the other day: caterpillars eating their own shedded skin for the extra protein boost. She got this from "Lanie," an American Girl book by Jane Kurtz. And we found this photo of a caterpillar in skin-eating mode on www.clayruth.com. 

The anti-grocery list

Ten things I refuse to buy in the middle of the week, even if I run out:
1. Dishwasher detergent -- whether it’s the commercial kind, or simply the ingredients for my homemade version, I always figure there’s no reason I can’t do dishes by hand until Friday, when I get my next week’s supply of grocery money.
2. Sandwich bags -- You can always swathe sandwiches in plastic wrap or make a bag out of the bottom of a cereal-box liner. Better yet, maybe I’ll finally buy one of those plastic “sandwich keeper” containers.
3. Coffee filters -- Two napkins laid so that eight corners are exposed do just as well. In a pinch, I‘ve even reused the filter from the day before.
4. Band-aids -- Almost any injury requiring a band-aid can be handled with a square of folded-up Kleenex and some packing tape.
5. Bread -- Make your own!
6. Cereal -- My kids get a cereal allowance, and just like their money, when it‘s gone, it‘s gone. The only exception: My husband‘s Raisin Bran, which is as much a part of his diet as bamboo to a panda.
7. Jam -- Put fruit on your PB in place of the J. Lettuce is nice, too.
8. Toilet bowl cleaner -- There’s almost always something around I can use instead: a can of Coke, bleach, borax. Bob‘s had great success with that heavy-duty citrus orange hand cleaner.
9. Deoderant -- The next time we run out of this in the middle of the week, I will finally be inspired to investigate how one goes about using baking soda as a deoderant.
10. Pasta -- You never really run out of pasta or noodles if you’ve got a little flour, oil and an egg in the house. Mix it up, roll it out, and cut into strips.

Celebrating shrinking

How do you celebrate losing 50 pounds in 21 weeks? (The official tally: 51.4). My first thought was to order a pizza, having restrained myself to just one skinny slice the night before Monday‘s weigh-in. After not eating much all day, I figured I had enough Weight Watchers points saved up for half a large cheese pizza from Pizza Hut.

On the other hand, I had a bunch of veggies and whole-wheat tortillas at home to make myself a customized personal pizza. So I bought some mozzarella cheese and indulged myself by using half a cup, twice as much as usual. Very tasty, very satisfying, and only a fraction of the cost and calories of a Pizza Hut concoction.

I followed that up with my usual Monday night ice cream sundae, what I think of as a stripped-down version of a Dairy Queen peanut buster parfait: One cup of Great Value fat free ice cream, 1 tablespoon of chunky peanut butter and 1 tablespoon of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. It’s only five points instead of the real thing’s 16, but it pushes all the right buttons in the reward center in my brain. And I didn’t have to buy anything -- all the ingredients were leftover from a couple of weeks ago.

Emergency rations for hungry guests

Coming back from a movie the other day with an extra “kid” in tow (my daughter’s boyfriend, Kevin), I was panicking because I knew everyone was hungry but wasn’t sure what I had on hand. Like a true brainwashed consumer, I kept thinking pizza was our only solution. Then I remembered we had a box of Velveeta-style cheese and a couple of loaves of bread. A big platter of grilled cheese sandwiches did the trick.

The compostable bag that wouldn't die

The "world's first 100% Compostable chip bag" is proving to be one tough nut to crack in the compost heap. We dug this Sun Chips bag out of the compost over Memorial Day weekend for an impromptu photo session, and discovered that after 69 days -- just under seven weeks, half the time it's supposed to take to decompose -- it didn't look much worse than it did in Week 1. We could probably run it through the dishwasher and reuse it. Then again, maybe that would jump-start the composting process. Hmm....

Improvising a cheeseball on deadline

I made my first cheeseball about 15 years ago, when I was trying out some of my grandma’s recipes in the months after she died. It was a hit, not just with relatives on my mom’s side, who appreciated the sentimental connection, but in a couple of other circles as well.

I’m still asked to bring cheeseballs to parties, so naturally I’ve spent some time thinking about how to reduce the cost of a dish that could easily top $10, depending on where and when I bought the ingredients. But this weekend’s cheeseball set a new record in cost-effectiveness, probably because I had to improvise under deadline.

I’m not going to suggest this as a recipe, because it wasn’t the best cheeseball I ever made. But it worked, and here’s the secret: As long as you’ve got a cream cheese base, at least one  tangier cheese to mix in, and some garlic powder, it’s pretty hard to screw up.

In this case, I started with the remains of an 8-pounce brick of cream cheese, about 3/4 of a package. I usually stock up on these when they’re priced at $1 or less. I added some swiss almond cheese spread that had been hanging out in the fridge for weeks (maybe even months), and -- sad but true -- a chunk of store brand Velveeta-style cheese. Pressed for time, I forgot to put in the garlic powder. And yet people still ate it.

Total cost? Less than $2.