Make your own toothpaste!
Two zero-waster recipes in this post: Toothpaste, and Crackers! The first is a recipe I tried in March, the second, i just made today. Both successful and tasty.
From the book "there's lead in your lipstick". The most unusual ingredient is vegetable glycerine.
Home-Made Toothpaste:
6 Tbsp baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tsp vegetable glycerine
15 drops peppermint or other ingestable essential oil of choice
Mix it all up, keep in a small jar. Gillian Deacon, author of “there’s lead in your toothpaste” picked up this recipe at http://www.pioneerthinking.com
It’s a big step up from dipping a damp toothbrush in baking soda!
These tasty morsels took about 45 mins, start to finish, and they are pretty idiot-proof.
Home-made Seedy Crackers
(from the Clean Bin’s DIY section)
1 c. whole wheat flour
<1c. (just less than 1 cup) white flour
1/3 c. sesame seeds
1/3 c. poppy seeds (i used well-chopped, shelled pumpkin seeds. substitutes ok!)
1.5 tsp. salt
1.5 tsp. baking powder
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
~3/4 c. water
Mix dry ingredients, add oil & mix with spoon, then pinch/mix with fingers until you have a well-combined sandy texture. Add water and combine, kneading 4 or 5 times to finish. Divide into 4-8 pieces, cover with tea towel and let rest for 15mins; turn oven to 450F. Roll out on lightly floured surface – a rolling pin works fine, but a pasta maker does a fancy job. Score with knife or pizza roller. Lay on cookie sheet and (optionally) brush with olive oil.
*For thin snacking crackers, roll 1/16th” thick, bake 4 min on one side, flip & bake 2-3 more mins.
*For thicker dipping crackers, roll 1/8th” thick, bake 6 mins on each side.
You may have to play with the baking time a bit to get the ideal toasty crunch you prefer; the nice thing is that these crackers still taste good either slightly undercooked or slightly overcooked. that’s my kind of recipe!
